Claim. When jesus testified that John the Baptist was Elijah and John flatly denied it, the Jewish people sided with John because John appeared far more credible than Jesus — born to the priestly family of Zechariah with angelic signs, leading an ascetic wilderness life, while Jesus was an unknown carpenter who befriended tax collectors and prostitutes and seemed to defile the Sabbath.
Elaboration. Per 2.2. The Direction the Jewish People Would Choose: Jesus “was an uneducated young man who grew up in the poor and lowly home of a carpenter,” called himself “Lord of the Sabbath” while apparently defiling it, gained a reputation for wanting to abolish the Law, ate with sinners, and accepted ministrations from a prostitute. He placed himself on equal footing with God and demanded that people love him more than family — appearing blasphemous to Jewish leaders. John, by contrast, was born to a priest, with miraculous signs around his conception, and led an exemplary ascetic life — so respected that a delegation of priests asked whether he was the Christ.
The mechanism: faced with two contradictory testimonies, the people “naturally believed John the Baptist when he denied being Elijah more than they believed Jesus’s testimony that John was Elijah.” Since they kept faith in Malachi’s prophecy (Messiah only after Elijah returns), they had no choice but to disbelieve in Jesus.
DP frames this not as Jewish stubbornness but as the sociologically rational outcome of a credibility asymmetry — a structural pattern in which prepared messengers (here Jesus) appear less credible than the prepared-preparers (here JtB). The pattern recurs (see dp-new-age-saints-persecuted-by-old-age-pattern).
See also. dp-jtb-faithlessness-was-main-reason-jesus-had-to-die, dp-jtb-denied-being-elijah-against-jesus-testimony