Jesus in the Talmud

126 Chapter 9After Jesus has healed him (again on a Sabbath), the blind man believesin the Son of Man, and, as John continues, “worship[s] him” (9:38). Similarly,when he awakes the dead Lazarus out of his “sleep,” Jesus proclaims:“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me,even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in mewill never die. Do you believe this?” (11:25f.)—whereupon Martha answersfrom the bottom of her heart: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are theMessiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world!” (11:27).The approaching hour of his Passion and death is depicted not only asthe fulfillment of his mission on earth but also as the return to his Father(12:23, 27f.; 13:1, 31f.), and this is also the leitmotif in his farewell speechto his disciples (chs. 14–16): “I came from the Father and have come intothe world; again, I am leaving the world and am going to the Father”(16:28). Accordingly, he opens his prayer to the Father before he entershis Passion with the words:“(1) Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son mayglorify you, (2) since you have given him authority over all flesh, togive eternal life to all whom you have given him. (3) And this is eternallife, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christwhom you have sent” (17:1–3).The counterpoint to this constant and dramatic insisting of Jesus beingthe Son of God is the no less constant and dramatic opposition of “theJews” (as they are often called uniformly), an increasing exacerbation oftheir hatred for Jesus. At first they are curious, but the more they hear andunderstand from him and his claim—and the more he attracts a growingnumber of their fellow Jews—the more impatient and furious they getwith him. The healing of the paralyzed man is offensive in their eyes notonly because it took place on a Sabbath but also and mainly because it isan immediate consequence of his claim to be the Son of God: “For thisreason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was notonly breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father,thereby making himself equal to God” (5:18). The feeding of the fivethousand impresses “the people” (whoever this is, but obviously a largenumber of the Jews)—who acknowledge him as a prophet and want to