Jesus of the Roman Bible was no Gandhi, no Alinsky, and no MLK. Was Jesus a quisling? Millions of Jews have died because of Christian calumny of the real resistance movement, the Pharisees.
Stephen Stills said that Jesus Christ was the first nonviolent revolutionary. I’m sure Stills was wrong about that, but his sentiment was right.
Stills’ ignorance, sadly, is the basis of a lot of antisemitism among liberals who look to Jesus for their inspiration.
While Still is correct that much of the teachings written in the name of Jesus are from a non violent resistance movement , Jesus .. if he even existed .. has escaped any contemporary as a leader or even as a participant of that movement. Worse, a lot of what is attributed to Jesus sounds like he might have been a collaboror.
The followers of the passive resistance movement were … the Pharisees. The Pharisee accepted the inevitability of Roman rule while resisting Roman efforts to destroy Jewish culture and not collaborating in the Roman effort to profane the Temple. The Pharisee movement did not arise in Jesus time. At least a century older than the time of Jesus, the Pharisees were resisting Roman rule. In Jesus lifetime it was led by the greatest scholar of Jewish history .. Rabbi Hillel. (FWIW Jesus was never a Rabbi). Later, when passive resistance failed, followers of Hillel led the military resistance to Rome.
One of the greatest of the Pharisees, Rabbi Akiba, led the Jewish Wars with bar Kochba. Bar Kochba, himself a convert to Judaism, was Captured by the Romans and threatened with death if he refused t recant, Akiba was skinned alive near modern Haifa.
After the destruction of the Temple the Pharisees created Rabbinic Judaism as a way to keep the Jews alive despite Roman terror.
Paul needed to build a religion that would be popular in the Greco Roman culture. Having an anti Roman Pharisee as your God or the son of your God would not have sold well. Millions of Jews have died because of Paul’s calumny of the Pharisees.
I must say Jesus did not come to start a nonviolent movement. St Paul was a Pharisee in fact he said before his conversion to Christianity he was a Pharisees’ Pharisee. A lot of people read the Bible but miss the story. My only advice is don’t read the Roman Bible it denies the deity of Christ.
Cecil.
Since the Roman Bibe is the only one that ha sbeen passed down, what are you talking about?
As for Paul, if you do not want to be Roman why is he a “saint?”