Who was Jesus

Who was Jesus, if there was such a person? I believe he was a rebel Preacher who drew unwanted attention of King Herod and the Romans.

Simon bar Kokhba came much closer to being a messiah than Jesus can ever hope to be.

Simon bar Kokhba born about a century later came far closer to fulfilling the messianic ideal than Jesus did. His name was Shimeon ben Kosiba, known as Bar Kokhba (son of a star), and he was a charismatic, brilliant, but brutal warlord. Rabbi Akiba, one of the greatest scholars in Jewish history, believed that Bar Kokhba was the mashiach. Bar Kokhba fought a war against the Roman Empire, catching the Tenth Legion by surprise and retaking Jerusalem. He resumed sacrifices at the site of the Temple and made plans to rebuild the Temple. He established a provisional government and began to issue coins in its name. This is what the Jewish people were looking for in a mashiach; Jesus clearly does not fit into this mold. Ultimately, however, the Roman Empire crushed his revolt and killed Bar Kokhba. After his death, all acknowledged that he was not the mashiach.

Jesus was born during the time of King Herod, client king of the Roman Empire. He was not a King born of the the Davidic Line, which is the bloodline from which the Hebrew Messiah has a patrilineal descent. 

Herod the Great also known as Herod I; He was the second son of Antipater the Idumaean, a high-ranked official under ethnarch Hyrcanus II, and Cypros, a Nabatean. Herod's father was by descent an Edomite whose ancestors had converted to Judaism. King Herod was a Roman client king; client King means he was appointed by Rome, not by G-d as the king of Israel) of Judea, referred to as the Herodian kingdom. He has been described as "a madman who murdered his own family and a great many rabbis", "the evil genius of the Judean nation”, "prepared to commit any crime in order to gratify his unbounded ambition". Vital details of his life are recorded in the works of the 1st century CE Roman–Jewish historian Josephus. (Herod’s tyrannical authority has been demonstrated by many of his security measures aimed at suppressing the contempt his people, especially Jews, had towards him. For instance, it has been suggested that Herod used secret police to monitor and report the feelings of the general populace towards him. He sought to prohibit protests, and had opponents taken away by force.

When it came to building the Temple Herod truly outdid himself, and even the Talmud acknowledges that the end-result was spectacular. "He who has not seen Herod's building, has never in his life seen a truly grand building." (Talmud-Bava Basra 4a)

Herod saw fit however, to place at the main entrance a huge Roman eagle, which the pious Jews saw as a sacrilege. A group of Torah students promptly smashed this emblem of idolatry and oppression, but Herod had them hunted down, dragged in chains to his residence in Jericho, where they were burned alive.

Having built the Temple, Herod took pains to make sure it would be run without future problems of the Jewish people that objected to the corruption of the Temple. He appointed his own High Priest, having by then put to death forty-six leading members of the Sanhedrin, half of the rabbinical court. The other half were intimidated by king Herod and towed the line. So what does all this have to do with Jesus being a Rebel? Jesus saw this corruption and preached against resulting in the anger of Rome and King Herod!

In his last years Herod suffered from arteriosclerosis. He had to repress a revolt, became involved in a quarrel with his Nabataean neighbours, and finally lost the favour of Augustus. He was in great pain and in mental and physical disorder. He altered his will three times and finally disinherited and killed his firstborn, Antipater. The slaying, shortly before his death, of the infants of Bethlehem was wholly consistent with the disarray into which he had fallen. After an unsuccessful attempt at suicide, Herod died. His final testament provided that, subject to Augustus’s sanction, his realm would be divided among his sons: Archelaus should be king of Judaea and Samaria, with Philip and Antipas sharing the remainder as tetrarchs.

It must be kept in mind how Constantine the great corrupted early Christianity introducing pagan holidays, the deity of Christ, and the trinity.

The Mashiach

the term "Mashiach" literally means "the anointed one," and refers to the ancient practice of anointing kings with oil when they took the throne. The Mashiach is the one who will be anointed as king in the end of days.

The word "Mashiach" does not mean "savior." the notion of an innocent, divine or semi-divine being who will sacrifice himself to save us from the consequences of our own sins.

There is mention in the Dead Sea Scrolls of a Teacher of Righteousness; I just can’t help but think that this teacher could be Jesus, but the timing of these writings of the Teacher of Righteousness were written over a hundred years before the lost years of Jesus. If we look in the New Testament and the many things written about the teachings of Jesus, we can see many correlations between what is written about what Jesus taught, and the many things written within the Scrolls.

Is it possible that Jesus studied the writings of the Teacher of Righteousness with the Essenes during the the lost years.

If Jesus' adherence to the Law concurs with that of the Qumran community, so, too, does his timing of the Last Supper. For centuries, biblical commentators have been confused by apparently conflicting accounts in the Gospels. In Matthew (26:17-19), the Last Supper is depicted as a Passover meal, and Jesus is crucified the next day.

In the Fourth Gospel (13:1 and 18:28), however, it is said to occur before the Passover. Some scholars have sought to reconcile the contradiction by acknowledging the Last Supper as indeed a Passover feast, but a Passover feast conducted in accordance with a different calendar. The Qumran community used precisely such a calendar - a solar calendar, in contrast to the lunar calendar used by the priesthood of the Temple.17 In each calendar, the Passover fell on a different date; and Jesus, it is clear, was using the same calendar as that of the Qumran community.

Certainly the Qumran community observed a feast which sounds very similar in its ritual characteristics to the Last Supper as it is described in the Gospels.

Now as for the arrest and trial of Jesus, there could be no question of anything corresponding to a trial taking place on this occasion before the Sanhedrin. Whatever inquest was made must have occurred during the Thursday night and outside Jerusalem (for on entering the city a prisoner would have had to be given up to the Roman garrison), and cannot have been held before a quorum of the seventy-one members of the Sanhedrin. It is more probable that the twenty-three members of the priestly section of the latter, who had most reason to be offended with Jesus' action in cleansing the Temple, met informally after he had been seized, and elicited sufficient to justify them in their own opinion in delivering him over to the Romans as likely to cause trouble by his claims or pretensions to the Messiahship, which, of course, would be regarded by them as rebellion against Rome. Nothing corresponding to a Jewish trial took place, though it was by the action of the priests that Jesus was sent before Pontius Pilate. The Gospels speak in the plural of the high priests who condemned him — a seeming contradiction to Jewish law which might throw doubt upon their historic character. Two, however, are mentioned, Joseph Caiaphas and Annas (Hanan), his father-in-law. Hanan had been deposed from the high-priesthood by Valerius Gratus, but he clearly retained authority and some prerogatives of the high priest, as most of those who succeeded him were relatives of his; and he may well have intervened in a matter touching so nearly the power of the priests. According to the Talmud, Hanan's bazaars were on the Mount of Olives, and probably therefore also his house; this would thus have become the appropriate place for the trial by the Sanhedrin, which indeed just about this time had moved its place of session thither.