h/t: Atheist Republic
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Always Question Authority 
O.K., Atheist Republic, let’s not get totally crazy here. Whoever this messianic Jew was who wrote the gospel of Matthew, he was an oppressed Jew who probably had only recently witnessed the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70CE. Would he have been wrong to suggest a call to arms to throw off Roman oppression? The larger point, however, is that most scholars would say the Matthew passage is metaphorical and you’re committing the same biblical literalism that the benighted Christians do when the use biblical passages literally. The “peace” he means to upend is Roman and Jewish priestly authority.