and irreversible, so that there was no further point in evangelism among Jews—God had rejected Israel.32 This negative attitude to Israel comes into sharpest focus in the statement that ‘the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation which produces its fruits’ (21:43), and in the embarrassing contrast of 27:24–25 between the declared innocence of Pilate and the eager acceptance by ‘all the people’ of the responsibility for the death of Jesus. It is further underlined by the