After much reflection in my earlier years, Annalex, I'm fairly convinced that when John uses the expression "the Jews" that he is referring to the leadership of both Sadducee and Pharisee. Obviously, he didn't mean "of Jewish descent", because that would be talking about himself also.
I'm also convinced that the Apostle Paul AFTER his conversion, AFTER his guidance gained from the Council of Jerusalem, and AFTER having spent his calling in telling Gentiles to turn to Christ Jesus without having to obey the Jewish law, that he himself saw no contradiction with continued observance of his Jewish traditions. Buggman is right. Paul clearly went through the Nazirite vows on his return to Jerusalem. He saw no contradiction in maintaining his Jewishness EXCEPT when it came to Peter's hypocrisy in pretending he was not associating with Gentiles.
And took them while among the Gentiles, long before he knew there was a political situation back home (Acts 18:18). This has to be emphasized, since there are many Christians who are deeply disturbed by Acts 21 and would like to make it out that Paul and Jacob (James) were just compromising with the masses instead of following their own convictions--see the commentaries of Matthew Henry, for example. However, that argument falls apart when you realize that Paul was already under a Nazrite vow and always intended to complete it as instructed in the Torah: with three animal sacrifices, a grain offering, and a wine libation. What Jacob asked him to do was to also pay the expenses of four other Messianic Jews who had also taken vows (indicating that this was a common thing among Yeshua's first generation of followers).
He saw no contradiction in maintaining his Jewishness EXCEPT when it came to Peter's hypocrisy in pretending he was not associating with Gentiles.
And that is the key point: Paul thought that Jews should remain Jews and Gentiles Gentiles (1Co. 7:18) and that the circumcised (Jews) were debtors to do the whole Torah (Gal. 5:3), but he also believed that the barrier between Jew and Gentile established by post-Torah Jewish law, symbolized by the "middle wall of partition" that separated the Court of the Israelites from the Court of the Gentiles in the Temple, had been removed (Eph. 2:14).
Unfortunately, starting in the 2nd Century and culminating in the 4th, the middle wall was errected again--this time by the Gentile Christians who were oblivious to their own hypocrisy in doing so.
Shalom.
I agree. My point remains, -- actually it is the corollary of the above, -- that the ethnic Jews of the early Church would do likewise, and call themselves "Christians" or in Hebrew idiom, "Messianic", but not "Messianic Jews" or "Christian Jews".
[St. Paul] saw no contradiction in maintaining his Jewishness EXCEPT when it came to Peter's hypocrisy in pretending he was not associating with Gentiles
His Jewishness was irrelevant to his faith, as he plainly spoke (Galatians 3:28, Romans 10:12). His praise and habit of mortification of the flesh (Romans 8:13, 1 Cor. 7:1,7) may have Nazirite historical origin (as well as John the Baptist's), but the result of it is perfectly Christian monastic practices of celibacy and fasting back then and today. This is no different than how the entire body of Jewish faith having been absorbed, transformed and clarified by the Holy Church.