I'm very sympathetic to the notion Jesus saw himself and his role as that of a Jewish reformer. I'm not a scholar though.
Here's a thought for you: Compare and contrast the disciples of Jesus and the Buddha. Not Jesus and the Buddha, but their disciples.
Buddha teaches for nearly 50 years and his disciples love him but manage to memorize a whole lot of his ideas that later get written down.
Jesus teaches for about six months and his disciples love him but later pass on relatively few of his ideas and instead seem to focus much more on his life events.
Haven't you ever wished we know less about what Jesus did and the plot of his days and more about what he thought and said?
Indeed, this is an interesting point to consider.
I think that's the essence of it though:
his life was so dramatic, it ultimately took centre stage, with the exception of the communities who composed the sayings gospels of Q and Thomas (for whom his wisdom, or rather his status as the earthly manifestation of divine wisdom, was paramount).
Jesus was the only founder of a major world religion to be executed by torture-death as a criminal, on charges of treason against the world's most powerful empire.
While other religious figures lived interesting lives, none of them have lived one quite so dramatic.
His humiliating, agonising state execution likewise tells us something important: his statements, whatever he was saying, really must have been perceived as a serious threat by the Roman authorities in Judea.
Any interpretation of Jesus' teaching has to account for the fact that he was executed for whatever he went around preaching about. He certainly saw himself in the mould of the Old Testament prophets that had preceded him, with their social messages, as
@Buddha Dharma explained. But he obviously must have gone further in some way, to warrant such an extreme death penalty.
My forays into New Testament scholarship have led me to the conclusion that Jesus was convinced God was soon going to act by overthrowing the corrupt world governing powers and inaugurate a perfect Kingdom in which the poor would be raised up, the rich cast down, the outcasts of society vindicated and the powerful humbled.
He taught that his disciples could prepare for this post-apocalyptic paradise by finding God's Kingdom within them in the intermediate time, in the form of cultivating values like learning to love enemies, practising nonviolence in response to provocation, abandoning all earthly possessions, adopting a pure and childlike attitude to life and ministering to the most vulnerable, needy members of society.
In this way, his community would create a mini-version of a way of life which Jesus expected, eventually, to encompass not only all Judea but ultimately the entire world. It was a radically egalitarian vision, as exemplified by the proto-communism of the early church.
He used cryptic, moralistic tales - parables - and pithy, bold sayings to get his points across to the masses. This is the most popular scholarly position - Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet, but not apocalyptic as we think of it today (i.e. less End Times and more a case of a new age in which God rules over the earth in peace and plenty).
Unfortunately, this utopian vision didn't pan out. The Romans were mortified that a man was going around a buffer state province on the far eastern edge of their empire preaching about the coming of a Kingdom, a new social order, that was radically different from life under the rule of the Caesars.
And the Jewish chief priests, clients of the Roman regime, were obviously terrified by his rampage in the Temple, when he effectively imposed an embargo on goods and money entering the sacred precinct and accused the religious leaders of being a den of thieves exploiting the common people and incurring God's judgement.
And so, he was seen as such a significant threat the authorities saw fit to give him the most painful, humiliating death possible - stripped naked and nailed to a stake - so that people got the message: this Kingdom of God thing isnt going to happen. His followers were forced to contend with the fact that their beloved leader, supposedly the herald of a new divine order in the world, had ostensibly failed - reduced to a horrendous death and himself crying out in misery, "why has God forsaken me?"
The only certainty scholars have come up with is that, whatever he taught, Jesus was
not perceived as a meek and mild Sunday school "nice-guy". You don't have to brutally execute Sunday school nice-guys to silence them and send a message to their followers. People often mistake nonviolence and pacifism for being "nicey-nicey", which is not the case at all.
Unfortunately for the Romans, Jesus got the last laugh. His death was the act that effectively sealed the fate of their civilization, which 300 years later would be completely dominated and subverted by the Jesus Movement, as it became the state religion of the Empire before it collapsed, having completely vanquished the pagan cults and traditions. In Jesus' lifetime, the Emperor was worshipped as a deity and Jesus was condemned as a criminal. 300 years later, Jesus was the only deity left in town and the divine cult of the emperor was abolished, with anyone still practising it declared a criminal.
The cross, supposed to be the symbol of Jesus' failure and humiliation, was turned by his followers into a thing of awe and power - God's decisive intervention in history to save humankind. It led Jesus to be quickly deified by his followers after his death, as the glorified and eternally pre-existent divine agent of God (a belief attested even in Paul''s earliest letters), whom death had no power over.
This wouldn't have happened if the Romans hadn't decided to "do him in".
