Religous debates and questions

Next bit is coming soon...honest.
Orwell the main thing the Romans did for them was stability. The Jewish nation, especially towards the end of the Hasmonean rule was quite divided. In fact their history prior to that is not too good either. When they weren't fighting with the neighbours they were fighting one another. There is also good evidence that even their religous practices at various points became fractured, leading to a lot of power plays and instability.
Rome brought stability. Or at least more than there was. It also put the Jewish people on the map. Herod the Great and his son Antipas both spoke out on behalf of the Jews in Rome, this was in any case prudent but it also seems to have been genuine too. The Herods seem to have been good Jews in th esense they observed the Mosiac Law, at least publicly, but most likely it was a genuine devotion. Inlight of Herod the Greats having 3 of his own sons executed a Roman senator remarked that "I would rather be one of his pigs than his sons'- showing that not also was his tendancy for killing his own noted but also his following of Jewish Law in not eating pork. He seems to have been as well know for being a Jew in his own lifetime and that most probably is because he genuinenly did make a deal of it and fight for good deals for his people in Rome.
Herod also vastly increased and improved trade, and no doubt taxtation with it-explaining the particularly unflattering view of tax collectors in the NT perhaps. But the main thing he did was buildings- he rebuilt the Temple, built the Palaces at Caesera, basically he created jobs and plenty of them. None of which would have been possible without the stability Herod gained from having the might of Rome to call on if he needed it. (He did not use Roman money for all these projects- but how he funded it I will touch on fullyina later post-at least thats the plan!)

Quiet day there in Forumshire. Ah well here's something to read over a cuppa.

Ok sorry this has been a while in coming but this part was a complicated bit! (hopefully not to read just to write)

To view Jesus in context we have to know something about the Jewish salvation history in which people may have viewed him at the time (including himself) and the broader question of how common or uncommon were people like Jesus. Also Jesus' miracles. Where they unusual by what people thought or expected at that time?
I'll start with the salvation tradition in Judaism.
At its most basic salvation in this context is a straight forward as a person will come forth whom God will act through to fulfil the hopes of Israel and so save the world.
This belief comes from the UT:God called Abraham, gave the Law to Moses, set up Israel in the name of Saul and David. Punished Israel when it fell away, first by exile and by Jesus' day Roman rule. When the Jewish people are worthy in Gods eyes again he will forgive them and raise them up, send a Messiah to lead the fight and defeat their enemies in war and Gentiles will turn to worship of God.
It is in this context Jesus is placed. But he is placed there by those wrote the gospels. Whether Jesus himself viewed himself as the figure who was going to bring about God's saving of Israel is more contentious.
One of the advantages to this Jewish scheme of history was that major events could be slotted into it- if Jews were being oppressed it was punishment from God, when they did well they were pleasing God and any major event which occurred must be part of Gods plan and could be 'read into' on that level.
And certainly in general terms that is how 1st Century Jews saw history.
It also left the way open for individuals to view a current event in light of this and claim it was a sign that the promised intervention by God was imminent. If God had a plan that could be seen in historical events then it could be detected in current events.
In my view this was how Jesus saw himself, as someone who interpreted history to mean that the Kingdom of God was coming based on current events seen within the framework of salvation history, but the evidence for that will come later in the bit on the gospels themselves.
One effect of the strength in the Jewish psyche of this salvation history is what we might consider today lies in the Biblical account of Jesus, but which its authors would have seen as being completely correct. Although its about the gospel story I will include it here as an example to bear in mind how the salvation history affected the way Jesus' story was recorded.

According to Matthew, Joseph and Mary lived in Bethlehem. But when Jesus was born Herod ordered the slaughter of all the first born. Jesus' family fled to Egypt from which Jesus later returned to live in Nazareth.
Luke tells us that Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth but that a census was called requiring all males to register for tax purposes and to do so in the home town of a remote ancestor. As Joseph was descended from David he went to Bethlehem.

