In traditional religious terms, Jews and Gentiles are understood as separate peoples—those inside the covenant and those outside it. But Neville Goddard, who taught that the Bible is a psychological drama beginning in imagination playing out within the human imagination, reveals that these terms are not racial, religious, or historical. They are personified perspectives of the mind.
Scripture is not categorising physical people. It is describing how the mind views itself at different stages of awareness.
The Gentile Perspective
Symbolically, the Gentiles represent ways of thinking that are unaware of the “I AM”. This is the perspective the mind takes when it assumes life is happening externally and independently of itself.
From this position, experience appears to be caused by circumstances, other people, luck, or fate. Imagination is active, but unnoticed. Creation is occurring, but unconsciously.
“The Gentile is the outer man. The Jew is the inner man. The Jew is the awakened imagination.”
— Neville Goddard, The Law and the Promise
Read psychologically, this does not describe separate beings. It describes where attention is placed. The Gentile perspective looks outward and identifies with appearances, unaware that imagination is the source behind them.
The Jewish Perspective
The “Jew,” symbolically, represents the perspective that has become aware there is an inner source. This viewpoint recognises that something within—thought, assumption, imagination—is shaping experience.
Yet in Paul’s letters (symbolising adjustment and commitment to memory), particularly Romans, this awareness often turns inward as self-observation and self-judgement. The mind measures itself against what it now knows, asking whether it is thinking correctly, believing enough, or aligning properly.
This is not freedom yet. It is awareness still entangled with effort.
Why Paul Removes the Distinction
Paul’s insight is that both perspectives miss the mark in different ways.
The Gentile perspective is unaware of the creative source.
The Jewish perspective is aware of the source, but uses that awareness to judge itself.
Both are perspectives the mind can occupy repeatedly. Neither is condemned. Neither is final.
Paul’s declaration that there is “no difference” is psychological, not theological. Freedom does not come from remaining in either viewpoint, but from releasing identification with both.
Redemption as a Shift in Perspective
In Neville’s framework, redemption is a change in how the mind relates to itself.
The promise that the Gentiles shall be “grafted in” describes unconscious perspectives being absorbed into conscious imagination—not corrected or rejected, but recognised.
The mind no longer sees itself as subject to appearances, nor does it measure itself by inner standards. It rests in the awareness of the I AM as the source.
Paul and the Inner Mission
Neville often spoke of Paul’s mission to the Gentiles as an inward process. Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus symbolises the collapse of self-judgement and the recovery of vision.
His mission represents the awakened imagination addressing those viewpoints within the mind that still believe power lies outside.
Final Thoughts
So who are the Jews and Gentiles in Scripture?
They are not people. They are positions the mind takes.
The Gentile perspective experiences life as externally caused.
The Jewish perspective recognises an inner cause, but may still judge itself.
Paul’s message is not to choose one perspective over another, but to move beyond both.
To become Israel, in Neville’s language, is to remember:
“I AM the Lord... and beside me there is no other.” (Isaiah 45:5)
From that awareness, imagination is no longer unconscious or self-critical—it is simply known.