Alright I figured it out there is a limit to the amount of replies available so starting here.
Yes, Pontius Pilate and Herod are familiar — that’s exactly why I pointed out that Judea had local rulers and autonomy before the revolts. Rome didn’t erase Judea until after the uprisings.
On Cyrus: calling him mashiach in Isaiah 45:1 doesn’t make him ‘the Messiah.’ In Hebrew, mashiach simply means ‘anointed for a task.’ Kings, priests, and even objects in the Temple were called that. It’s not the same category as the prophetic Messiah described in Isaiah 53, Daniel 7, or Psalm 22.
Saying ‘a messiah is a messiah’ ignores how the word is used in the Hebrew Bible. There’s a difference between a general anointed ruler and the eschatological figure Jews expected.
As for Jesus doing nothing messianic: His followers, His opponents, and the Roman authorities all treated Him as someone making messianic claims — that’s why the charge on the cross literally read ‘King of the Jews.’ Whether someone believes those claims is separate from whether they were made.
“When Jesus spoke about ‘this generation’ in Matthew 24, He was describing the events leading up to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. That destruction happened in 70 AD, within the lifetime of the people He was speaking to. This is why historians and scholars treat that part of the passage as referring to the fall of the Temple, not the final return.”
And yes, outsiders called early believers Nazarenes — that’s why I said the term wasn’t originally ‘Christian.’ The Antioch reference in Acts 11:26 is where the name actually appears.
