What Would They Have Thought?

I find it interesting when Messianics say that Jesus' death on the cross was a sacrifice. What is most interesting about this is that on a historical basis, Jews would not have looked at death on a cross as any sort of religious sacrifice.

The Romans used the cross to kill people for various crimes related to insurrection, such as acts of sedition. In an nutshell, if the Romans thought that you were talking about or planning to fight them, the Roman government could decide to kill you on the cross. Moreover we know from historical records that the Romans killed hundreds of people for these insurrection "crimes", many of them Jewish, on the cross. In contrast, death on the cross has no function or history of use by the Jewish people. It is a completely foreign concept.

So what would the Jews have thought when they saw Jesus on the cross? They would have thought something along the lines of, "Guess the Romans thought was Jesus was planning to overthrow them." Any claims that the Jews would have thought of this as a sacrifice is not based in the history of Rome or the Jewish people.