Tuesday:

> The Jews didn't reject Jesus? He was beaten beyond looking human, and hung on a cross. It was mostly because they couldn't accept a poor man and one of their own as the Son of God.

That is a blanket statement. First, it was not every Jew that did this. Second, crucifixion was a Roman form of execution. Jews would most likely have practiced stoning to death. Third, from the point of view of the Jews of that era, Jesus was a heretic, someone who did not follow traditional Judaism.

Would the Jews accept Jesus as the Son of God? Some guy walks out of the street and tells you: "I am the true son of God". Would you believe him? You are thinking in terms of how modern Christians see Jesus. To the Jews of that era Jesus would not have been the only man to claim to be the Messiah or the son of God. Many religious zealots made that claim, just as today we have many preachers who claim to talk to God, or who claim to know when the Final Judgement will come, etc. Jesus was lost among all the false prophets and zealots. Of course, what would later become Christianity accepted him as the Son of God. However, people forget that Christianity did not exist when jesus was alive, and Jesus did not think of himself as the originator of a new religion. Jesus was first and foremost a Jew who preached a different message. The Bible says that he was executed wrongfully and cruelly. However, it is obvious that his execution was political. The mob wanted Barrabas released, and the Romans always gave the mob what it wanted in order to avoid strife and dissent within the empire. Jesus was executed not out of rejection of his teachings, but as an execution by an angry mob. He was paraded around to give the mob a spectacle as well as to terrify the mob into submission first to Rome and second to the power of the Pharisees.