why was there no general riot among when Jesus was arrested?

[dio9]

Matthew 26:3
"Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, 4 and they conspired to arrest Jesus in a treacherous way and kill Him. 5 “Not during the festival,� they said, “so there won’t be rioting among the people.�

Caiaphas cautioned the conspirators not to arrest Jesus because he was afraid there would be rioting among the people.
Why was there no riot?
Did the people not really believe Jesus was the Messiah?
After All the wonders in Galilee where he made the blind to see and the lame walk, preached to and fed multitudes , where was the riot?

[2timothy316]

It was well past midnight when those cowards came and arrested Jesus. They dared not to do it while people were awake, while Jesus was teaching or healing. Satan, the coward, works in darkness and in the shadows.

"While I was with you in the temple day after day, you did not lay your hands on me. But this is your hour and the authority of darkness.� Luke 22:53.


MATTHEW 26:47-56 MARK 14:43-52 LUKE 22:47-53 JOHN 18:2-12
https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1102014724

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 1 by dio9]

Whatever we might say about Caiphas, Annas and the leading classes, they were not stupid. They knew Jesus had popular appeal and had been unable to turn the crowd against him in public debate. They also knew however they represented the highest and most respected religious court in the eyes of all Jews, and their position of respect and authority surely played a part in ensuring that Jesus lost credibility in the eyes of the masses.

The narrative presents the religious leaders as being hesitant of "arresting" Jesus in public not necessarily about being unable to manipulate the masses once in their custody. People might get out of bed and start rioting at the news but the religious leaders were evidently willing to bet this wouldn't be the case.

TIMING

• And they were clever, very clever. The religious leaders knew enough to keep the masses ignorant of a night trial (which was illegal) and to hold a (repeat) morning "mock trial" the next day to give the whole affair an air of legality. Maybe the timing turned out to their advantage after all, yes it was risky with so many people in the city (not least the hot headed highlanders from Galilee) but reading the bible narrative, I often think of the modern day tactic of passing controversial Parliamentary bills at midnight before a national holiday. It was the day before the Passover, maybe people were less inclined to make trouble and ruin their holiday, not least for some rumoured "Messiah" that preached about some nebulous far off kingdom and that had supposedly been discredited by "experts".

CROWD THINK

• I don't think crowds act that much different today than they did thousands of years ago, crowds can be manipulated. The majority were not familiar with Jesus personally, they had heard rumours about him as a miracle working teacher and were divided as his authenticity. Only his disciples and perhaps some Galileans were convinced of the stories and even they had many false expectations about what he was going to do. They all expected or at least hoped for a powerful fighting Messiah that would rise up against their Roman oppressors and as events turned out Jesus didn't fit the bill.
  
  So let us imagine hearing rumors that this winsome teacher had in fact been arrested during the night, and tried on blasphemy charges at the Sanhedrin. This would be like a case coming before the United States Supreme Court. It would be almost inconceivable that a gross injustice would be committed such men. How could an ordinary person on the street think such highly esteemed men would violate dozens of legal checks and balances that existed to ensure the justice was done and all scheme to put an innocent man to death. How many today are ready to question the official narratives put out by government authorities? In a world governed by "if its on Wikipedia it must be true" do we really have to ask?

SMOKE & MIRRORS

• Wouldn't it be more likely that the masses would simply be disappointed that their hopes were once more dashed and this "Galiean" was in fact revealed as another charletan and hoaxster by those set up by God to protect the nation against such men? If they say he was found guilty of blasphemy (even if they hadn't heard it themselves) why would the crowds not conclude that a thorough investigation had not been held and that Jesus was in fact guilty?
  
  After this second trail the bible narrative speak of Jesus being bound and "led off" to Pilate. The is no indication of secrecy of the previous nights dealings, for this second transit, a bound and visibly beated Jesus bound and lead like a common criminal through the streets of Jerusalem. If people were shocked, their shock no doubt turned to dissapointment, and their disappointment ripe to be prodded into anger, not at the authorities but at the "criminal". Nobody likes to be duped, and many no doubt believed they had been.