Now both of these accounts cannot be true. And in fact neither is. Mathew is the gospel concerned with paralleling Jesus with Moses. So his account has a similar slaughter of the first born as the Moses story. Jesus even goes to Egypt just so he can 'come out of Egypt' just as Moses did. This is also handily chimes with a prophecy in the OT that the Messiah will 'come out of Egypt.'
Luke’s account is even worse, the census was years later than the latest times estimated for Jesus birth and it did not include Galilee anyway. And the notion of having to register in the home town of an ancient ancestor is of course ridiculous, every male in Israel who tried to trace their line back that far (assuming they could) Joseph has to trace his to David, would find they have well over a million ancestors to choose from (1 million is passed at the 20th generation).
Augustus was known as one of the most rational of the Caesars, the idea he would have ordered this ludicrous census, which would have had thousands on the move all across the Empire trying to trace the birth place of lost ancestors, and for which there are no records is completely preposterous.
So what is going on here? The answer is the writers of the Gospels believe Jesus is the Messiah spoken of in several OT passages. Including that he will be a descendent of David and born in Bethlehem.
The Gospel writers probably did not know where Jesus was born for certain. The only thing the gospels seem to agree on is the family lived in Nazareth (and this is in fact most likely where he was born).
That he lived there seems to have been well enough known that the writers could not easily ignore this so they invented, based on the predictions made in Salvation History, what must have happened in order to have him born in Bethlehem. He must have been born in Bethlehem because the prophets said he would have been. (So Luke invents a census that mentions David And Matthew gets the Egypt bit from another old prophet and the rest from the story of Moses).
It is not that the gospel writers are lying, this made sense to them as truth. Jesus=messiah. The messiah = birth in Bethlehem. Ergo Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
The problem for them seems to have been the audience they were writing for knew he was from Nazareth (otherwise they could just have left it out altogether and had him always in Bethlehem and saved a problem), but everyone knew he was from Nazareth so they had to come up with some excuse for why he was in Bethlehem to be born and not Nazareth. Luke moves them about by census, Matthew by Herod's slaughter.
Neither however is at all likely to be the literal truth, which far more likely is simply that he was born in his home village of Nazareth.

OK, diversion over, just keep in mind that this thinking permeates the gospel writing.

So was Jesus unusual as a man wandering about preaching and performing miracles?
No is the short answer to that. We know from the Bible itself John the Baptist was already a well known preacher during his lifetime and it is highly likely Jesus began as one of John's followers (they were also cousins, as John mother Elizabeth was Mary's sister). Immediately around the lifetime of Jesus there is Honi the Circledrawer who could command God to bring the rains, the Egyptian who led a large group around the walls of Jerusalem believing God would bring them down as a second Jericho, instead the Romans came down on them, and Hanaina ben Dosa who performed miracle cures very similar to those attributed to Jesus. Not long after Jesus' death a man named Theudas led his followers to the Jordan river promising to part it.
Jews in general were known in the ancient world as miracle workers, particularly to do with exorcism and medicine. Exorcism in particular was a much valued skill in an age when elderly relatives lived with families till death and there was no knowledge of dementias or mental illness. Cure by exorcism has been shown to be possible especially a temporary effect in those with mental illnesses, a placebo effect, and that effect was probably more likely to occur in a culture where it was accepted as everyday fact these things occurred. Jesus performs several exorcisms in the gospels.
The Jews who practised this sort of magical medicine claimed to have inherited the wisdom of Solomon as the source of it.
In general in the times of Jesus miracles were considered not only possible but to happen all the time. If you were ill you had few choices. You could pray to the Gods, or make offerings or you could turn to a miracle worker. These were not necessarily the idea we might have such people now, they were more like the Doctors of their day and fitted into society although some were more rogue and freelance, and some were more organised, political or militant.
The types of miracle worker can be categorized:
At the top are miracles performed by the Gods in return for appropriate offerings and living according to your religious doctrine, being blessed by priests, interacting with a holy relic ect.
Below that are the miracle workers in residents- the people who would have a business in essence administering cures, concoctions and magic incantations- their cures often involved incantations, spitting, and other 'magical' elements (Jesus shows some signs of practising this form of miracle as he uses both incantations and spitting in some of his cures-and as he had a house in Capernicum where people could come to him it is even possible he ran such a practice before undertaking his mission and was already known as a miracle-worker in this context of the term).
The next rank were those who claimed to speak personally with God- these fall into two subcategories- those like Honi the Circle Drawer who had no followers and seemed to have no particular message to deliver and those like John the Baptist and Theudas who gathered followers and had a message to deliver from God.
Both were dangerous in their own way to the authorities but the latter more so.
Jesus when he began his ministry was in the latter category in that he deliberately attracted followers and he had a message to bring- the Coming of the Kingdom.

