Reply #25: There's a more recent thread that I thought related to this

[Igel]

issue:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x173414

Apparently the idea that the crucifixion was somehow related to a more bloodthirsty Xianity was enough for the writers. They saw the timing as completely irrelevant, and tied it in with the "body and blood" in the eucharist.

But I suspect the timing are not entirely irrelevant. The timing--the truly rendering of Western Xianity as bloodthirsty is timed with the conquest of Spain and the intrustion of conquerors into SE Europe, the loss of N. Africa and even an attempted--and repulsed--invasion of France. Either Western Xianity (viz. it's leaders) found a way of making the usual bloodthirstiness of rubes serve its interests and avoid being conquerored, or it was obvious that it would be overriden and the Xians in the West, its leaders and churches, would have the same fate as in the east. Not only did it serve local leaders immediate needs, but also rather longer-term interests. Having Sicily attacked--amidst some local subversion--probably caught the attention of those in Rome if Spain and France didn't.

But the crucifix itself is a repudiation, in spades, of precisely the view of the invaders. It's the mostly glaring crucial difference between Jesus and Issa, the one that nobody can overlook: Jesus was crucified, killed by the Romans in a humiliating manner that even the pagans found made him unworthy as a person and rendered him incapable of being God's chosen--it's a "hard reading"; Issa was not crucified, and preserved his human honor and was given honor by Allah.

Islam just picked up the "righteous go to heaven when they die, sinners go to hell" motif that's really hard to get out of the NT text, but is a given of Byzantine theology.