The true challenge presented to us by Jesus of Nazareth is neither his supposed divinity nor his miraculous works, but rather this: how are we to make sense of what must be seen as a keystone of his teachings - that he was to give his life on behalf of many, and that his followers must partake of his blood and flesh - within the context of Judaism, which had never ceased to condemn human sacrifice and to forbid the eating of blood?

​

Striving to decode the intentions of the man whose death on a Roman cross changed the course of history, The Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth advances that Jesus, far from seeking to found a new religion or even to improve on the old, was striving to free his fellow Jews from religious bondage altogether.

​

As the author observes, By portraying his death as a sacrifice willed by YHWH, and in teaching his disciples to symbolically drink his blood and eat his flesh, Jesus unequivocally set the stage for a profound spiritual crisis to arise in the lives of his Jewish followers. In my view, he was not seeking to establish a new religious covenant, but rather to provoke the utter abrogation of the everlasting covenant that bound the Chosen People to their tribal God.