Anyone who reads the gospel of John can see that “the Jews” have become for John what Bultmann sees as a symbol of human evil.20 But those who agree with Rudolph Bultmann and Heinrich Schneider that the use of the term is merely symbolic and thus has no social or political implications seem to be engaging in apologetic evasions. John’s decision to make an actual, identifiable group—among Jesus’ contemporaries and his own—into a symbol of “all evil” obviously bears religious, social, and political implications.