But what was the Kingdom? Jesus never really gives us a detailed description. But what did Jews at the time think it was?
Well most Jews believed in line with the salvation history that God would, as he had in the past, intervene in the history of the nation, most thought He would do so through some form of intermediary who would act like Gods viceroy on earth. But there was a wide divergence in what different Jews thought would actually happen. Some indeed believed there would be a great war, God and the angels would cast out evil and the world would be transformed. Others had a more grounded idea, God would intervene and restore Israel, the Gentiles would turn to God, everyone would essentially be a Jew and one of Gods people, God would rule over all and his viceroy and chosen followers would rule the earth, peace would reign.
Its hard to tell where Jesus is between these two points- sometimes he seems to speak of the Kingdom as a miraculous alteration of the order of things conducted by God, and on the other hand there are several discussions about who will get what job in the Kingdom, implying they still expect the world to be there afterwards and that it is not some ethereal heavenly version. It will still need a ruler, and a a council, someone has to sit at the right side of Jesus in the Kingdom.
I suspect the vast majority of Jews were somewhere in the middle, they believed at some point God would intervene in some fashion and they would know it when they saw it. Until then they got on with their lives as best they could.
The other thing which comes to bear regarding Jesus and the Kingdom is that Jesus always took the side of the oppressed, the despised and the underdog- he preached a change in attitude to such people and a tolerance and understanding which does not sit with the idea he himself thought he was about to bring about the Kingdom in his own lifetime when all such mistreatment and ailments would be gone. And his overall message and many of his parables do not seem designed to be heard by a final generation but to be addressed equally to the generations to come- in that sense I think Matthew perhaps is right to cast Jesus in the light of Moses in that he expected what he was saying to apply to subsequent generations not just those he was immediately addressing. This message seems to contradict the idea Jesus thought he himself was the Messiah and that the Kingdom was about to occur any day soon. I have no doubt he expected it, I just do not think he believed it would be that soon. Israel would first have to turn fully to God to be forgiven before God would intervene. And it seems possible Jesus also believed that rather than Gentiles coming to God after the intervention that they should be brought to God as part of the preparation for it.


Next- a (hopefully) brief look at Roman justice- is what happened to Jesus how a Roman trial works? What sort of crimes do you get crucifixion for? Who tries and sentences you in Judea in Jesus' day? And what crimes was he guilty of anyway and are there precedents for the punishment for such crimes?

Wonderful, very well balanced stuff. In terms of bringing together just the right amount of detail and surveying all viewpoints this is the best I've ever seen.

Thanks Halfwise- I am trying to keep it as unbiased as possible although its not without some, every bit of writing has bias- some writers are just better at hiding it than others.

