A summary of the comments of Josephus about crucifixion is at http://www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/JD ... ephus.html Josephus said that the Romans crucified many before the walls of Jerusalem during the siege of 70 C.E. The idea was to terrorize the population and force a surrender. The number reached 500 a day at one point until there was no wood left in the area for this purpose! "the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest, when their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies."DWill wrote: if a fact about Jesus seems incongruent or is a possible sticking point that presumably could have been omitted to remove the problem, that in itself could be strong evidence that there is a core of historical truth. That the Gospel writers do include these facts indicate that they are a part of the tradition they couldn't reasonably ignore. One of these is the bit about Jesus not being a hit in his own hometown. The most significant, though is the crucifixion itself. The Messiah is summarily executed by the Roman authorities--what kind of a promising start is that for the Jewish Kingdom of God? Would that scenario be likely to have arisen as fiction? What would be the point of using it? It therefore seems likely to me that a person named Jesus was crucified.
This great humiliation and trauma for the Jewish people naturally led them to consider how they could continue the struggle against Rome. My view is that the story of Jesus, the one who died to save many, was a form of 'recovered memory therapy', displacing the trauma of the Roman mass cruelty of crucifixion into a narrative myth that would enable organisation of the community on a moral and religious basis. As the wiki page on recovered memory therapy explains, people sometimes claim to remember events in childhood which did not happen, but they believe fervently, often because the story has been suggested to them. This idea of Jesus as a 'recovered memory' explains why Jesus was crucified through hands and feet, and had Odin's spear stuck in his side, even though nails must go through wrists and ankles to prevent the body falling off. Jesus Christ is symbolic king of eternity. The stigmata signify the kingly power of energy from the hands. The cross symbolises the defeat of the Messiah by Rome, and the resurrection symbolises his eventual victory over what Paul called the powers of this present darkness. It makes far more sense to see the cross of Jesus as a myth created by the post-destruction Jewish people to formulate a viable story for the struggle against Rome. It could have drawn elements from many of the heroes of the Jewish War, and also from Old Testament prophecy concerning the messiah.
Another key element of the Christ narrative is the eschatological story of the precession of the equinox through the Ages of Pisces and Aquarius. This cosmic myth provided a long term vision for the gospel story of salvation, whereby the victory of the messiah denied in the Age of Pisces would be realised in the Age of Aquarius. However, this story was too controversial to be included explicitly, as it conflicts with Jewish hostility to star worship, and so is only included symbolically, in the loaves and fishes, the Man with the Jug, the holy city of Revelation, the Alpha and Omega, the 'fishers of men', and numerous other symbols. Indeed these precessional Great Year symbols are so pervasive that there are strong grounds to see them as an organising principle for the cosmology of the gospels.
Christopher Hitchens cites an episode of anger from Jesus as evidence of such a trifling detail that no one would have thought to invent it. I would rather suggest, the Gospels drew from many sources, and anything seen as adding to the credibility and coherence of the story would have been strongly considered for inclusion.
