Jesus was a threat to the legitimacy of the rule of the corrupt interest groups at the center of the Judean economy. He was genuinely exposing the machinations of wealth extractors such as tax collectors and moneychangers. Elites had a good thing going (for themselves, not for the nation). They could live off forcibly extracted wealth in the form of taxes, which included tithes recently taken on the force of law, making them a kind of religious tax. Jerry Bowyer