Jesus in the Talmud

124 Chapter 9also Acts and Letter to the Hebrews (reference to Ps. 2:7), Paul(God’s firstborn, the sacrifice of the new covenant)• Jesus’ punishment: eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus(John)This is quite a colorful picture, but still, the familiarity of our (Babylonian)sources with John stands out. 108 So why this sometimes astonishingproximity to the Gospel of John in particular?Why John?To answer this question we need to have a closer look at the Gospel ofJohn. As with all the New Testament writings, the elementary questions ofauthorship, time, place, and circumstances are hotly disputed. The detailsof this controversy do not affect our present discussion, but in orderto put things straight I am prepared to reveal that I sympathize with thosewho see in John, who claimed to be Jesus’ disciple, the head of a schoolthat flourished between 70 and 100/110 C.E. in Asia Minor and that wasresponsible for the edition of the Gospel of John soon after 100 C.E. 109 Nodoubt, the Gospel of John is the last of the four Gospels that took shape.More important for our present investigation: it enjoyed wide circulation,it is the most unambiguous and as such the most “Christian,” and, notleast, the most strongly anti-Jewish Gospel of the four Gospels.From its very beginning, the Gospel of John makes crystal clear whomit is talking about: the Word that “became flesh and lived among us” andthat is no one else but the “only Son from the Father” (1:14). Hence,when John the Baptist sees Jesus, he immediately declares: “Here is theLamb of God” (1:29, 36), who is the “Son of God” (1:34). That this Jesus,who is subsequently identified as the Messiah (1:41), this “Jesus ofNazareth, the son of Joseph” (1:45), is indeed the “Son of God” (1:49)—as well as the “King of Israel” (ibid.) and the “Son of Man” (1:51)—issolemnly proclaimed from the outset and becomes the leitmotif of thewhole Gospel. Accordingly, the author of our Gospel does not wait until