It think and believe definitely that the Book of Revelation reveals the oldest belief of the Pillars.
Jesus was immolated, not crucified. Since only this death could allow a so strong
effusion of blood that was able to purify the sins:
Hebrews 9:22
In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
Notoriusly, the crucifixion of a
living victim can only allow a
minimal effusion of blood.
It is simply ridicolous to think that the nail wounds were able to shed so much blood to purify alone the sins.
While I am sympathetic to the potential point here, crucifixion was often an entire ordeal which included more than just the fixing of the body (living or dead) to a stake. Scourging or flogging frequently accompanied crucifixion. Livy writes in
History of Rome 22.13 of a guide who "was scourged and crucified in order to strike terror into the others," and in
History of Rome 22.13 of a magistrate and a treasurer whom Mago had "scourged and crucified." Thus blood could be associated with crucifixion as a matter of course:
Josephus, Antiquities 19.1.13 §94: 94 Ἔνθα δὲ καὶ σημεῖα μανθάνει δύο γενέσθαι· καὶ γὰρ μῖμος εἰσάγεται, καθ᾽ ὃν σταυροῦται ληφθεὶς ἡγεμών, ὅ τε ὀρχηστὴς δρᾶμα εἰσάγει Κινύραν, ἐν ᾧ αὐτός τε ἐκτείνετο καὶ ἡ θυγάτηρ Μύρρα, αἷμά τε ἦν τεχνητὸν πολὺ καὶ περὶ τὸν σταυρωθέντα ἐκκεχυμένον καὶ τῶν περὶ τὸν Κινύραν. / 94 And here he perceived two prodigies that happened there. For a pantomime actor was introduced, by whom a leader of robbers was crucified, and he introduced the drama Cinyras, in which he himself was killed, as well as his daughter Myrrha, and a great quantity of artificial blood was poured around both the crucified one and Cinyras.
Cicero, Against Verres 2.4.11: With what face have you presented yourself before the eyes of the Roman people, when you have not yet pulled down that cross which is even now stained with Roman blood [illam crucem quae etiam nunc avis Romani sanguine redundat], which is fixed up in your city by the harbor, and have not thrown it into the sea and purified all that place, before you came to Rome, and before this tribunal?
I would love to be able to explain the introduction of the crucifixion as the mode of death for a purely mythical or legendary Messiah figure, but so far every explanation comes across as a bit of a "just so" story. Yes, some people
could have eccentrically imposed crucifixion upon such a scenario, but
did they? It does not seem inevitable; no scriptural or parascriptural passage leads naturally in that direction with the single
possible exception of Wisdom of Solomon 2.20 ("let us condemn him with a shameful death"), if we allow (as I do) that crucifixion qualifies as a fairly obvious choice for a "shameful death." Or one has to fill in the blanks (as I myself have before and may yet do again in the future) and imagine that some group worshiped a god named Jesus who had been "crucified" (in myth) like Inana; yet no actual evidence exists for such a group; the case is purely circumstantial and depends upon the perceived need to solve a problem with other scenarios.
If some maneuver like that is all it took to create Christianity, so be it. But the historicist does not have to deal with that issue, and I wonder whether David's
recent summary of a(n apparently) minimally historicist scenario might not be easier to defend. I am not of the persuasion that purely mythicist origins of Christianity are impossible or or even necessarily implausible; what I question is whether they are the best explanation of the available evidence.
ETA: Concerning nails used in the process of crucifixion, Plutarch writes in
On a Happy Life 19 (
link) of people "struggling to tear themselves away from crosses into which each one of you is driving his own nail." And we also have the following:
Pliny, Natural History 28.9.46: Earth taken out of a skull acts, it is said, as a depilatory for the eyelashes, while any plant that has grown in the skull makes, when chewed, the teeth fall out, and ulcers marked round with a human bone do not spread. Some mix in equal quantities water from three wells, pour a libation from new earthenware, and give the rest to be drunk, at the rise of temperature, by sufferers from tertian ague. These also wrap up in wool and tie round the neck of quartan patients a piece of a nail from a cross [fragmentum clavi a cruce], or else a cord taken from a crucifixion, and after the patient's neck has been freed a they hide it in a hole where the sunlight cannot reach.
Lucan, The Civil War 6.543b-549: [The witch] breaks with her teeth the fatal noose, and mangles the carcass that dangles on the gallows, and scrapes the cross of the criminal, she tears away the rain-beaten flesh and the bones calcined by exposure to the sun. She purloins the nails that pierced the hands, the clotted filth, and the black humour of corruption that oozes over all the limbs; and when a muscle resists her teeth, she hangs her weight upon it.