So why were there no riots in Jesus defense? Because the masses didn't really believe in him. His disciples were shocked and terrified for their own safety and swiftly fled or went incognito, and the masses were no doubt disappointed and vulnerable to political manipulation no doubt through "provacateurs" leaking misinformation and false rumours. The gospel accounts subsequently describe a crowd whipped into a frenzy screaming for blood in a deadly game of "follow the leader". If Edward Bernays didn't say "Anyone can manipulate a crowd" he really should have.

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one. - Charles Mackay

To learn more please go to other posts related to
THE RANSOM SACRIFICE , THE EXECUTION OF CHRIST and ... MEMORIAL OF CHRIST'S DEATH

[dio9]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness]

Jesus didn't have popular support of the Jerusalem religious community .
If such a thing happened today there would be riots for sure and in those days too there were riots uprisings against Roman occupation. But not for Jesus, why not?

[2timothy316]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness]

Jesus didn't have popular support of the Jerusalem religious community .
If such a thing happened today there would be riots for sure and in those days too there were riots uprisings against Roman occupation. But not for Jesus, why not?

So if I showed you an injustice toward a peaceful person, no, many people, yet there are no riots for them, would you agree there is an evil and cowardice angel that is behind all plots to kill innocent people?

[steveb1]

Matthew 26:3
"Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, 4 and they conspired to arrest Jesus in a treacherous way and kill Him. 5 “Not during the festival,� they said, “so there won’t be rioting among the people.�

Caiaphas cautioned the conspirators not to arrest Jesus because he was afraid there would be rioting among the people.
Why was there no riot?
Did the people not really believe Jesus was the Messiah?
After All the wonders in Galilee where he made the blind to see and the lame walk, preached to and fed multitudes , where was the riot?

As a Christ Myth theory fan, I doubt that Jesus was historical, so I doubt that he was arrested.

But the standard reply would be that the priests were afraid of causing a riot if "the crowd" witnessed Jesus being arrested, so they simply arrested him "with no crowd around him", as it says in Jesus Christ Superstar.

Another reason is that if he existed, Jesus was a foreigner to Jerusalem. Very few would have recognized him, especially in the crush of Passover holiday crowds filling the city.

It's not matter of people not believing he was the Messiah - he never made a public claim to Messiahship (except in John's Gospel, which is a case of very special pleading). He had never done anything Messianic in the first place - he didn't rebuild the Temple, he didn't kick out the Romans, he died young (the Messiah was supposed to be "long in days", i.e., not young), etc. At the most the few people who might have been aware of him in Jerusalem would have known him to have been an early disciple of John the Baptist, a Kingdom-preacher, a healer, an exorcist and a person full of a spirit - a spirit which his friends called "a", or "the" Holy Spirit, and which his enemies called "Beelzebul".

In any case, Jesus was a small flash in the pan by the time he supposedly died, and would hardly have been noticed in Jerusalem on that Passover except by his disciples, family, and a few friends (and enemies that he had made earlier in Galilee).

[JehovahsWitness]

...in those days too there were riots uprisings against Roman occupation. But not for Jesus, why not?

There were certainly a number of Jewish uprisings against the Roman occupiers but not that many against their own Jewish Senhedren. The Romans didn't arrest Jesus their own religious leaders did. There is a record of people protesting the high prices of the religious sacrifices at the time but the arrest of a would-be Messiah by their own authorities ... not so much. Further the gospels explain that John the Baptist, who was widely accepted as a Prophet was arrested and executed and yet there is no record of riots, so while the Jews were not adverse to rebellion it wasn't systematically the case for every decision imposed.

Summary: Over the last two posts I have proposed the following possible factors as to why their were no riots; I don't think the answer lies in any one single factor but a combination of all these factors.

#1 The stated fear was of possible riots at the moment of arrest Jesus was arrested privately at night (a common tatic of secret services under Stalinist Russia to prevent backlash)

#2 It was made known that Jesus had been charged and convicted first at the Jewish High Court not by the Romans. Riots against a country's own Supreme High Court are rare.

#3 The events happened early in the morning and information was sketchy as to the details

#4 there was possibly a degree of misinformation and selectively leaked information (for example that Jesus was turned in by "a whistleblower", one of his own which implies detrimental inside information)

#5 It was the morning of a national holiday and one of the nations holiest festivals of the year.

