Epistles and the book of the Revelation, that should establish the meaning of

the word by its usage.

Gentiles, Samaritans and the lost sheep of the house of Israel are

differentiated in Matthew 10:5,6.  The Saviour revealed, in Matthew 20:19,

that He would be delivered to the Gentiles, 'to mock and to scourge' and this

was done exclusively by the Romans.  No one so far as we know has ever

ventured to teach that the 'Gentiles' of Matthew 10:5 or of 20:19 were Jews

of the dispersion, or Jews that had lost their true nationality by living for

a long period among the nations.  The nations that shall be gathered before

the Lord (Matt. 25:32) and the nations that the command of Matthew 28:19

embraced, were not apostate Israel, but 'the nations other than Israel', or

to avoid a circumlocution 'The Gentiles'.  Old Simeon differentiated between

the Gentiles and God's people Israel (Luke 2:32), and Luke records the

prophecy that the Jews shall be led away captive into 'all nations', and that

Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the

Gentiles be fulfilled (Luke 21:24), which makes nonsense if the words

'nations' and 'Gentiles' mean any other than those nations who are not

The occurrences of ethnos in John's Gospel are five in number, namely

in John 11:48,50,51,52 and 18:35, where ethnos is consistently translated

'nation' in the singular, and refers to Israel 'That the whole nation perish

not', 'Not for that nation only', 'Thine own nation'.  When Pilate said 'Am I

a Jew?  Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me',

there can be no doubt what people he meant by the word 'nation'.

Coming to the Acts of the Apostles, we learn that those who attended

the feast of Pentecost, were:

'Jews ... out of every nation under heaven' (Acts 2:5).

Acts 4:25,27, bring together 'heathen', 'Herod', 'Pontius Pilate with

the Gentiles', who are differentiated from 'the people of Israel'.  In the

estimate of Stephen, Canaanites were Gentiles, as distinct from 'our fathers'

(Acts 7:45 'Jesus' referring to Joshua).  These same Canaanites are referred

to as 'seven nations' by Paul in Acts 13:19, and the 'Gentiles' of Acts

13:42,46,47,48; 14:2 and 5 are referred to as distinct from the Jews or

'children of the stock of Abraham' (Acts 13:26).  Even a renegade Jew would

still remain 'of the stock of Abraham' however far he may have departed from

the faith of that patriarch.

Peter's defence for going to the Gentiles (Acts 10:35,45 and 15:3,7)

was the attitude of a man who, as he himself confessed, would have classed

Cornelius among the common and unclean had the Lord not intervened.

We turn aside to consider a note expressed by one who was enthused with

the idea that 'Gentile' in many passages of the New Testament refers to

Israel, or Israel of the dispersion.  He drew attention to the fact that

where the Authorized Version reads 'It is an unlawful thing for a man that is

a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation' (Acts 10:28), that

the word here translated 'another nation' is the Greek allophulos, literally

'another tribe' which 'proved' that Cornelius the centurion was after all one

of the tribes of Israel!  But this by proving too much destroys itself.  Of

what 'tribe' was Peter?  We do not know, but as he was a native of Bethsaida

in the land of Gennesaret, Peter could have been of the tribe of Manasseh.

If Peter's words to Cornelius really mean that he, of the tribe of Manasseh,