harassed God with your persistent requests, he has granted you what you wanted, as a father does what his importunate son asks him.’ So finally, Rabbi Simeon quoted Proverbs 23:25: ‘Let your father and mother be glad; let her who bore you rejoice.’ There is not even a shade of a prefiguration of Jesus in such a story.21 Jesus was in a league of his own. He ‘rivalled’ no one, not even the extremely popular Graeco-Roman healing god Asclepius/Aesculapius. And if it is a question of credibility, Jesus