silveradept | (Reply)

From:

I think my intended tone did not come across, then. I am playing very loosely with the source material and retelling it in the modern world, with justifications and reasons that would be more likely espoused if the story happened in 2007-2008 than in 33 C.E.

That's the aim I was trying for - the story from an outside perspective, without the obvious religious references and the point of view of the believer that ascribes noble aspects to the main character. Switching one unreliable narrator for another. Take out the obvious Jesus references from the account and tell me someone wouldn't draw the conclusion that even though he was denying it all the way there, had no history of it (well, one disturbing the peace citation), this Jew, this Nazorean, was going to become a political figure. Whether he liked it or not. If Pilate truly didn't care about rebellion or political insurrection, he wouldn't have asked about them. "Are you a king, then?" is a pretty direct question about competition to the established order. Pilate concludes rightly that there's nothing there that should concern him, aside from the rapidly growing and significantly uglier and more unruly mob outside his court calling for the Nazorean's head. Because while Pilate might know that there's nothing there, and Jesus knows there's nothing there and the writers know there's nothing there, there had to be some reason why the chief priests were dragging a Jew before the Roman court, specifically asking for the death penalty. He's a threat to the chief priests, which means his teachings are popular, and furthermore, that means followers. Followers make for political potential, even if it's never tapped. Enough Jesus freaks in the right places, or in the angry mob, and look! Now they're in government, in the places of power, as rabbis and devotees, and who knows what they're going to do now?

In many ways, we're taking this far too seriously, because it isn't intended to be something scholarly-supported and well-researched. Just a bit of perspective on how things could have gone. Or how they could be justified, knowing what we know now, having seen several hundred years of what happens when you put fanatics into positions of political power. I'm totally reading modern interpretation backwards into the Bible that hang off of shreds here and there, with no real chapter-and-verse support. I'm not saying that Jesus was a political rebel. I'm saying that he could easily have been perceived as one, and that there are textual fragments that could justify reading things that way, and they would probably hold up if you removed all of the believer-specific inside knowledge.