[Guderian]

Jesus represented a foil to more radical Jewish leaders though. The more followers Jesus has, the less followers the kinds of Jewish leaders who might start a political revolution have.

Abcdxxxx...

The Roman Empire was an amalgam of different religions; there was never any attempt to force "Roman religion" (by that I mean worship of the Jupiter-led pantheon, not paying lip service to the idea of Imperial divinity, which wasn't a concept in Jesus' time anyway) on the occupied peoples. The Greeks continued to worship their gods, the temples to Isis in Egypt were open until the Byzantines closed them in the 500's, and all the other more minor religions of the conquered peoples in Gaul, Britain, and North Africa were allowed to continue after the Roman conquest. This is one of the features of Roman rule that made it so successful - so long as the occupied peoples didn't stir up trouble, they were basically left alone to trade, make money, practice their respective religions, etc.

Judaea was a notable exception to the rule because most of the Jewish religious leaders were openly opposed to Roman occupation. This of course culminated in the major revolt you mentioned, the Jewish Revolt of 66-70 that ended with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. With most estimates for Jesus' life placing him at least 30 years before this event, you can see that the Romans were hardly oppressing Jewish religion to any real extent. The Temple was destroyed as a consequence of Jewish political revolt, not Jewish religion conflicting with Roman beliefs. Later on, Christians would refuse to accept the Emperor as being divine, which would result in their persecution; this, however, was far in the future at this point.

You mention that studying the Torah was illegal. If that's the case, you would expect that the Pharisees would have been an underground resistance at the time of Jesus.