The only crucifixion mentioned in Hebrews (hence in Paul, also) is of the corpse of Jesus

[Giuseppe]

You are ignoring that, once read according the metaphor in the passage from Ephesians (merging of gentiles and Jews by the cross), also the passage in Ezekiel gives the metaphor of the merging of Judah and Israel by the intersection of two sticks: a cross.

Especially, you are ignoring all the other references given above about the Hebrew for tau (X or T) as the eschatological divine signature connected with the apparition of the Messiah (for the Damascus Document, too). In this sense, "take your cross" means: to receive the sign tau on own forehead to be saved. It is not a Zealot saying, pace Hengel.

You are going to ignore that for Paul the Christ crucified is the power of God. A symbol of glory and victory, more than one of sufferings. Just as the symbol tau.

I don't think that one has to have already the idea of the crucifixion in mind before to read the crucifixion behind the Jewish symbology about tau. The idea of the suffering Messiah is derived from the Servant Suffering of Isaiah. The way to connect this figure with the Messiah was by making resemble the his suffering to the symbol tau via the crucifixion.

[Giuseppe]

I see that you are already conceding the point that a suffering figure could be invented (from Isaiah etc). I see that you are already conceding the point that this suffering figure could be called Messiah.

Where you seems to have some difficulty with is on how just an invented crucifixion - as opposed to other invented forms of death - could be connected with this invented figure of suffering Messiah. The my answer is that the crucifixion is precisely what makes the (invented) suffering figure a (invented) Messiah. In virtue of the symbology about tau.

[Ben C. Smith]

I am ignoring none of that. I am saying that none of it is obvious.

The two sticks becoming one does not automatically suggest a cross; it suggests a new stick, and that new stick can be imagined in different ways. This is why modern representations of this passage can so widely differ:







The stuff about the Tau is all rationalization after the fact. A sign in the form of a Tau (if such it even is) does not automatically suggest a crucifixion.

I see that you are already conceding the point that a suffering figure could be invented (from Isaiah etc). I see that you are already conceding the point that this suffering figure could be called Messiah.

There is no concession here. I have never said otherwise. I have even argued for the proposition that the idea of a suffering Messiah at least in part from Isaiah's Suffering Servant. But suffering and being crucified are not the same thing; the latter is a subset of the former.

You are relapsing into your old rhetorical habits here, Giuseppe, and I will not be as slow as before to pull the trigger and stop engaging. Stay

[Giuseppe]

But suffering and being crucified are not the same thing; the latter is a subset of the former.

Precisely. But the crucifixion is simply a form of suffering. The core of the my argument is that the precise form of suffering had to be just the crucifixion to vehicle the symbology about tau. This explains why Paul brandished just the form (1 Cor 1:23: "Christ crucified") as opposed to the mere suffering or as opposed to the outcome of the suffering (the resurrection). That precise form referred to the divine signature: the tau.

In terms of mere form, the people usually choose a form meaning something they like, not something meaning nothing. There would be good divine coincidence, here, that God put just the his signature (!!!) on the form of the suffering of the his son...

....but you call it rhetoric.

addenda 1: Note that in the place of Jesus, all the Christians were signed by tau.

addenda 2: I see that the tau argument is advanced independently by Max Rieser,

The question as to why the Xristos was allegedly put to death by crucifixion has as main answer the grammatical fact that the word Xristos begins in Greek with a X (khi) and that this is pictorially speaking a cross. The word Xristos suggested by its initial the kind of death. In addition this letter resembles the old last letter of the Hebrew alphabeth namely "Thav" (th) and this letter has a similar form as X. Now thav means "cross" or "sign". These grammatical facts suggested the kind of death the Xristos was subjected to.

(The true founder of Christianity, p. 24)

[Ben C. Smith]

But suffering and being crucified are not the same thing; the latter is a subset of the former.

Precisely. But the crucifixion is simply a form of suffering. The core of the my argument is that the precise form of suffering had to be just the crucifixion to vehicle the symbology about tau.

I understand this argument, and I disagree with it, because it did not have to be crucifixion. Nobody forced anybody to make the "sign" mean that. It is not an obvious step.

....but you call it rhetoric.

What I called "rhetoric" is your overconfidence and your ad hominem attack.

[Secret Alias]

What Giuseppe doesn't get or doesn't care about is that the texts have a value in themselves. They are not to be used merely as footsoldiers in a 'cause' - in this case proving the mythical origins of Christianity. This is the fundamental problem. He treats the textual material like Boko Haram treats captured women and children. That's not scholarship. That's abuse.

[Giuseppe]

It is not an obvious step.

precisely here you are wrong. It was an obvious step, insofar you have already on the table a suffering figure and with it the need of giving a form to this suffering.

I write this precisation only because I think that you tend (a bit hypocritally?) to eclipse the logical sequence of the steps here, when you claim that there is no reason for the form of suffering become just a form of X or T. Differently from you, I see that particular reason that did the difference among the various forms, ceteris paribus.

So:

Isaiah --->Suffering ---> need of a form of the suffering ----> the cross.

And not so:

Crucifixion ----> suffering------> Isaiah.

[Ben C. Smith]

It is not an obvious step.

precisely here you are wrong. It was an obvious step, insofar you have already on the table a suffering figure and with it the need of giving a form to this suffering.

I will let Celsus address this point:

Origen, Against Celsus 6.34: 34 .... "And in all their writings [mention is made] of the tree of life, and a resurrection of the flesh by means of the tree, because, I imagine, their teacher was nailed to a cross and was a carpenter by craft: so that if he had chanced to have been cast from a precipice, or thrust into a pit, or suffocated by hanging, or had been a leathercutter, or a stonecutter, or a worker in iron, there would have been (invented) a precipice of life beyond the heavens, or a pit of resurrection, or a cord of immortality, or a blessed stone, or an iron of love, or a sacred leather!" ....

[Giuseppe]

Only as little corollary:

The beheading of John the Baptist.

It could be historical, ok, for Josephus (and only for him!)

But only few readers realize the symbolism behind the beheading, so well described by saint Maximus of Torin:

When therefore the head of John was removed from the his body, the Christ is someway removed from the Jews, beheaders of the Law. Without the Savior, it is left them only a Law mutiled and without life. Without their head, they lose the sense of the divine things.

(Sermo 88)

[Giuseppe]

It is not an obvious step.

precisely here you are wrong. It was an obvious step, insofar you have already on the table a suffering figure and with it the need of giving a form to this suffering.

I will let Celsus address this point:

I thank you because you show the sharing of the same very naive view of Celsus, resumed so: all the possible forms of the suffering of Christ are equally probable, without no real divine coincidence able to surprise us (= able to make us consider it as unexpected, = as not probable).

My answer, as you say, is that these possible forms are NOT all equivalent among them in terms of divine expectation. At least one is more expected and divinely providential than all the others. The coincidence of just a Xristos being CRUCI-fied is too much impossible to be a coincidence, therefore it can't be a coincidence.