I think of it as a satire that subverted the civilizational values, so the Jesus of the NT used those values against the dominators. It was an internal criticism that parodied dominance hierarchies by moralizing them, pointing out that a God worth worshipping would prefer the opposite social arrangement (with the lower classes in the privileged position). Jesus was also thought to speak in hyperbolic parables, so who knows what he would have taken literally?