John Lightfoot on John 7:35

[To the dispersed among the Gentiles, &c.] I confess Gentiles, in the apostle's writings, does very frequently denote the Gentiles: to which that of the Rabbins agrees well enough, the wisdom of the Greeks, i.e. the wisdom of the Gentiles. But here I would take Gentiles in its proper signification for the Greeks. It is doubtful, indeed, whether by the dispersed among the Gentiles ought to be understood the dispersed Greeks, or the Jews dispersed amongst the Greeks. There was no nation under heaven so dispersed and diffused throughout the world as both Greeks and Jews were.

In the very heart of all the barbarous nations the Greeks had their cities, and their language spoken amongst the Indians and Persians, &c.

And into what countries the Jews were scattered, the writings, both sacred and profane, do frequently instance. So that if the words are to be taken strictly of the Greeks, they bear this sense with them; "Is he going here and there amongst the Greeks, so widely and remotely dispersed in the world?"

That distinction between the Hebrews and the Hellenists explains the thing. The Jews of the first dispersion, viz. into Babylon, Assyria, and the countries adjacent, are called Hebrews, because they used the Hebrew, or Transeuphratensian language: and how they came to be dispersed into those countries we all know well enough, viz. that they were led away captive by the Babylonians and Persians. But those that were scattered amongst the Greeks used the Greek tongue, and were called Hellenists: and it is not easy to tell upon what account, or by what accident, they came to be dispersed amongst the Greeks, or other nations about. Those that lived in Palestine, they were Hebrews indeed as to their language, but they were not of the dispersion, either to one place or another, because they dwelt in their own proper country. The Babylonish dispersion was esteemed by the Jews the more noble, the more famous, and the more holy of any other. "The land of Babylon is in the same degree of purity with the land of Israel." "The Jewish offspring in Babylon is more valuable than that among the Greeks, even purer than that in Judea itself." Whence for a Palestine Jew to go to the Babylonish dispersion, was to go to a people and country equal, if not superior, to his own: but to go to the dispersion among the Greeks, was to go into unclean regions, where the very dust of the land defiled them: it was to go to an inferior race of Jews, and more impure in their blood; it was to go into nations most heathenized.