Surely I would follow Dujardin in considering the crucifixion an old ritual.
Only, now I learn that it was a Roman ritual:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10. ... 7915623196
Crucifiction? The Reimagination of Crucifixion as Failed Imperial Ritual in Philippians 2:5–11
Peter-Ben Smit
Abstract
In this paper the famous “hymn” in Philippians 2:5–11 is considered from the perspective of the study of ritual failure. It is argued that the crucifixion of Jesus, as it is mentioned in this text, can well be considered as a ritual that, on the one hand, fails, given that it leads to Jesus' exaltation rather than to his permanent death, while it is at the same time reinterpreted as a consequence of Jesus' obedience rather than of his disobedience, as one would expect. Using the body of theory as it has been developed concerning ritual and its failure, it is shown how this reinterpretation of a ritual is more than “just” about ritual, but serves to carve out a space for early Christianity and its self-understanding in the web of power relationships that made up Greco-Roman society
So I wonder: was there really a clash of views about the crucifixion ritual? Some Jews saw the crucifixion as a sacred ritual and in whiletime the same crucifixion was seen independently as a Roman ritual. When the two rituals merged in only one, the man on the cross was seen at once as both the man possessed by the Son of God and another mere victim of the Roman empire. The same ritual was considered winner and loser in the same time.
Unfortunately, we see only in the (pre-christian?) Odes of Solomon the evidence of a ritual of crucifixion. But not in Paul.