you are reading these texts as a 21st century westerner. this is not how an ancient person would understand these texts.

An ancient person wouldn’t understand the texts because ancient people were largely illiterate. I’m interpreting them as the Romanized Papal state integrated them into what would eventually become feudal Europe. The scriptures justified the existence and perpetuation of the aristocratic class by enshrining the idea of Master and Servant in religious doctrine.

many of these texts are actually giving agency to those who have none and are demanding justice for those who abuse their power.

They’re establishing a code of conduct that places Masters above Servants. This may have been intended metaphorically at the start, but it eventually became the rationale behind European aristocracy. Liberation Theocracy - in its modern form - emerged as a means of reconciling religious cultural roots with socialist revolutionary demands. Its the Liberationists who are using a 20th century western lens to interpret scriptures pruned by ancient aristocrats to exclude more radical ideas and attitudes.

liberation theology is a recovery of how to read the bible from below, which is how the gospels were originally written

The gospels were originally written a century or more after the oral history of Jesus had mutated into countless variations. Literature and History Podcast has a great break down of The Gnostic Texts which deviate profoundly from the codified Biblical Scriptures. Nevermind the rest of the Apocrypha which heads off in all sorts of directions, politically speaking.

Liberation Theology isn’t any more a originalist interpretation of the scriptures than Mormonism. Its a movement that grew out of the churches of oppressed peoples seeking to hitch liberationist ideology to a theocratic movement that had been oppressive more often than liberating for centuries prior.

if that was jesus’ message, he wouldn’t have been murdered.

Jesus was murdered for building a religious movement in opposition to the Pharisees. The Pharisees, who were in tight with a Roman government that needed them to keep control of a restive population, called in the hit as a favor. But they didn’t have to work particularly hard, because crucifying people was a Roman past time for centuries before and centuries after.

A century of persecution later, the early Christians were willing to suck up to the Roman government in order to avoid persecution. And the Romans were looking for a nice liberal theology to pacify a restive slave population prone to bloody revolt. Paul of Tarsus negotiated a middle ground between the two. And he was so successful that Christianity eventually became the Roman religion of choice for mass pacification.