This is just a brief additional to the above piece.
I mentioned Honi the Circledrawer a few times, and his story is worth recounting if only to illustrate how people viewed those who claimed to have a direct line to God. (Something which could be taken as blasphemy afterall).
Honi lived earlier than Jesus by about 40 years and was known for his skill in praying for rain. He made his name during a drought when he appealed to God for rain, God dully obliged and it started to rain, a bit. Honi chastisited God with the words, 'Not for such rain have I prayed, but for rain of goodwill, blesing and graciousness'. God obliged and it began to rain steadily for several days.
A leading Pharisee at the time summed up officialdoms view of such events rather well, 'Were you not Honi I would have pronounced a ban against you! But what shall I do to you- you importune God and he performs your will, like a son who importunes his father and he performs his will.'
This sort of thing was not approved of but if it seemed to be effective then the person got to bypass the normal rules which applied.
Note also the language of the Pharissee response, comparing Honi to a son of God. It is likely when Jesus performed miracles a similar view was taken of him- that he was a son of God in the same sense Honi was- he could appeal to God as a son could a father (a popular image in Judaism). The idea of a literal son is not a Jewish one but a much later Chrisitian development.
During a period of civil unrest Honi was captured by one side to use his ability to appeal to God to fight the opposition. Honi refused and rather than let him go, where he might choose to aid the opposition they stoned him to death.
It is worth noting that they stoned him to death not because they thought he did not have the ear of God or that he was a fraud, quite the opposite, they did it because he would not whisper in Gods ear for them and they feared he would for their enemies. Having the ear of God did not make you 'holy' or protected. If anything such people were considered potentially dangerous. In this case they would rather kill him than risk his skills going to their enemies. God or not.

Thanks Petty I am finding this very interesting indeed.

This all takes me back to all those years of reading everyting I could find on the subject, everything from the sublime to the ridiculous... I got better.

Are you saying its ridiculous?
Almost all of this stuff comes from notes I took to aid memory back in a similar period of my life ddelving into all this sor tof stuff. And all the fun wacky stuff to.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Are you saying its ridiculous?
Almost all of this stuff comes from notes I took to aid memory back in a similar period of my life ddelving into all this sor tof stuff. And all the fun wacky stuff to.

The fun wacky stuff was at least entertaining.

"Next- a (hopefully) brief look at Roman justice- is what happened to Jesus how a Roman trial works? What sort of crimes do you get crucifixion for? Who tries and sentences you in Judea in Jesus' day? And what crimes was he guilty of anyway and are there precedents for the punishment for such crimes?"

..... ..... ....

Whenever you're ready.

yeah get on with it Petty

erm seeing as Petty is doing religion and Halfwise is doing QuantumWavey stuff, if anyone wants some potted art history I will gladly oblige, I am ok from the dawn of time up to about 1930 and then I lose the plot, not my thing after that.

Mrs Figg wrote:erm seeing as Petty is doing religion and Halfwise is doing QuantumWavey stuff, if anyone wants some potted art history I will gladly oblige, I am ok from the dawn of time up to about 1930 and then I lose the plot, not my thing after that.

I'd tune it to watch.

Potted Art History? A history of pots? A history of potted plants? Archaeology involved I assume?

anyways give me a topic and i'l try to not bore you all to tears.

Hey I was busy writting the Drak Planet story- I don't know impatient folks around here- a hobbit barely has time to get drunk anymore!
Might get the next bit up tonight sometime, if I get some peace.

Yes, that one was a topper. We'll be patient for another week I guess.

Mrs Figg wrote:anyways give me a topic and i'l try to not bore you all to tears.

I was just trying to figure out what you meant by 'potted art', not suggest topics. You should just pick what you think will be most interesting and fun for you to work on.

As there has been a bit of a gap I thought it might be useful to set out what we know so far about the world and likely circumstances of Jesus life.

1. He lived in the small village of Nazareth but was within a few miles of arguably Galillee's most important city Sephorris, home to the wealthy and the aristrocracy.

2. He was born during the reign of Herod the Great, Herod was tough on oposition but also observed Jewish Law and undertook massive building programs. He greatly increased the standing and wealth of the region in the Roman World.

3. For most of Jesus's life Galilee was ruled by one of Herod's sons, Antipas Herod. Overall he was a fair ruler by the standards of the day. There was no major public unrest during his reign.

