Opening the Door of Faith to the Gentiles...but Who Were They?

AM Psalm 119:49-72 • PM Psalm 49, [53]
1 Samuel 25:23-44 • Acts 14:19-28 • Mark 4:35-41

In the passage from the Acts of the Apostle in today’s readings, we find ourselves plunked down in the middle of Paul and Barnabas’ whirlwind preaching tour of Asia Minor. In Chapter 14, we find this dynamic duo drawing crowds, usually in the synagogues, in Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, Pisidian Antioch, Pamphylia, Perga, and Syrian Antioch. Arriving at this last stop, Paul and Barnabas “gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he [Paul] had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles” (v. 27).

As I read this passage, I wondered whether I had missed (or slept through) a Sunday school lesson from my youth. Certainly, someone must have tried to teach me who exactly the Gentiles were, but I simply couldn’t recall. So I did some etymological (i.e., word-origin) work, and I found this useful tidbit from Britannica.com: “Gentile, person who is not Jewish. The word stems from the Hebrew term goy, which means a ‘nation,’ and was applied both to the Hebrews and to any other nation. The plural, goyim, especially with the definite article, ha-goyim, ‘the nations,’ meant nations of the world that were not Hebrew.

The Latin versions of the Bible translated goyim as gentes (singular gens) or gentiles (an adjectival form of gens). In modern usage, “Gentile” applies to a single individual, although occasionally (as in English translations of the Bible) “the Gentiles” means “the nations.” In postbiblical Hebrew, goy came to mean an individual non-Jew rather than a nation. Because most non-Jews in the Western world were Christians, Gentile came to be equated with Christian. Strictly speaking, however, any non-Jew is a Gentile.”

So, to the older, traditional Jews in the synagogues where Paul and Barnabas showed up, what these two upstarts were doing was preaching to the “other,” the people of an “other” nation. I recall a snarky abbreviation, the use of which was sometimes imputed to folks who considered themselves elite: it was NOSD—“Not Our Sort, Darling.”

Is it any wonder that the older, traditional Jews in the synagogues were mightily miffed at Paul and Barnabas and frequently tried to run them out of town? But shouldn’t we try to follow the example of Paul and open our doors to folks who might seem, at first blush, “not us?”

Written by David Jolliffe

At St. Paul’s, David sings in the choir, works with the community meals projects, and helps to coordinate the Tippy McMichael Lecture series.