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The offense of the cross [Generated] 2008-08-22 01:09:15 GMT +1000 [URL]
http://jesus.com.au/html/page/offense [Path] Home / Jesus / Resurrection
/ Crucifixion / Offense
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    1.  Divinity and suffering
    2.  Greek and roman views of crucifixion
    3.  Early Christian writers

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[[ 1. Divinity and suffering ]]

Can the gods suffer? Aristophanes' in *The Frogs* (~405 BC) makes use of
the idea that they cannot.

DIONYSUS in agony
    Man' don't torture me!
    I am a god. You'll blame yourself hereafter
    If you touch me. 
AEACUS
    Hillo! What's that you are saying? 
DIONYSUS
    I say I'm Bacchus, son of Zeus, a god,
    And he's the slave. 
AEACUS
    You hear him? 
XANTHIAS
    Hear him? Yes.
    All the more reason you should flog him well.
    For if he is a god, he won't perceive it.

Aristophanes: The Frogs [1]
    at MIT Classics.

[1] http://classics.mit.edu/Aristophanes/frogs.html

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[[ 2. Greek and roman views of crucifixion ]]

Crucifixion was the most degrading of deaths in the ancient world:  Not
merely an execution, but a torturous humiliation;  a public spectacle
and an intended example to others; a penalty reserved for slaves and
foreigners (‘barbarians’), but hardly even spoken of in civilized
society.  This caused all manner of problems for early Christian
writers:  What kind of 'god' suffers humiliation on this scale?

A brief list of references will illustrate this.

Plato in his dialogue with Gorgias (380 BCE), requiring a rhetorical
example of the worst imaginable death to suffer, sets impalement /
crucifixion on a par with being burned alive:

> is racked, mutilated, has his eyes burned out, and after having had
> all sorts of great injuries inflicted on him, and having seen his wife
> and children suffer the like, is at last impaled or tarred and burned
> alive...

Cicero (106-43 BCE) had occassion to discuss crucifixion and its
reputation in 63 BCE, in the course of defending [1] a man he esteemed
highly against a charge of treason:

[1] M. Tullius Cicero, Speech before Roman Citizens on Behalf of
    Gaius Rabirius, Defendant Against the Charge of Treason (ed. William
    Blake Tyrrell).  See also vv. 8, 11, 12

*[ continuing ... ]*

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[[ 3. Early Christian writers ]]

Christian writers of the second and third centuries CE had to contend

with Greek and Roman attitudes to crucifixion.  The sheer (and

justified) revulsion associated with the practice made it seem

ridiculous that any 'god' worth speaking of would suffer such a 
fate.

More generally this contributed to Docetism, the view that 
Jesus was
fully divine, but not fully human, and was related to the 
Gnostic
dualism that viewed matter as intrinsically evil or corrupt.

This seems to be what Paul has in mind in 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 [1]:

[1] http://www.jesus.com.au.html/bible/1+cor+1.18-25

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;

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