4. Now as then more Jews lived outside the Holy Land than in it. Jews in more distant Gentile cities attracted attention, and many Gentiles were attracted to the religion but put off by some of the more extreme rules, such as circumcision. As all Jews payed a Temple Tax regardless of where they lived Gentile converts were not also good for numbers but for money. There was a growing belief in some Jews, especially those outside the Holy Land, that it wa sbecoming necessary to drop some of those practices. Of course other Jews vehemently opposed any watering down of the Covenenat and saw even the suggestion as beyond the pale. But money talks then as now.

5. In the Ancient World Jews were known for miracle working, particularly in the field of healing and espeially exorcisms. Jesus seems to be in this tradition. There were several others like him, some whose preaching overlaps with Jesus, such as John the Baptist and others who were famous before or after him. And no doubt countless others, known in their day, are lost to history. People like this were still unusual, most people did not perform miracles or preach, but they were not uncommon either and were a part of life, I imagine much like celebrities are to us today. A lot of people talked about them , some liked them, some followed them devoutly and others dismissed them.

6. Although Rome was in charge during Jesus' lifetime day to day affairs were ran within Jewish law. Villages and towns were Jewish, schools were Jewish, the magistrates and courts were Jewish, the highest authority for the Jews was the High Priest, who although appointed by Rome still represented Jewish law. It was a predominantly Jewish world and Jewish world view Jesus had. Herod and his sons also abided by Jewish laws. Rome was intrested primarily in peace and stability in the region (there is some evidence they ran it at a loss) as it was a good trade route. So long as these conditions were met the day to day rule was largely left in the hands of the inhabitants. Rome did not even have enough standing troops in all Judea to deal with any sizable outbreak of trouble. The only time troops were increased and were present in numbers within Judea and particularly Jerusalem, was during festivals. Which were known for their potential for trouble.

7. In Jesus day there were several 'flavours' of Judiasm that were promiant. There were two main parties, the Sadducees (who drew members mainly from the aristocracy and the priesthood) and the Pharisees (who were out of favour politically but respected among the people still for their interpitations of the Law). There were also the Essenes, famed as the authors of the Dead Sea scrolls. These were the old dipsosed Hasmonean priesthood and attendants. Under their intepretation of the Law they were duty bound by God to provide a tithe to the Priesthood, as they did not recognise the Roman appointed High Priest they instead maintained the old aristocracy at Qumaran. The Essenes were big on apocolyptic thinking and were also keen on astronomy an astrology. Of all the Jewish groups they were the most ritualistic, strict and magical.
As well as these groups each village had its Elders, from whom Magistrates were also picked. Villages and towns also had synagogues were there were services, debates, points of Law argued and prayers given. This was the religous framework within which Jesus lived.

8. In keeping with most Jews Jesus believed that God had a plan in relation to Israel which could be read in history. He also believed God would soon fufill this plan by bringing the Kingdom. The main difference between Jesus and others of this view is that he seemed to expect it imminently, if not within his own lifetime then shortly afterwards. (I will go into this in more detail later but in brief the evidence for this comes from the early years of Christianity and Pauls letters, where he has to address the vexing problem some of the people Jesus said this to are now dead from old age and the kingdom has not come (such an obvious problem is more likely to reflect the truth that the followers believed the kingdom was supposed to happen as Jesus promised, within the lifetimes of the disciples, as Paul would hardly make up such a serious problem, it not happening, if he could have easily just removed the reference- so in all likelihood the tradition goes back to Jesus himself).

So in summing up, whilst Jesus was clearly not your every day person he was not as exceptional as Christianity likes to make out. He was a Jew who broadly speaking believed in the same sort sort of things Jews living contemporary with him believed in. He believed he had a more central role to play than most yes, but their is nothing in his views which are particularly unique to him. The famous prophet Hillel was preaching '"What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow" for example a generation before Jesus (although there is some overlap, its even possible, depending on whose dating you trust, Jesus heard Hillel speak when Jesus was a child).
Jesus was a miracle worker, but in an age when there is was a thriving trade in miracle workers, cures and remidies, so again there was nothing particulrly unusual about this.

