Jesus of Nazareth was not the messiah. In a time that Judea was under the remorseless Roman rule. Jesus was a man born in Bethlehem to parents Mary and Joseph, who would raise him in Judea’s backwater province of Galilee, in the city of Nazareth, practicing strict Jewish traditions. Later in his life he would claim to be the son of God and travel Judea preaching peace and translating God’s word for anyone that would listen. He would gain a following and be praised and worshipped as the messiah. He would be crucified as a threat to Rome and the Jewish officials, and then supposedly rise from the dead. News of his execution would cause outrage against Rome and spark the Jews to rebel against the Romans. Despite how Christianity has identified …show more content…
Roman rule was cruel and relentless,so much so that it would later inspire German Nazis. After witnessing the power of faith in the Jewish people the Romans realized that they must respect the traditions of the people they ruled over, there would be no interference in religious practices, instead they would exploit them in other ways; taxes. During Passover Jews would need to pay their taxes to the Romans, but first they needed to pay to convert their money to proper Roman currency. Roman rebellion as the result of Julius Caesar’s assassination had made Rome weary and any inkling of rebellion against the Roman tyrants would be severely punished, as seen by the public torture of Judas of Gamala (O’Reilly, 83). The Roman’s had mastered the art of torture and execution, creating new inhumane ways to humiliate the executed. One of their favorite methods of execution was crucifixion, which would cause excessive suffering of the accused as they slowly and painfully died in public. This method would famously be used to murder Jesus of Nazareth. On top of the Romans, the Jewish Sanhedrin was misusing their power and influence. The Sanhedrin is the judicial council of Judaism and dictated worship and Jewish law, the assembly was made up of Pharisees, religious experts, and Sadducees, the wealthy elite. The High Priest was the head of the council and during Jesus’ time that role would be played by …show more content…
He possessed powerful protest intelligence. He practiced non-violence. Non-violence as a protest tactic would be used all throughout history, all the way to modern day by activist such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, because of it’s effectiveness. Non-violence is not about passivity, as many believe, instead it relies on the idea of being active for the longest amount of time because an individual cannot be charged simply for speaking. Even Pontius Pilate would recognize this during the trial of Jesus and tell the Pharisees he cannot sentence him to death for his teachings, because Jesus had done nothing illegal. During these ancient times it was important to travel and preach as much as possible to be able to make a change, this is long before media existed that could spread his message to the masses so he had to ensure himself a level of security that allowed him to move around. He also adopted a small number of disciples whom he educated on his methods and ideas so that after his death there would be someone to continue his work. Which they would, after his execution the disciples would travel the world preaching about the man that they had known and converting people to a new religion of Christianity (O’Reilly). Despite practicing non-violence, it has been discovered that Jesus may have had some involvement in an anti-Roman resistance group,