Freaky Good Friday
March 25, 2016
by William P. Meyers

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What made the Crucifixion so Popular?

The crucifixion of Jesus, in the official Bible and in many supporting texts, is always set on the Friday before the Jewish celebration of Passover. Whether it was the Romans or the Jews or Herod who killed Jesus, it is unlikely to have been done just before Passover. It is fair to deduce that whenever the execution took place, by whatever means, it was later made more symbolic by placing it so that Jesus could be said to rise from the dead on Passover (or Easter, as it has become in the Christian tradition).

The Passover was a Jewish myth, perhaps rooted in reality. In it God sends an Angel of Death to kill every first-born son of every Egyptian, while sparing the children of the Jews. Well, probably it just did not happen, the story was made up during the Babylonian exile to try to scare the king of Babylon into sending the Jews back to Judea. Perhaps some disease hit Egypt and because of some Jewish gene or practice of cleanliness only Egyptian children died. My own theory is that Jewish thugs creepy-crawled around some Egyptian neighborhood, killing Egyptian children, like an early day Manson cult. We just don't know. The Egyptians have no record of it, and kept a lot of records, so probably it was Make Believe.

For whatever reason the early Christian myth-makers wanted the Resurrection to be connected with the Passover, which was about the death of innocent Egyptian children. It was about the triumphant resurrection of Jews as a nation not getting absorbed into the Egyptian melting pot. But that became inconvenient Make Believe when there were more Christian gentiles than Christian Jews.

Then we have the alleged events of Holy Thursday and Good Friday. Following the communal dinner on Thursday night, Jesus is betrayed by Judas. Which simply means he was betrayed by Jews, since Judas means Jew. Matthew 26 indicates Judas did this because of the incident where a woman anoints Jesus with precious ointment, and when the disciples are critical, Jesus rebukes them. Jesus predicts Peter will betray him. A "great multitude" of men seize Jesus. It is not clear if that is Thursday night or in the early hours of Friday.

The High Priest questions Jesus, who makes claims that are interpreted as blasphemy, which is punishable by death under Jewish law (just like the Islamic State today). Peter denies Jesus three times. If he would lie about that, why not lie about the Resurrection or other miracles?

The Roman governor, Pilate, questions Jesus, and tries to let him go through a sort of get-out-of-death auction, but instead Barabbas is freed, as the Jews demand the death of Jesus.

I would guess that the Make Believe of this part of the story came later, when the Christians started separating themselves from the Jews, and attaching themselves to the Romans. "Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children." The classic line used by Christians when persecuting Jews, used by Hitler himself (a Roman Catholic) as part of his rational for the Holocaust.

Roman soldiers mock Jesus. Does not everyone feel mocked at times? Most people like to mock on occasion, but few enjoy being mocked. Poor little Son of God.

Jesus is crucified, along with two thieves, and mocked some more by chief priests, scribes and elders.

Finally Jesus dies. In the Matthew version the Roman soldiers don't make sure he is dead by spearing him. [I won't compare the various versions here] As if to prove Jesus was really the Messiah, or the Son of God, or maybe even God, "the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves."

That sure sounds like a later rewrite to me. Can't have Jesus just die. At the very least an earthquake should mark the occasion.

Both the Romans and the Jews were big on keeping records. No one recorded Jesus's death. or his trial. Or the earthquake. Or the people rising from the dead. Or the expense of repairing the temple.

True believers attribute that to the hatred of the Jews for God. They were shown miracles, and they obstinately rejected the Hand of God.

More likely the early Christians were pissed that most Jews would not play the new game of Make Believe. Jews stuck to their own version of Make Believe.

After all, if they were very interested in religion, they knew where Christian Make Believe came from. Resurrected gods were a dime a dozen at the time the Jesus cult began. The Egyptian resurrected god was Osiris. The Greeks had multiple resurrections, including Hercules and Adonis. The non-Jewish Palestinians had several.

I can say one nice thing about Jesus of Nazareth. Everyone agrees he was a Jew. Which really bothered the hell out of Adolf Hitler, to the point that in his own game of Make Believe, he asserted that Jesus was really an Aryan interloper, not a true Jew.

For more on ancient gods who rose from the dead, see Vampires or Gods?

Agree? Disagree? You can comment on this post at Natural Liberation Blog at blogspot.com