Dash it all to heck! Just looking back, i see I missed out a "paste" of the comment I was quoting.

Oh well, the general point is that "The holy people" (said it was a shame) no doubt refers to the religious leaders of the time, but
"THEY" (whipped and they stripped and they hung me on high, and left me there...) doesn't necessarily refer to the holy people in the previous line. If songs were written that carefully, Mick Jagger COULD get no satisfaction.

In fact, if you want to analyse it that closely, it refers to three things that THEY did (whipping, stripping, and hanging on high) and only one of those is unequivocally a transitive verb with "me" as the object. One valid reading of the sentence is that they whipped some cream? themselves?) and stripped (after all, it was warm) and then they directed their attention to the protagonist and hung him on high.

And I don't think that anywhere does it say that the narrator of the song is Jesus.   It could be Brian.

It's a while since I've read much scripture, but I can't recall Jesus ever saying, "I am the Lord of the Dance" (even allowing for multiple translations over 2 000 years, given that he never spoke English).

Unless I've missed the reference, therefore, although the song relates many biographical details which bear a striking similarity to those of Jesus, it also repeatedly falsely attributes these rather important words to him, in nearly every verse.

Like I said, it's a song, not a legal document.

If we're going to analyse the text in this level of detail, who wants to give me a thorough grammatical, syntactical, lexicographical, etymological and theological analysis of "And i-o-i-o-i-o by priest and people sungen"?