what do you mean demotion? iirc jesus never spoke higher of anyone than he did of john the baptist. and john was a precursor to Jesus who was killed in the middle of jesus' years of ministry, so I'm not sure how he could be demoted (and by whom).
from matthew --> john he goes from being a divinely inspired
teacher of jesus who
baptised him into the ways of the lord to some goober who took off his shoes, bowed down before him and watched as god made the clouds open and the sun shine down on jesus and told john that jesus was his boss
John the Baptist - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
why? because each gospel has its own job to do in terms of who it's addressing and who it's presenting its case re: the divinity of jesus to
john got demoted because john's sect was older and more established than the new christian sect, and in a religion that (supposedly, but that's another question for another day) depends on apostolic succession, and in a political climate where
multiple people are being presented as the messiah (before AND after jesus), you need to get lines of succession sorted out
john's believers were direct competitors of the early church, so you get successive rewrites
this is just one example and I'm cribbing basically from
zealot, but it's really very crucial that the idea of audiences in an academic sense is driven home
'
I can't help what you are ignorant of.
'jews decide the messiah jews didnt' nominate jesus as messiah'
different jews nominated a whole bunch of jews as the messiah, that's the whole fucking problem
the main difference between orthodox judaism and the various messianic sects that have come and gone through the years is that orthodoxy doesn't recognise anyone as the messiah, because their messiah would be more or less space hitler and/or paul atreides
so yes, 'jews didn't nominate jesus as messiah', but the people who nominated jesus as messiah were really, really religious jews, christianity is a judaic sect that went critical and super-developed after the initial schism what the fuck is wrong with you never mind