Time to get back to the OP.....before this thread runs off track.....
In considering the following long quote from Rabbi Wise - that the Roman crucifixion of Antigonus in 37 b.c. has been linked to the NT Jesus story - perhaps keep in mind the position of George Albert Wells: The ''Galilean Jesus was not crucified,''. Wells considered both supernatural and natural sources for elements of the gospel crucifixion story.
George Wells: This Galilean Jesus was not crucified, and was not believed to have been resurrected after his death. The dying and rising Christ of the early epistles is a quite different figure, and must have a different origin. ...
In the gospels, These two Jesus figures -- the human preacher of Q and the supernatural personage of the early epistles who sojourned briefly on Earth as a man, and then, rejected, returned to heaven -- have been fused into one. The Galilean preacher of Q has been given a salvivic death and resurrection, and these have been set not in an unspecified past (as in the Pauline and other early letters), but in a historical context consonant with the date of the Galilean preaching.
https://infidels.org/library/modern/g_a ... lding.html
Paul may have thought of his 'Christ crucified'' as one of the victims of earlier rulers of the region. Josephus tells that Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria in the second century B.C., and the Hasmonean ruler Alexander Jannaeus, of the first century B.C., both caused living Jews to be crucified in Jerusalem. (Antiquities of the Jews, 12:255-56; 13:380. George Albert Wells: Cutting Jesus Down to Size.
The Martyrdom of Jesus of Nazareth: A Historic-Critical Treatise on the Last Chapters of the Gospel (third edition; Cincinnati: Bloch, 1883) Rabbi Wise
III. THE CRUCIFIED KING.
It might appear from the foregoing argument that the crucifixion must anyhow be a historical fact. For, being injurious to primitive Christianity among the heathens, so that the whole story had to be perverted in order to be less offensive, it might have been omitted altogether if it had not been a fact. This, however, is only apparent : it is no real argument. Christ crucified was preached to the heathens by Paul before the existence of a church, and the story was established in Christendom long before it was written. But why should Paul or anybody else have started the crucifixion story if it was not a fact ? There is an answer to this query and we will state it.
There existed, in the. time of Paul, among the Roman- Syrian heathens, a wide-spread and deep sympathy for one crucified king of the Jews, as is evident from Dio Cassius, Plutarch, Strubo, and Josephus. It was the youngest son of Aristobul, the heroic Maccabee. In the long combat for the crown of Palestine by the brothers Hyrcan and Aristobul, the latter at last succeeded in gaining the sympathy of Julius Csesar for his cause, who fave him two legions, and sent him to Syria to regain his kingdom; but while under way, men of Pornpey's party destroyed him by poison. His body was embalmed in honey, till Antony afterward sent it to Judea to be buried in the royal sepulchre. About the same time Alexander, the son of this Aristobul, who fought at home for his father's cause, was captured by Scipio and beheaded at Antioch. The death of these two valiant princes, whose cause had been declared just by Julius Csesar, enlisted wide-spread sympathy among Romans. There was one more son left of this heroic family, Antigonus, who followed his mother and sister to Chalcis, where the latter was queen. In the year 43 B. c., however, we find Antigonus again in Palestine claiming the crown. Allied with the Parthians, he maintained himself in his royal position for six years against Herod and Marc Antony. At last, after a heroic life and reign, he fell in the hands of this Roman. "Antony now gave the kingdom to a certain Herod, and, having stretched Antigonus on a cross and scourged him, a thing never done In-fore to any other king by the Romans, he put him to death/'*
The fact that all prominent historians of those days mention this extraordinary occurrence, and the manner how they did it, show that it was considered one of Marc Antony's worst crimes ; and that the sympathy with the crucified king was wide-spread and profound. Here we may well have the source of the crucifixion story. That class of heathens, to whom the Gospel was originally preached, knew no difference between David and the Maccabees; both were then extinct dynasties. They had heard of a crucified king of the Jews, who was one of the last scions of a heroic family and a hero himself, young, brave, and generous, whose fate was regretted and whose fame was heralded. Paul, who made use of everything useful, narrated the end of Jesus to correspond with the end of Antigonus, both stories appearing identical, to enlist the prevailing sympathy of the hero of the Gospel story. Therefore he preached "Christ crucified. " So the story was established among the Paul-Christians. All the gospels were written by Paul Christians. John expounds Paul in the Alexandrian method. But, in the time of Hadrian, the story had to be turned in favor of Rome and against the Jews, as we have seen before; and so Mark did. So far, then, there is not the least evidence, outside of Paul and Mark, that Jesus was either scourged or crucified. Let us see, now, how much fact can be elicited from the statements of Mark and his three successors.
https://archive.org/details/martyrdomof ... 7/mode/2up
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* Dio Cassius, Book xlix., p. 465. Plutarch: Life of Antony. John Gill Notices of the Jews etc, I. Salvador: The Romans in Palestine. Josephus, Strabo, and others.
What is suggested by the quotes from both Rabbi Wise and George Albert Wells is that the crucifixion element of the gospel Jesus story has been added for theological or philosophical reasons. i.e. there was no Jesus figure crucified under Pilate. If there was a wandering preacher Jesus figure during the time of Pilate - he was not crucified. In other words; the gospel writers have taken the historical crucifixion/execution of the last King and High Priest of the Jews, Antigonus, and turned the tables, as it were. Transforming a non-value, physical death on a cross, into a spiritual or philosophical value. In other words; they changed the context. Life, death and rebirth of the spirit, of intellectual life, of intellectual evolution, was the appropriate context in which 'death' could have value.
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A better link to Rabbi Wise's book.
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006641842