So the French Mythicist Maurice Mergui points out the important concept of
LIMIT:
The passage beyond the limit coincides therefore with the death of the messiah. The death of the messiah is not other than the passage beyond the limit. This is why, inter alia, the first Christians were so much concerned about the quote from Osea 11:1: from Egypt (mi-mitsrayim) I have called my son. In Hebrew, metsar is the limit. The son (the messiah) is called when the limit is reached. In the Jewish eschatology, the redemption happens always in the middle of the night, at the maximum of the suffering of the exile. [...] We point out the link between the Egypt and the inversion. In addition Revelation 11:8 says us that the Passion happens in Egypt: Egypt ... there where their Lord was crucified too.
(extract and translated from
Comprendre les origines du Christianisme: De l'eschatologie juive au midrash chrétien)
Now I see here a link with what Danielou says about the cosmic Cross as a celestial
LIMIT:
it is, therefore, easy to see how on this view the Cross could come to be regarded as separating the lower world from the world above
...the entire quote is the following:
Is it possible to determine more precisely the origin of this theme of the Cross-Limit? There do not seem to be any grounds for suggesting the image of an erect pike or of a palisade, and such a symbolism would in any case be misleading. The best suggestion is that the Platonic X of the Timaeus underlies the Gnostic Stauros, and that this was thought of as a great cross of light traced in the sky. For Plato the cosmic X was constituted by the intersection of the sphere of the planets and the sphere of the fixed stars at the ecliptic, and thus formed a cross marking the boundary between the planetary world and the heaven of the stars. Now the Gnostics regarded the planetary world or hebdomad as the sphere of the Demiurge, who was a stranger to the Pleroma, and it is, therefore, easy to see how on this view the Cross could come to be regarded as separating the lower world from the world above. The reference to the Timaeus appears, therefore, to be by far the best explanation of the definition of the Cross as the Limit. But are there sufficient grounds for linking these ideas in this way? Gnostic texts make no allusion to the Platonic X, but on the other hand, this was identified with the Cross of Christ by second century writers of the Great Church. Thus the Demonstratio of Irenaeus states: 'He has imprinted the sign of the Cross on the universe,' which is in fact a scarcely altered quotation from the Timaeus of Plato (26 B-C), which Justin had seen as a prefiguration of the Cross in his First Apology: 'Plato, in the Timaeus, seeks to discover, in accordance with the laws of Nature, what the Son of God is, and puts it in these words: "He has marked Him in the form of a X on all things" (LX, I). Justin then explains that Plato borrowed this symbolism from the episode of the brazen serpent, and continues: 'which Plato reading, and not accurately understanding it, and not apprehending that it was a figure of the Cross, but taking it to be a X, he said that next to God the first principle, the second power, was traced in the form of a X upon the universe' (LX, 5-6). There is another detail in the text of the Timaeus which permits a still more definite conclusion. Plato explains that the function of the sphere of the fixed stars is to restrain (pedan) the movement of the planets. Now in the Acts of Andrew a eulogy of the Cross includes the following words: '0 Cross that hast restrained (pedesas) the moving sphere of the world' (JAMES,p. 360). It is impossible to avoid seeing in this an allusion to the Timaeus; moreover, the fact can be quite definitely established, thanks to a passage in Hippolytus on the disciples of Mark: '(The eighth heaven) has been added to the planetary sphere to restrain its rapid movement .... Hence it is an image of Horos ' (Elench. VI, 41; cf. also Irenaeus, Adv. haer. I, 17:I). Here the Gnostic Stauros-Horos is explicitly identified with the Platonic X.
(Danielou,
The Theology of Jewish-Christianity, Darton, Longman & Todd, p.285-286, my bold)
In conclusion, the idea of
LIMIT that was crossed through was
both:
- temporal: the "last times" are arrived
- spatial: the Messiah has crossed the cosmic border between upper heavens and lower heavens: i.e. he is just entered in Outer Space
Hence, This is another answer for the question: why crucifixion?
Because the crucifixion represented the
go beyond the LIMIT, both spatial and temporal, and hence the best sign of the coming of the Messiah.