IamJoseph

What else? Free will is when there is a choice - and this was not the case with a Jew in Judea 1st C. Unless the Gospels is saying Jesus would have obliged Rome's emperors and worshiped Nero - or that Rome would entertain one as king of the Jews with a red carpet? So where is the term sacrifice merited here if there was no choice available? The Gospel keeps forgetting what Jews represent! :constern01:

bacht

I agree that the Roman administrators assigned to Judea in the 1st C seem to have been disreputable. But blaming the whole revolt on Nero is simplistic. The Jews had been fighting among themselves since Hasmonean times. Neither Herod the Great nor Roman officials could bring unity to this region. Other parts of the empire didn't have these problems.

The Jews had won religious liberty under the Maccabees after a short period of persecution from Antiochus IV. This was maintained until the 1st revolt over 200 years later. Josephus indicates that Nero decided against the Jews in a dispute with gentiles in Caesarea (not an ancient Jewish city):

There was also another disturbance at Cesarea, - those Jews who were mixed with the Syrians that lived there rising a tumult against them. The Jews pretended that the city was theirs, and said that he who built it was a Jew, meaning king Herod. The Syrians confessed also that its builder was a Jew; but they still said, however, that the city was a Grecian city; for that he who set up statues and temples in it could not design it for Jews.

Wars II.13.7

Sadly this reflects the general hostility between Jews and Hellenized gentiles in the eastern empire. In the Levant there was lingering bad feeling from the Hasmoneans (eg the destruction of the Samaritan temple).

IamJoseph

Herod was a Roman converted lacky, and this obviously merited a revolt and inter battles. Someone had to defend the right to freedom of belief, and someone did. The only sacrifice was by the Jews.

Ceasara was a Jewish city, and the Hellenists were instigating revolt by desecrating the Sabbath and other laws, as they did 200 years earlier. Josephus also says so.