So why Christianity? Well for that I will have to cover first what the NT combined with some history can tell us about what Jesus was actually doing. Was he an outrage to fellow Jews so that they had to hand him to the Romans to execute? What was the gripe the Pharissess and the Sadduccess actually had with him and was it that bad? What did he do to deserve the cross? And eventually what happened to turn this mans life into what we know as Christianity?
(If you are wondering about the trial bit I promised, I have decied to leave it until that part of the NT is reached and do it in context).

the best part is while I was reading this I was thinking about would be the next questions I'd like addressed, and Lo and Behold, I get to the last paragraph and you promise to address them. Very nice.

Something to bring a smile to the face whilst waiting on the next instalment- friend posted this on their facebook page. Both informative and funny- wish the response was here too!

I knew Dr Laura was conservative, but I didn't know she was a scriptural adherent.

I dont even know who she is, just made me laugh.

Doesn't Leviticus also say mould in houses is unclean --- as in evil?

OK this is the tricky bit and deserving of a few caveats.
Up until now what I have covered has been history.
The contents of the Gospels are historical only in that they can be looked at in the same way as other historical documents- dating, composition- that sort of thing. And I will cover those to begin with. But the content they tell is material of a different sort.
They were composed with a purpose in mind, those who wrote them were each trying to achieve something in their selections and positioning of stories. Each one emphasises different aspects that are not always comfortable bedfellows with each other. And this will be addressed also.
But first we will look at when and how they were written and their structure and what those can tell us, before going on to see what they tell us about what Jesus was doing and his life.

The first thing to say about the gospels is we do not know who wrote them or exactly when.

The names currently attributed to them were given in hindsight by the early Christian Church (there was a tradition to name Gospels after disciples it seems as the trend can also be seen in the apocryphal gospels too such as the Gospel of Thomas).

The second thing to note is that the current form and content of the NT was only decided on by vote at the Council of Nicaea in AD325.

The third thing to note about them is that all biblical scholars agree John should be treated separately from the other three.

John is of later composition and draws on the other three. It also strongly reflects the view of the Church at the likely time of composition, suspiciously so. Whereas the three other gospels are believed to go back to shortly after Jesus died and to his immediate followers (although not all scholars agree on that last bit- but I will come to that soon).

The fourth thing to note about the gospels, and one that is slightly ironic given the aim of this is to put Jesus in context, is that you can never be certain of any of the context of what Jesus does or says in the Gospels.

This is because of how the gospels seem to have come about. Individual stories highlighting a particular teaching or action.
These are known as pericopes, and the thing about them is you can put Jesus anywhere or any time, even change the people involved in a pericope and still retain the teaching.
So one Gospel may say Jesus was in Capernicum with Bartholomew and Matthew late in his ministry when he was confronted by the Pharisees and the next that it was on the Sea of Galilee with Simon and Andrew at the beginning of his ministry. This is most likely a result of the stories originally being passed on orally, the message was important the details were not and got changed about over time and retelling. The end result is we can never be 100% certain when Jesus said things, where or to whom.
These original little stories, these individual pericopes were probably then gathered into groupings, a collection of Jesus healing miracles for example, or a collection of his teaching on the Law, these would have been the first written material on Jesus circulated on papyrus among his growing followers and eventually formed the proto-gospels.

