Chief Priests and Roman Authorities

[Ferrocyanide]

I don’t know if this has been said before. Let me know if you have read it somewhere.
I’m sure someone has presented these ideas before.
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There are 2 issues I would like to discuss:
#1. Did Jesus really sacrifice himself for his people (the jews)? Did he really come to save Israel?
#2. Why did the chief priests, elders, scribes, Pharisees cooperate with the Roman authorities?


The NT is such a big mess of contradictions, logical problems, religious magical things but I am convinced that there is political reality to it. It is a case of problem and a solution is needed for that problem.

#1 Yes and yes.
I think there were a bunch of messiahs. I don’t know if Jesus of the NT represents a single guy and a single cult or maybe a bunch of guys and a bunch of cults.

So, polytheists defeated them and were ruling over them (for who knows how long. Is it around 63 BCE?).
Their logic led them to believe that jews are sinners. The jewish god has turned his back on them. If only the jewish people would be placed back on the right tracks. So, the jewish god is going to give them another chance.
It is even possible that a lot of jews had lost faith in their god.

So, Jesus’s job is to put the jews into the right tracks. Once enough jews are cleansed, perhaps they can repel the Roman invaders.

#2 The chief priests, elders, scribes, Pharisees are presented as pure concentrated evil in the NT.
But are they just trying to protect Israel?

I think their logic was that they have to appear cooperative with the Roman authorities. Anybody who starts up a new cult will eventually talk about cleansing, and returning back on the right tracks, and eventually that will lead to “let’s get rid of the Roman empire”.
Rome would send their armies and do a massacre.

In order to avoid such a scenario, the chief priests cooperate with the Roman authorities.
The Romans kill the new cult leader and the followers, and the rest of the cities are spared.

CONCLUSION:
In other words, it makes it look like Jesus came to save the jews from their sins, he sacrificed his life for his people.
Being saved means getting freedom from the Roman empire.
Also, chief priests, elders, scribes, Pharisees also saved Israel by pointing out to Rome who the problem elements are.

[Jehanne]

I think that the best explanation is that Jesus of Nazareth existed and was one of a number of David Koreshes of his day. Remember, the population of Alexander, Egypt and Rome itself were both around 1 million people; while he was alive, no one took notice of Jesus to bother writing anything about him; ditto for his execution. The Romans, of course, knew exactly how to deal with religious loons, and they did so without so much as a historical footnote.

[The Grand Nudger]

Whats funny is that a jesus of nazareth may have existed - but you're not going to find him, whoever he was, in the pages of new magic book. That's about Christ.

That's not really true about romans and historical footnotes, btw - they were pretty big on dragging their dissidents and defeated political opponents very publicly and even literarily - we know of a bunch of loons from jesus day - because romans wrote it down. They didn't write about the character in new magic book..but why would they, there was never any such person as that character, though any number of real people may have gone into that character.

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There are certainly aspects of the character of christ as told in new magic book that express or instantiate a then-present resistant jewish community struggling under the boot of roman authority, hoping that a promised (and very militant) savior was immanent - lamenting the fifth column in their society as they saw it much as the prophets of old magic book had done.

[Jehanne]

I'm not a mythicist, of course. The notion, I think, of a desert-preaching apocalypticist who claimed that a divine being from Heaven would descend to the Flat Earth to deliver the Jews from the Romans would have been a popular message with the ignorant, illiterate masses but would have been ignored by the literate, Greek-educated elite, which is why they viewed Jesus as being just another corner-preaching crank who was not worth mentioning, even after things boiled over to where the Romans decided to put an end to things.

What followed, of course, was not on anyone's radar, Jesus included (while he was alive), the seeds of a world religion having been planted by a series of unfortunate events.

[The Grand Nudger]

Which Jesus?

The mythicist position is that there was a christ myth before there was a historic jesus, if we can reasonably identify any singular historic person in the character of jesus of new magic book, in the first place. Oddly enough, the historicist position doesn't technically disagree, and even helps to build that case. Even historicists acknowledge that we're dealing with a composite character whose deeds and attributes are, at least to some extent, written to fit an ideology, rather than a news story from the galilean front.

The difference between the two positions, is that historicists think that the christ myth came after and was based on some actual singular historic person, however mangled that persons actual character happens to have been (to the point where there's no agreement between historicists whatsoever on who that was). The mythicist position is that any actual people who might have been used for content came after the myth, and whatever might have been included about them was only included insomuch as it helped put that myth in a relatable and marketable setting.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The story of Jesus being killed by the authorities is just another one of the god-man tropes. They had to write it that way because that’s how you write that sort of thing.

Boru

Edit: Yeah, what Nudger said.

[The Grand Nudger]

The romans were killing a hell of alot of nameless judeans at the time. Putting down a rebellion tends to create alot of martyrs. It is completely without doubt, though, that messianic judaism proposed such a savior before any actual man born in 0ad could come along to fit that mold, however much they had to finesse it to make the events work. One of the criticisms of mythicism that I think hits home the most, is that while it may be true, it's trivially true.

[Ferrocyanide]

Guys, you are forgetting to comment on
#2. Why did the chief priests, elders, scribes, Pharisees cooperate with the Roman authorities?

[The Grand Nudger]

They didn't, in mere reality. They were the rebels the romans were putting down. Those rebels, however, believed that there was a fifth column in their midst. That's one of the stories that historicists don't think washes out. The madman turning the tables would have been brutalized on the spot - it;s just as much of a miracle as walking on water or turning it into wine.

- but the story expresses their opposition to the specter of complicity while establishing christ as an authority over and above the same. For what it's worth, the romans did tend to install puppet regimes sourced from the locals when they set up shop. None of this would survive protochristianity as objectionable, as it was quickly romanized.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Guys, you are forgetting to comment on
#2. Why did the chief priests, elders, scribes, Pharisees cooperate with the Roman authorities?

Because the Romans were reasonably tolerant, as conquerors go, of the religious beliefs and practices of the conquered. The chief priests, et al, didn’t wasn’t Jesus upsetting the apple cart. 

Again, it’s all part of the boilerplate for this variety of myth.

Boru