Quotes from Peter Schäfer

Its main thesis is that not only the emerging Christianity drew on contemporary Judaism but that rabbinic Judaism, too, tapped into ideas and concepts of Christianity to shape its own identity; that, far from being forever frozen in ingrained hostility, the two sister religions engaged in a profound interaction during late antiquity.

There exists hardly any other New Testament text that is more unambiguous and firm in Jesus' mission on earth and his divine origin, indeed his identification with God,114 and that is sterner in its attitude toward the Jews than the Gospel of John.

There is every reason to believe that the Gospel of John was spread and well known in Babylonia, if not separately then in the version of Tatian's Diatessaron with its predilection for John.

The Babylonian Jews in the Sasanian Empire, living in a non-Christian and even progressively anti-Christian environment, could easily take up, and continue, the discourse of their brethren in Asia Minor; and it seems as if they were no less timid in their response to the New Testament's message and in particular to the anti-Jewish bias that is so prominent in the Gospel of John.