Thus, there’s no good reason to think the early Christians would have been embarrassed about saying their saviour Jesus was crucified. Those authors combined Greco-Roman ideas with Jewish ones to form a new religion, which is how syncretism works. Moreover, Mark would have preferred crucifixion for literary reasons, since crucifixion made for the more impactful story.
Finally, an ancient religious reference to crucifixion didn’t imply the earthly penalty, because the ancients believed there were degrees of earthliness, reaching up into the heavens. Jesus the saviour god could have been “crucified” in a “fleshy” but not human biological body, by archons or demons in a lower heaven. Add that, then, to this list of reasonable doubts about the historicist’s account.
Finally, an ancient religious reference to crucifixion didn’t imply the earthly penalty, because the ancients believed there were degrees of earthliness, reaching up into the heavens. Jesus the saviour god could have been “crucified” in a “fleshy” but not human biological body, by archons or demons in a lower heaven. Add that, then, to this list of reasonable doubts about the historicist’s account.
(my bold)
https://benjamincain8.medium.com/clarif ... 8a293bd4d5
In another thread, I explain what was really embarrassing about the crucifixion idea: being compared to the only crucified being in the entire OT (apart Aman and 5 Canaanite kings): the Genesiac Serpent.
How did the Christians overcome that specific embarrassment?
They couldn't avoid it, since it was connected by need with the crucifixion idea: only the Genesiac Serpent was crucified... are you Christians really saying that your crucified deity was the Genesiac Serpent? Are you adorers of Devil?
The Barabbas episode was a first apology to neutralize that embarrassment.
But especially, even when the Gospels (and with them the Barabbas episode) were not fabricated yet, the embarrassment (for the similarity Crucified Jesus== Crucified Genesiac Serpent) was neutralized by the concept of Passage beyond the Limit: the Messiah arrives when the Limit has been reached, when the greatest apostasy has been realized: the outsiders arrive to confuse the Christ with the Genesiac Serpent, via the shared feature of the crucifixion.
The same embarrassment by outsiders for the concrete risk raised by the following equation:
Crucified Christ==Crucified Genesiac Serpent
...is the eschatological signum par excellence that the Messiah has really arrived.
