Jesus Christ and the Ubermensch

You do realise that Jesus was executed due to the massive political instability his philosophy triggered, right? For 'not a revolutionary, almost at all', that's a pretty big 'almost'.

Also, re-read the Sermon on the Mount. Early Christianity was actually considerably harder-line than mainstream Judaism.

edited 27th Dec '11 1:26:28 PM by Iaculus

Jesus was quite radical, but I don't think he qualifies for Ubermensch still because he was in fact modifying an existing moral code...

"Massive political instability" that the death of one man immediately fixed? Because Rome was rolling pretty hard at the time.

He was executed for Blasphemy. Which is what he was doing. So.

I thought the Romans executed him for causing disturbances and inciting the people, and the whole blasphemy thing was secondary to them because they didn't give a shit about Judaism...

He could have been executed for blasphemy. The problem with that is, if he had transgressed against local laws he would have been stoned according to local customs. However, he was crucified, a hallmark execution form of the Romans. All sources agree on that. So there must have been some charge against him relevant to Rome - but alas, we don't know which. All gospels have him be accused by the priests to be blaspheming and then handed over to the Romans. Which is... not how things usually went, actually.

The New Testament story is that the Romans didn't have a real charge. Pilate had him executed to prevent a riot, which would have reflected back badly on himself as the governor.

Even then he could simply have left him to local jurisdiction, in which the result would have been a stoning. Now, granted, those are the rules, and in ah, less institutionalized times as the modern age "rules" were often merely taken to be more like "guidelines"...

Herod didn't want to do it, and I don't think the Jewish religious authorities had the authority to do it.

It's not clear whether or not Pilate was worried about the mob, or actually upset about the claim to be king of the Jews. I prefer the interpretations that he was won over by the mob, but that's mostly for religious/philosophical purposes. I don't actually know what his rationale was.

From what I was taught, it was that Pilate was mostly bothered by the "King of the Jews" thing, which was basically equivalent of treason.

My understanding is that under Roman law the Jews didn't have authority to sentence someone to death for breaking religious law, so they invented charges of inciting sedition as an excuse to pressure the local roman authorities to execute him.

That makes perfect sense, actually.

Local authorities certainly did have the authority to judge and condemn people who had transgressed local laws. There might have been a special rule for death penalties, but even if so then it meant the Romans saying "go ahead" (or not) and then the Judeans stoned him/her (or not). For a Roman execution to happen, there must (nominally at least) have been a transgression against Roman law. But as I've said - it's not like in ancient times such rules were set in stone. Plus, yes, trumped up charges always work.