You mean a total corruption of the original message espoused by all religions?
Look at the practice of institutional religion. Look what the religious leaders do, how they live, what kind of political leaders and government actions they support. Look at the wealth of the Vatican and tell me how it compares to the Jesus message.
Violence in context of imparting religious morality is a contradiction in terms.
Of course. All that contradiction is why children who grow up in strict religious homes/communities suffer some form of emotional dysfunction.
Violence - actual or threatened - is the
only way religious morality is imparted to anyone.
The Jesus cult was a threat to the Pharasees, regardless of its later historic role.
They
may have perceived Jesus as a threat, yes. (always assuming any of those gospels are a. authentic b. contemporary and c. true. You know the Nicaean council made shit up, right?) If so, it was not for his sermons. He
didn't have a cult; he had twelve rag-tag disciples. If there was a threat, it would come from the rabble he might rouse. Maybe they thought his little band was terrorists/freedom fighters. Maybe they just wanted to flex some muscle on this big holiday, sway the crowd their way; demonstrate to the various resistance cells that the established order was in control.
If the biblical Jesus existed, he was a devout Jew in the tradition of Israel's long line of prophets, who pretty much all railed against the corruption of the elites of their day and blamed non-adherence to the Law (rather than geographic bad luck) for one invasion after another. They were - still are - revered by the temple establishment.
Jesus wasn't trying to start a new religion; he couldn't have, while he was alive. The center, the very
crux of Christianity is his death. Anything he might or might not have said about living is still considered by most Christians as trivial compared the monumental fact of his death; without it, he's not the savior; he's just another hedge-priest. The first chronicles of this cult appeared fifty years after the death, written by a Turk, in Greece. It crept into Rome, Egypt, etc, slowly, barely noticed for another two centuries, no threat to anybody.
