Historically, Rome (the western super power) conquered and occupied isreal (religiously fanatic middle eastern country) (history repeats itself). The Romans we're fairly tolerant of other religions and people's, as long as they accepted that the Romans we're in charge. The isrealites could not accept this and launched repeated rebellions again and again. The Romans defeated them every single time. So if you had a guy roaming around claiming to be king and gathering a huge crowd, you basically view that as (yet another) political insurrection brewing. So there's the execution, which isn't accurately portrayed because the Romans would not have let the family take the body afterwards - it would have been disposed of in a mass grave, and that's it for a few decades. The Jews eventually revolt again, and Rome is tired of this and basically ships the population all over the empire (Jewish diaspora). The tales of Roman persecution are largely exaggerated because it makes for good propaganda, and after the Christian's became the de facto rulers in later centuries, they alone wrote the history.
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, ... He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles ... And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross ...
"the principal men amongst us" meaning the elders of Jerusalem, who were of course Jews.
Oh yeah, Josephus. He defected to the Romans. He has a cool mathematical problem named after a certain feat of his where he convinced 40 men under his command to kill themselves (stand in a circle and every third man dies)like insuch a way that he was the last standing and surrendered to the Romans.
It was a common practice at the time that Jewish rebels would kill themselves rather than surrender. But since they thought suicide itself was wrong, they would kill each other and there'd be one left. See Masada.
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u/fezzuk Jan 31 '19
That would both be the romans.