I can conclude for myself that Jesus was a historical figure; an itinerant preacher who had a small band of followers who believed he was the messiah. I'm not sure whether he thought of himself as the messiah, but he certainly imo had heated dialogue with traditional Jews of his day.
Exactly the consensus of historical Jesus scholars
He was certainly crucified.
There are two aspects of Jesus's life (other than his itinerant preaching and the teachings one can attribute to him from Q, the earliest discerned layer of the Jesus logia/sayings tradition) that command virtually universal assent amongst scholars of antiquity: his baptism by John and his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate (presumably on the instigation of the High Priest Caiaphas).
The reason these events are accorded such a high degree of historical credibility, quite apart from their unanimous attestation in different traditions including secular sources (Tacitus and the uninterpolated part of the Josephus passage that scholars have reconstructed) in the case of the cross, is that they fit what we know about the the social milieu of the time and would have caused grave embarrassment for the early church, such that New Testament authors endeavoured to make them 'fit' into theological doctrines.
If you have to "explain" and defend something, its clear that you're likely dealing with an inconvenient fact that actually happened.
Something important to bear in mind about ancient Roman understandings of death:
‘The condition of human life is chiefly determined by its first and last days, because it is of the greatest importance under what auspices it is begun and with what end it is terminated.’
- Valerius Maximus (Memorable Doings and Sayings (“On Deaths out of the Ordinary”) 9.12 praef. LCL 493, trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey)
Jesus thus died the most ignoble torture-death from a Roman perspective for sedition against their empire, which is not something one is liable to concoct....
in the Roman Empire. Cicero described crucifixion as
‘the greatest punishment of slavery’ (
Verr. 2.5), while Josephus labelled it ‘
the most pitiable of deaths’ (
War 7.203).
As
Professor Helen K. Bond, an expert on this period, has noted:
"Crucifixion was the most shameful, brutal and degrading form of capital punishment known to the ancient world, reserved for slaves, brigands and any who set themselves up against imperial rule. It was intended to be public, to act both as a deterrent to others and to provide spectacle, even entertainment, to onlookers.
It was a form of death in which the caprice and sadism of the executioners was allowed full reign, as they devised ever more gruesome ways to ridicule the condemned. Stripped naked, the victim was humiliated and shamed as he suffered extreme agony, perhaps for several days, until, overcome by suffocation and exhaustion, the merciful end would come.
So offensive was the cross that civilized people preferred not to talk about it, and few Roman writers ever dwelt on any of the details...
There is no getting away from the fact that Mark’s account, particularly in the crucifixion scene, is the very opposite of a “good death”: Jesus dies alone, in agonized torment, with no one to perform even the most basic rites. As Adela Collins puts it, Jesus’ death in Mark is “anguished, human, and realistic.”"
(see also, J. G. Cook, Crucifixion in the Mediterranean World (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014).
It is difficult for me imagine that
anyone in their right mind would make such a story up while living under the Romans. The gospels were written to 'defend' the legacy of Jesus and defiantly keep his memory alive, in spite of the Roman attempt to silence and discredit him through crucifixion. If I might quote Professor Bond again:
"...Jesus’ crucifixion was an attempt by the rulers of his day to consign not only his body but also his memory to oblivion. In many ways, Mark’s bios can be seen as an act of defiance, a refusal to accept the Roman sentence and an attempt to shape the way in which both his life and death should be remembered.
His work takes the place of a funeral ovation, outlining Jesus’ way of life and pointing to the family of believers who succeed him.
While men of higher class and greater worldly distinction might have had their epitaphs set in stone, Mark provides his hero with a written monument to a truly worthy life. Mark redeems Jesus’ death not by casting it as ‘noble’ or conventionally ‘honourable,’ but by showing that it conforms perfectly to his counter-cultural teaching..."
(Bond, H 2018, 'A fitting end? Self-denial and a slave’s death in Mark’s life of Jesus' New Testament Studies)
Given its deeply subversive nature, the 'cross' and the shameful slave-sedition death that it represents, was evidently
not a literary fiction of the early Christians in a Roman context. The early Christians turned an unremitting tragedy (a shameful death for their leader) into a focal point of 'strength' for their movement.
That took a lot of "
after-the-fact" rationalization on their part.