#6 Events moved extremely quickly leaving little time for a grassroots reaction([*]see note below "A final word about rioting)

#7 Jesus own disciples did not voice their protests, so there was no motor to stir significant outrage and build momentum.

#8 People tend to riot when they, their family or their income are personally under threat or are outraged by a perceived injustice for one of their own.

#9 The majority of people were not convinced of Jesus Messiahship so there simply was not enough stronge public feeling on the issue.

* A FINAL WORD ABOUT RIOTING

• The logistics of things is that people don't usually arrange to riot, they protest. And protestations usually take a little time to get going. The biblical record of the riots of Ephesus were of protests which built in momentum over the course of the day and unlike for Jesus there was a definite motor, a central cell of merchants, driving the event . Jesus was arrested, tried and placed into Roman custody "before breakfast". This moved everything to a whole different level, people would think twice before going head to head with the Roman authorities who were trained to squash rebellion without mercy. It's one thing to throw a few stones but how many family heads, in town for a holy day with their kids, would be willing to risk death for an out-of-town carpenter already revealed to be a "hoaxster" by their own "experts"?

To learn more please go to other posts related to
THE RANSOM SACRIFICE , THE EXECUTION OF CHRIST and ... MEMORIAL OF CHRIST'S DEATH

[Wootah]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness]

Jesus didn't have popular support of the Jerusalem religious community .
If such a thing happened today there would be riots for sure and in those days too there were riots uprisings against Roman occupation. But not for Jesus, why not?

England barely cared when Tommy Robinson was arrested by the 'pharisees' last week. I think you over estimate people.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to JehovahsWitness]

Jesus didn't have popular support of the Jerusalem religious community .
If such a thing happened today there would be riots for sure and in those days too there were riots uprisings against Roman occupation. But not for Jesus, why not?

England barely cared when Tommy Robinson was arrested by the 'pharisees' last week. I think you over estimate people.

I was going to mention the Tommy Robinson case as well as it well illustrates how difficult it is to move people to action when the establishment has put its powers to work. I'm not comparing Robinson to Jesus but the mechanics have predictable outcomes.

• Secret arrest. Robinson was not arrested at one of his public addresses , he was arrested alone with his phone (and one or two other supporters). Jesus was arrested at night, there were plenty of opportunities for a public arrest but that was avoided for obvious reasons.
  
  Media blackout. The less information that is available the better. When the establishment controls the narrative they can to a great extent control the reaction. The British courts slapped a gagging order on the press leaving people in the dark as to what had happened. Two of Jesus three trials were held closed court, without the opportunity for him to have anyone in his defense any information that might have been leaked was done by the establishment. Anyone that attempted to counteract rumours with reporting in the Robinson case intially risked prison. That is how the establishment stop public dissent. Jesus supporters self censored but the result was the same.
  
  Fait accompli. The British public were presented with a fait accompli. Never in the history of the British court system has a case moved so swiftly from arrest to sentencing. Jesus was arrested and exectuted within a day. That kind of speed is difficult to counteract. By the time anyone knew what was happening it had happened and *as* it was happening the official narrative was being spun out. Emotion based presumptions, character assasination and misinformation was presented and without the least amount of proof the attempt was (in Jesus' case) successfully made that this was a "dangerous extremist" an anti-government, antiestablishment insurgent.

To this day there are people are convinced that Jesus was indeed guilty as charged and people don't rise in protest for guilty men.

[dio9]

On the arrest in darkness issue Pilate brought Jesus before the crowd and asked-
Matthew 27:17
“Whom do you want me to release to you? Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?�

This could have been a chance for According to the Gospel their voice was not heard. Jesus followers to raise their voices in protest. At least shout give us Jesus.

27:20 "But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitudes that they should ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus.

The tragedy for Jesus Christ was there was no one to counter persuade the multitude for Jesus. That could have been the time to start a riot.

Pilate was sympathetic toward Jesus.
27:23
" Then the governor said, “Why, what evil has He done?�

Instead of a riot for Jesus there was a riot starting against him.
27:24
" When Pilate saw that he could not prevail at all, but rather that a tumult was rising, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this [d]just Person. "

In fact 27:24 states Pilate did not want to execute Jesus. "Pilate saw that he could not prevail at all,"

This would have been a perfect time for Jesus disciples to start a tumult for Jesus release.