Is John Anti-Semitic?

John talks much of “the Jews” as the enemies of Christ, and this has led many to charge him with anti-Semitism. 

Paul Rainbow finds these charges groundless (Johannine Theology, 130-6). John is Jewish, and “takes obvious pride in his own people’s religious heritage.” Jewish Scriptures are integral to John’s presentation of Jesus, and “in John’s writings there is no criticism of any of the great Jewish institutions.” The high priest has a “prophetic charism” and “in the Apocalypse the temple serves as a positive symbol of heavenly verities.”

In fact, “the sole point on which John distances himself from the Jews is their repudiation of Jesus’ messiahship and divine sonship.” 

And this leads Rainbow to this summary of John’s double-sided presentation of the Jews: “John’s references to ‘the Jews’ divide between a wistful, backward look that sees his erstwhile Palestinian co-religionists in historical and cultural continuity with the Old Testament people of God, and a resigned, forward look that yields the title of ‘the Jews’ to those Judean leaders whose rejection of Jesus became definitive of Judaism” (130).