I came across the idea when I was reading Amnon Linder's the Jews in the Legal Sources of the Early Middle Ages. The prohibition against Jews burning an effigy of Haman crucified apparently went back to the age before Theodosian as we read:The governors in the provinces shall prohibit the Jews, in a certain ceremony in their festival Haman in commemoration of some former punishment, from setting fire to and burning a simulated appearance of the holy Cross, in contempt of the Christian faith and with sacrilegious mind lest they associate the sign of Our faith with their places.
I used to buy into the idea that the Jews simply 'imitated' or 'parodied' the Christian Passion. Then I read a fascinating chapter in David Chapman's Ancient Jewish and Christian Perceptions of Crucifixion which makes clear that the idea that Haman was crucified is older than or contemporary with earliest Christianity.
Travers Herford develops the argument that the various rabbinic references to Haman's crucifixion were influenced by a prior knowledge of Jesus' death, but I am not so sure. The crazy idea that has been rolling around in my head all night has been the possibility that the heretical interpretation of the Crucifixion was actually influenced by the Alexandrian interest in the death of Haman.
Let me explain what I mean.
In another chapter in the book Chapman demonstrates that the rabbinic tradition already linked crucifixion with Deuteronomy 28:66 - a very important scriptural proof for Passion in the writings of early Church Fathers like Justin Martyr.
I always scratched my head trying to find an explanation for the comparison between Moses raising of the serpent in John 3:14 and the Christian crucifixion. I couldn't believe that the original Jews or Christians thought that the snake was a good animal.
Then there was that equally puzzling statement in Ephesians chapter two:
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the fence, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his gospel the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their enmity (ܒܥܠܕܒܒܘܬܐ beldababuwta)
I am sure that scholars have looked at this passage for centuries, but I am struck by the implicit idea that the body which was left on the cross embodied 'enmity' - or in Syriac beldabuwta. From the first moment I saw this word I recognized it as the source for the gnostic concept of 'Ialdabaoth.'
Just look at the manner in which Irenaeus connects 'Ialdabaoth' with the idea of 'commandments' which - as we see in Ephesians 2:15 were also 'destroyed' with beldababuwta's crucifixion:
Ialdabaoth, however, through that oblivion in which he was involved, and not paying any regard to these things, cast Adam and Eve out of Paradise, because they had transgressed his commandment. [AH i. 30.8]
Without getting into the other gnostic texts it is worth noting that the Apostle clearly has the LXX of Genesis in mind when he speaks of crucifying 'enmity.' For the very same word - ἔχθρα - is used in the LXX:
And I shall put enmity (ἔχθραn) amidst you and amidst the woman ...
The point of course is that the reference to the body of Jesus representing 'enmity' slain on the cross makes very little sense if we don't accept the custom of establishing effigies of a crucified Haman didn't exist first.
Yet we have already shown that already at the time of Josephus you have the idea that Haman was crucified and the Jewish practice of establishing a crucified man representing 'enmity' during Passover must go back to the Common Era as well - especially at Alexandria.
I don't see how the Apostle's statement about 'enmity' being crucified on the cross (or some similar shade of nuance) could have been developed without it.
