— Galatians 3:1Surely you have taken leave of your senses, you men of Galatia! Who has cast this spell over you, before whose very eyes Jesus Christ has been exposed to view as nailed on a cross?
So Neil:
http://vridar.org/2016/01/25/crucifixio ... galatians/The Gospel of Mark’s narrative is not a graphic description of Christ crucified but it is a graphic depiction of seeing but failing to see Christ crucified. So it is not likely that Paul rhetorically presented the Galatians with what we read in Mark 15.
In my view, a ''crucified Christ'' is for Paul the more ''evident'' and ''effective'' way of persuasion of the his audience: no crucifixion, no freedom from Torah.
Therefore Paul had any interest to represent ritually or graphically or orally or scripturally the image of a ''crucified Christ''. Strangely, this is not the case in his epistles.
But then could it be the contrary? The Galatians were deceived (by Judaizers) just because they saw a rite of crucifixion?
Note that in this way it may be resolved the contradiction between Paul and Mark described above by Neil.
The following fact:
is a direct effect of the Paul's polemic against who saw (during a Judaizing ritual) but failed to see Christ crucified: the Galatians themselves.The Gospel of Mark’s narrative is not a graphic description of Christ crucified but it is a graphic depiction of seeing but failing to see Christ crucified.
My reconstruction of the polemic Paul vs Galatians is the following:
1) Judaizers, came from Jerusalem, entered among the Galatians,
2) they knew the meaning of the cross for Paul: fredoom from Torah
3) for them, that was surely an heretic corruption of the original meaning of the cross: the pure and simple martyrdom of the Son of God, meaning the imminent universal domain of the Torah.
4) therefore they had any interest to represent ritually the crucifixion in anti-pauline function, as the exact opposite of a ''triumph'' or of a liberating sacrifice: as a real embarrassing fact.
5) therefore they persuaded the Galatians to abandon Paul just by representing ritually the crucifixion as a outrageous humiliating torment, resembling the same torture of sinner criminals.
6) Paul had to react against that propaganda, by instinting again and again that the crucifixion represents a real triumph (and liberation from the Torah) even if, and rather even more so if, it appears embarrassing and worthy of the last of the criminals.
Evidence of this ancient Judaizing anti-pauline ritual of crucifixion may be preserved in the Talmud, where the Jesus's death is represented as really worthy of a criminal, on a ''tree'' as the Torah reserves for criminals.
Evidence of this Judaizing ritual may be at the origin of the same Pagan accusation (if dated 85 CE) of adoring a criminal crucified:
(Origen, Contra Celsum, III, 1)He gives it as his opinion, that "the controversy between Jews and Christians is a most foolish one," and asserts that "the discussions which we have with each other regarding Christ differ in no respect from what is called in the proverb, 'a fight about the shadow of an ass.'"
The ''ass'' would be a Pagan image of the Jewish Messiah. Celsus continues:
and thinks that "there is nothing of importance in the investigations of the Jews and Christians: for both believe that it was predicted by the Divine Spirit that one was to come as a Saviour to the human race, but do not yet agree on the point whether the person predicted has actually come or not."