The probable origin of the crucifixion: Numbers 21:9

[Giuseppe]

So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.

(Numbers 21:9)

This bronze snake put on a pole evokes the miracolous victory of the Messiah on the eschatological Serpent.
The image evokes also another similar image: the Genesiac Serpent crucified by YHWH on the Tree of Paradise.

There is not a Christ without an anti-Christ.

From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it.

(Matthew 11:12)

[Giuseppe]

Why, if the Genesiac Serpent is an evil character in OT, he is compared to Gospel Jesus by the same Judaizers ("Mark"), adopting the cross symbology ?

Because the culmination of the evil, in apocalyptic terms, is the total confusion between evil and good: the Christ is confused with the anti-Christ, Jesus with Bar-Abbas, the Messiah with the Genesiac Serpent.

Note that the "Herodians" in the Gospels are the people who believed that the evil Herod was the Messiah: that also is a culmination of blasphemy, hence an apocalyptic signum.

The Jesus (of the Judaizers) can defeat the Serpent only confusing himself with the latter: on the cross.

[Giuseppe]

Curiously, the Ascension of Isaiah says that Jesus has to assume the form of the beings found in any heaven visited by him: hence also the form of the demons (in the lower heaven, where the crucifixion probably happened). There is a confusion of a divine archangel and a demonic form, too. Jesus has to assume the form of the Serpent to be crucified by the serpents.

[Giuseppe]

The cosmic cross called Horos has also a Jewish meaning connected with an apocalyptic prophecy.

Horos is called also LIMIT.

The passage beyond the Limit is the culmination of evil and sufferings, the culmination of blasphemy and heresy: the precise moment when the good is confused with the evil.

When the crucified Messiah posed as the crucified Serpent.

[Giuseppe]

And he cried unto the LORD; and the LORD shewed him a tree

(Exodus 15.25)

[Giuseppe]

Eusebius knew still something about the original crucifixion:

And besides this, he caused to be painted on a lofty tablet, and set up in the front of the portico of his palace, so as to be visible to all, a representation of the salutary sign placed above his head, and below it that hateful and savage adversary of mankind, who by means of the tyranny of the ungodly had wasted the Church of God, falling headlong, under the form of a dragon, to the abyss of destruction. For the sacred oracles in the books of God's prophets have described him as a dragon and a crooked serpent; and for this reason the emperor thus publicly displayed a painted resemblance of the dragon beneath his own and his children's feet, stricken through with a dart, and cast headlong into the depths of the sea.

In this manner he intended to represent the secret adversary of the human race, and to indicate that he was consigned to the gulf of perdition by virtue of the salutary trophy placed above his head. This allegory, then, was thus conveyed by means of the colors of a picture: and I am filled with wonder at the intellectual greatness of the emperor, who as if by divine inspiration thus expressed what the prophets had foretold concerning this monster, saying that God would bring his great and strong and terrible sword against the dragon, the flying serpent; and would destroy the dragon that was in the sea. This it was of which the emperor gave a true and faithful representation in the picture above described.

Eusebius puts in mouth of Constantine the passage of Isaiah 27:1 (in bold). A midrash is implicit, here, in the connection between:

• the dragon/serpent (who is the same Genesiac Serpent)

• a public picture/banner

• the cross

The idea is the same, again and again: the Genesiac Serpent is crucified on a cross and this crucifixion is also a public exibition of the eschatological victory of the Messiah.

Even the fool Eusebius knew this.

[Giuseppe]

Hosea 11:1:

“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son

mi-mitsrayim ('out of Egypt') in Hebrew is similar to metsar, the LIMIT: the Son (the Messiah) is called when the LIMIT is reached.

The passage of the LIMIT (= the Cosmic Cross called Horos or Limit, placed IN OUTER SPACE) coincides with the death of the Messiah.

[Giuseppe]

I am particularly grateful to Mythicist Maurice Mergui because he has found the missing ring between Leviticus 16 (considered by him as the midrashical source behind the Barabbas episode) and the correct explanation of the Barabbas episode given by Couchoud/Stahl.

Both the explanations share a feature in common: the ἀνομία, the total loss of any distinction between two rival Jesus, between the (Jewish) Christ and the anti-Jewish anti-Christ (the Jesus of Marcion), between the Messiah and the Genesiac Serpent (who is precisely the deity adored by Marcion as supreme god), accordingly the risk of a confusion between the two, where the Jews fall en masse.

If Jesus can be confused with Bar-Abbas, as the logic goes, then Jesus can arrive to be confused with the same Genesiac Serpent cursed by YHWH (accordingly, "hanged on the tree"). Where? On the cross.

[Giuseppe]

Now an enigma is resolved:

but we preach Christ crucified, which is a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles

(1 Corinthians 1:23)

The Jews were scandalized for the fact that the crucified Christ posed embarrassingly as the Genesiac Serpent cursed/'crucified' by YHWH on the cross.

Since the Genesiac Serpent was 'crucified'/cursed by YHWH on the Tree of Eden, IN HEAVEN, then accordingly the location of the original crucifixion of Christ had to be IN HEAVEN, also.

The Doherty/Carrier paradigm is confirmed again and again.

[Giuseppe]

Imagine a world without Marcionites. Without haters of YHWH.

Even so, the suspicion is raised: a crucified Christ is scandalous for the Jews, because he resembles too much the Genesiac Serpent crucified by YHWH.

Hence the Barabbas episode was invented not against Marcion (who never existed for the premise), but to exorcise the dangerous suspicion, implicit in the cult of a crucified Christ, that the crucified being was the Genesiac Serpent.

My point is that, even in the total absence of adorers of the Serpent as supreme god, the early Christians had to exorcize the accusation addressed against them by some Jews: that they adored really the crucified Genesiac Serpent. They couldn't evade easily that accusation. The Barabbas episode served to neutralize that accusation in advance.