I wouldn't say it's a case of "
ignoring" the more negative elements in the early Palestinian Jesus tradition, than it is recognising them as a product of the cultural / intellectual limitations of his background and time period.
When viewed in context with contemporary statements from other Jewish and pagan thinkers of the era, one can develop an understanding of
why xyz belief would have emerged in the tradition - whether or not one deems it praiseworthy.
For example, the anti-family strain in the synoptic tradition, which critics of Jesus often cite as a negative.
"
I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother" (
Matthew 10:35).
All that stuff about setting sons against fathers and daughters-in-law against mothers-in-law - has a context in
(a) the historical Jesus's (evidently) poor personal experiences with his immediate relations
(b) the apocalyptic expectation of a new kingdom of God on the horizon that would radically abolish traditional ways of life, including family relations
(c) more significantly, the fact that the ancient patriarchal family structure / tribalism he was calling for people to reject / free themselves from, was a deeply regressive, inegalitarian and collectivist institution (
"He who insults his father or his mother shall be put to death" (Exodus 21:17))
As an example, stoning to death a rebellious son in the Torah: "
If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them, then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city...Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear of it and fear." (
Deut. 21:18-21)
In the surrounding Greco-Roman culture, the sacred office of the family patriarch was perhaps even more important again. As the historian Proessor Larry Siedentop explained in his 2014 book entitled
Inventing the Individual:
The [Roman] paterfamilias (father) was originally both the family’s magistrate and high priest, with his wife, daughters and younger sons having a radically inferior status.
Inequality remained the hallmark of the ancient patriarchal family. “Society” was understood as an association of families rather than of individuals.
Both male and female children were under the
patria potestas of a paterfamilias, that is, under the control of a male head of a household. Women of all ages in Roman society were always under the guardianship until marriage, and in theory the patriarch had a power of life and death over the members of his household:
Patria Potestas
The elite landholding class built Roman law on the base of patria potestas, the life-and-death power of the father over his wife, children and slaves. This privilege was enshrined in the Twelve Tables of the Law, not to be rescinded until the 2nd century CE. [Lyttleton/Werner, 83] Legally, the Roman word familia referred, not to a family of kin, but to slave holdings: Familia derived from famuli, “slave,” and paterfamilias meant “father of slaves.” [Palmer, 117; Thomson, 92]
Is rejecting paternal and maternal authority in
that kind of family context really a bad thing in the same way as calling for sons to break loose from modern, generally supportive nuclear families would be?
IMO, your principal interests and goals and mine, here in RF, differ significantly, but what the heck?! as the Rolling Stones sang: you can't always get what you want, eh? I suspect that you'd like to make bigger "nudges" than I do and in directions that are more noble than any of mine. Occasionally, I sense some frustration on your part that the results of your nudges don't seem to satisfy you, but that's probably my imagination speaking. 
