—If Jesus spoke a message of freedom from religious tradition mainly to the lower classes, who would he be taking attention away from, rich Roman toadies? No, those who focused on upholding traditions in the lower classes.—
Ah, so now it’s a matter of jealousy about his views stealing the spotlight from similar views, not actually opposing his views?
I still don’t see how that avoids my (admitted) conjecture about Jesus being yet another failed Pharisee thinker (though probably not an actual trained Pharisee), who, to continue to be worth worshiping, had to have those links reversed later on, especially after the Temple was destroyed.
—Jesus was intended to be the Jewish Messiah, not the Roman Messiah.—
THE messiah of that period was supposed to liberate everyone from Rome’s domination. One valid possibility is that Jesus thought he was just such a messiah (who expected god to swoop in and empower him to drive the Romans out), and the Romans offed him for his troubles, as they did many such messiahs. At first, perhaps, people cursed others for lacking the faith that would have made his mission successful, sowing dissension with other Jews. But then, some people claimed instead that dying was his intention all along, and instead of being a defeat, was actually the intended victory: developing a theology that both rejected the faithless Pharisees (they thought Jesus had failed: what did THEY know: Jesus kicks ass!) and developed an account of why Jesus really WASN’T a failure, after all, but instead was reinterpreted as bringing secret victory to those who could appreciate it.
All speculation, but perfectly plausible (indeed, because it happened with other such figures as well)
—As stated in my earlier example, is there any reason that Pharaoh should have been painted in a more negative light than Moses, if it turned out that Moses handed the Power of God over to Pharaoh? Of course not, Moses would likely have received most of God’s anger. Apply that model to those who sat in the seat of Moses according to Jesus.—
That’s some twisted logic there, and beside the point to boot.
At question here is why the Romans are painted in a good light at all, when this is not how anyone else under their rule in Judea in that period paints them. And again, this makes Jesus condemanation of the Pharisees in particular even more off-kilter with reality: far from handing over God’s power to anyone, the Pharisees WANTED to kick out Rome. It was other parts of the Jewish leadership that toadied up to Rome in the interests of not being crushed.
—If you tend to listen more to those who like to say that the Bible is fantasy, then you may come to believe that kind of rhetoric, regardless of evidence or lack of it.—
Doesn’t that suggest that maybe you should look into the scholarship on this issue? Perhaps learn what a Pharisee actually was, apart from the entirely idiosyncratic picture of them we get in the Gospels (written decades after the accounts we have of what the Pharisees actually were like and what they cared about?)