the gospel of mark (haven't gotten around to reading the others yet) gives me a lot of impressions of a jewish proto-nationalist struggle against rome, but then mystified and distorted by 1. people from outside the context misinterpreting stuff and 2. the empire itself adopting and coopting the movement (or the movement selling out)

There's a neat sorta process of

"jesus inspired to preach (which, in historical context is equivilant to agitation)"

"jesus starts preaching literally about the corruption of judean society and the temple"

"jesus gets his ass beat by locals for telling them they're sinful"

"jesus starts preaching in parables so he doesn't get his ass beat"

"jesus builds movement and explains things literally to the apostles, but continues parableing in his preaching"

"jesus does mutual aid, healing people of physical and mental ailments (not curing imo, but alleviating symptoms (psychologically or literally with oil))"

"jesus confronts the demon legion (which is many)"

"jesus goes to jerusalem, intending to agitate more and die as a matyr to incite rebellion"

"jesus's followers abandon him and it all falls apart"

30 year break until the actual attempted revolution

"some guy remembers jesus's ideas (sees visions) and thinks "the rebellion would work if the whole roman empire rose up instead of just judea""

"starts spreading faith to non-jews"

which leads varying religious/cultural ideas being taken literally, misinterpreted and morphed until apocalypse means "the literal end of existence" instead of "the collapse of the existing social order" and jesus is turned into literally god, when in all likelihood he was preaching more or less what isiah or jeremiah did

Christians love to lionize the early church

Not the first time the early church got lion-ized

Unforced until God strikes you dead for being a selfish capitalist.