Advance

I don't think that Jesus' agenda was a new religion.  He was fine with Judaism.  He had taken Judaism to another level, a more mystical one.  He had come to the awareness of "Oneness."  He knew that Judaism was needed with all its laws and rituals, because it can still have an overall place in the life of even a mystic.  The laws and rituals are also necessary for those who don't move along to the mystical level.  It is a bit like saying that you know about the latest in science, but you still need grammar school as part of the educational process to get to the more complex subject matter.  Some people never get beyond the elementary, the fundamentals.  So be it.  But to persecute those who do, becomes problematic.  Jesus got ahead of eveyone else.  That made some people very uncomfortable.  To many, the solution to being uncomfortable is fundamentalism.