At the end of the day, Jesus (or the writings that his cringier followers left behind since I would like to think the historical Jesus was a lot cooler than what was in the Bible) would rather blame a bunch of collaborator Jews than the Roman oppressors who have their sandals on the Judeans’ collective throats. It’s very hard to read his trial with Pilate in the Gospel and not see how the received text constantly tries to downplay Pilate’s role in Jesus’s torture and execution, never mind that Pilate was a colonizer governor who could simply free Jesus with a snap of his fingers and crucify the entire crowd with another snap of his finger since as Roman governor, he had an entire Roman legion under his command. Who were the Pharisees going to complain to, the Emperor himself?

The Zealots were easily the coolest Jewish factions because unlike the Christians, Pharisees, and Sadducees, they understood who the enemy was and actually tried to do something to rid the people of Judea of the Roman yoke. Sadly, they failed in their historic task, and the surviving Christians and Pharisees would go on to spit on their graves for daring to free themselves.