-I should say here this is the consensus among scholars of how the gospels came to be, but it is not fact. There are no surviving proto-gospels, so far anyway. It is inferred from the way in which the Gospels are written. We know it was written in movable pericopes because the same stories appears in different context in different gospels with linking phrases to disguise the lack of actual definitive knowledge, such as “And at that time,” which gives the impression the author knows precisely when it took place when in fact none of them actually did.
That the material in the gospels is often arranged topically implies the previous existence of Jesus' sayings being collected in this fashion for distribution. And it is known religious sayings and teachings were distributed this way at that time. But there is no physical evidence for this. None survive.
Just to be clear, and to be balanced I should also note that there are some who argue that the gospels are as late as the second century AD, at least 200 years after Jesus lived. The main thrust of this argument is based on Luke.
Because of similarities in writing style and both being addressed to Theophilus some scholars believe the person who authored Luke also authored Acts of the Apostles. As well as this there are various references in Luke; to the census, the three Jewish rebels, the death of Agrippa, which the others do not have but which were recorded by father of historians Josephus, implying the author of Luke used Josephus to pad out the history. There is no evidence of Acts existing prior to the latter half of the second century and Josephus until mid way though the first, meaning Luke would be from a very late date if this is the case.
Basically it boils down to nobody knows for sure and there is a conceivable window for composition that stretches from about 50AD to 300AD.
My own gut feeling is that the core oral stories were collected within the first 50 years of Jesus' death and were being distributed among his followers, but that they were then much amended and edited over the following 150-200 years.
On the question of Luke I think the author of Acts probably did write Acts late in the second century and edited Luke but did not compose it, he added in the extra detail using Josephus as his guide I think. But that is just my own instinct on it, you will have to form your own judgement on this one as there is no physical evidence to decide it one way or another.
All we can say is that sometime from about 20 years after Jesus' death a version of his story was being told and probably first being set down for distribution, but that it would be 300 years until the 'definitive' versions which we have now would come into being-

By the time the Gospels were set down in the form we know them today 300 years had elapsed between Jesus and the Book that would be about him. And by then their was a whole new political context to the Christian Movement and the wider Roman World it was about to dominate.
I do not want to get into a big digression about the history of the period or the ulterior motives that may have affected the choices of gospels and their content, but it is worth noting that it was in the best interests of those who set the NT out to appeal to Rome and to package the whole thing in a form which would be acceptable to mass appeal with Gentiles and to be capable of functioning as a State Religion- a far cry from the Jewish-centric teachings of Jesus.
The political and social pressures that existed on those who decided what the exact content of the NT was to be and which Gospels (and ideas) were to be considered apocryphal should always be borne in mind. The NT was not
composed in a vacuum and was in many respects as much a political document as it was a religious one.
It is difficult to believe for example that the decision taken on a vote (and only narrowly won) at the Council, over whether or not Jesus was Divine and therefore the Son of God and God incarnate, did not affect the content of the existing Gospels of that time. It is more likely they were edited to bring them in line with this new definitive outlook.
There are other signs the original material had been altered to suit the political needs current at the time of the Council and the decades which followed- Jesus' Jewishness is underplayed as much as possible and God being open to Gentiles over emphasised. The Jewish role in his death is emphasised whilst the poor Romans deliberate over whether to kill him or not and only eventually acquiesce when the Jews demand it. All of this smacks of the need to appeal to Rome and Gentiles, as does the loss of Jewish customs such as circumcision and sacrifice from what was after all the religion Jesus followed whilst alive- if you are British it is a bit like New Labour. The NT was a mass re-branding manifesto. Turning an offshoot of Judaism into a full blown independent religion.
The OT was reduced to being a preamble to the arrival of Jesus, and Jesus was handily declared to mean there was no further need for circumcision, baptism would replace it, and no further need for sacrifice as he was the
ultimate sacrifice. Thus severing all the tricky links with Judaism (as far as Gentile acceptance was concerned) once and for all.
It is very unlikely Jesus advocated either of these positions but particularly not the latter.
For now it is just worth bearing in mind that the content of the NT was as much a planned design as any Presidential campaign document. They were angling to become the official state religion of Rome and eventually
to take its political control too. The Council was, once and for all, to decide a single definition of what Jesus represented (there were several views on this including that he was just a man, that he was just a man but God entered his body and left it on the cross when he says “Father why have you forsaken me?” That he was the actual
son of God, that he was the son of God and God, and a few more divergent views). All of this had to be brought into one definitive line, not for only for religious reasons but for political ones too.
That is the context in which the Council sat and in which it made its choices about the form the NT and indeed Jesus would take from then on in.


OK now all the caveats are out of the way in the next bit what we can see what can be gleaned from the gospels about what Jesus was up to.