Was Jesus Hung On A Tree?

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not ...
 - Isaiah 53:3

Men weep, and bewail their lot, and curse Cadmus with many curses for introducing Tau into the family of letters; they say it was his body [the letter's form] that tyrants took for a model, his shape that they imitated, when they set up structures on which men are crucified. Stauros (cross) the vile engine is called, and it derives its vile name from him.
  - Lucian, 160 A.D., quoted on Wikipedia

Χριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαι·
 - Saul of Tarsus, Galatians 2:19

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us-- for it is written, "CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO HANGS ON A TREE."
- Saul of Tarsus, Galatians 3:13

In yet another instance of the rash of gospel revisionism, there are those who cite the many NT references to Jesus being hung on a "tree" claiming things like:

Although some accounts say that he was convicted and turned over to the Romans for execution, 1 Thess. 2:14-15, an undoubtedly genuine letter of Paul, and probably the oldest book in the entire NT, plainly states that Jesus was killed by the Jews. Assuming this to be correct, Jesus could not possibly have been crucified. [ref]

This particular commentator claims a special priority of the letter to the Thessalonians, but the letter to the Galatians is at least as well attested to, and in that letter Paul claims that the stauros/σταυρος (cross) counts as a tree in terms of the laws of Moses.  The Sanhedrin and the Pharisees did not want to be viewed directly bringing his downfall.  There were strong ties between the ministry of John the Baptizer and Jesus of Nazareth, and they evidently thought it prudent for Jerusalem see the false messiah defeated by the Roman oppressors.  On the other hand, it may not have seemed enough to merely stone Jesus.  With crucifixion, the people would see the would-be messiah utterly destroyed as well as seeing him utterly shamed.  What kind of Messiah would be suffered to die the death of a blasphemer and traitor?  Hence the jibes about him getting himself down from the cross.  No messiah could hang dead on the tree.  His teaching would be discredited when people realized that this man was no deliverer.  

The Israelites didnʼt kill criminals using the method of hanging, but they would at times hang the criminalʼs body after they applied a capital punishment. This action was to show the curse that came from breaking Godʼs Law.  The Hebrew word for curse is qalal (#7043) and it means something that is lifted or lightened, as in, making it little or contemptible. A curse is the opposite of a blessing. When someone was given a blessing, they were shown favor, or value. When someone was hung, it signified that they were despised, without honor. [ref]

Even though Pilate knew they were setting up an innocent rival of theirs, there is only so much he could ignore the person that was welcomed on palm leaves after the Sanhedrin say that he claims to be the Messianic king.  His first revenge is to state Jesus' crime in a way that offends the religious leaders.  Later Pilate allows Jesus to be taken down in order for Joseph of Arimathea to give him an honorable burial and not leave him hanging all night. Of course, the gospel narratives tell us that Pilate did not believe Jesus to be the threat the Sanhedrin claimed him to be; he was a threat to their authority perhaps, but not to his.   

But it is interesting to consider the Torah-based shame that was connected to the Roman cross. 

Three times in the book of Acts the word tree is used to refer to Jesus' crucifixion. In these cases, it appears in a Jewish context as well. [ref]

Also,

..for any Jew...the cross would be doubly repulsive... crucifixion was the most
abhorrent of all deaths because of its cruelty and shame, but for the Jew it also
involved the curse of the Torah, the curse pronounced on 'every one that hangeth on
a tree' (Davies, 1980:227).  [qtd in ref]

But Jewish tradition upholds the view of the Jewish leaders having hung Jesus from some sort of tree or stake rather than him being nailed to a Roman cross.  One writer avers that the stauros could refer to other sorts of stakes, even though Lucian traces the derivation of stauros from the letter tau, which has a crossbeam.  The cross on which Simon Peter was eventually crucified was in the shape of the early Phoenician tau/tav: its crossbeams fashioned as an X.  By extension, a stauros may well have referred to any execution stake or pike.  The Talmud recounts that Jesus was stoned and then hung as accursed according to the law:

On (Sabbath eve and) the eve of Passover Jesus the Nazarene was hanged and a herald went forth before him forty days heralding, 'Jesus the Nazarene is going forth to be stoned because he practiced sorcery and instigated and seduced Israel to idolatry. Whoever knows anything in defense may come and state it.' But since they did not find anything in his defense they hanged him on (Sabbath eve and) the eve of Passover. Ulla said: Do you suppose that Jesus the Nazarene was one for whom a defense could be made? He was a mesit (someone who instigated Israel to idolatry), concerning whom the Merciful [God] says: Show him no compassion and do not shield him (Deut. 13:9). [ref]

Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides) in the 12th century summarized in his letter to Yemen:

Jesus ... impelled people to believe that he was a prophet sent by God to clarify perplexities in the Torah, and that he was the Messiah that was predicted by each and every seer. He interpreted the Torah and its precepts in such a fashion as to lead to their total annulment, to the abolition of all its commandments and to the violation of its prohibitions.  The sages, of blessed memory, having become aware of his plans before his reputation spread among our people, meted out fitting punishment to him.

Some have even conjectured that this is the way it happened and that the early Jewish Christians somehow shifted the blame to the Romans, in extreme contradiction to the sort of revisionism that claims the Romans were at least as much to blame.  Both of these extremes are rejected in the Acts of the Apostles.  There are very clear claims that Jesus was given a Roman execution at the prompting of the Jewish leadership and with the support of the crowds of Israelites inhabiting Jerusalem for the Passover pilgrimage.  Jesus was "handed over to the Gentiles" to be abused and killed;  by Israel he was "disowned" because they "asked for a murderer [Barabbas] to be released instead" and so "put to death the Prince of Life"; the people of Jerusalem "condemned him" and "asked Pilate that he be executed"; and so they "nailed [him] to a cross by the hands of godless men and [thus] put him to death."

At one point the high priest accuses Simon Peter and the disciples of trying to "bring this man's blood down upon us."  Peter responds that he has no choice but to obey God and tell the truth.  The Daily Beast, of course, rejects the NT as anti-Semitic and chides believers for not realizing that the gospels are the sort of "unsympathetic portraits of Jesus’s Jewish contemporaries [that] persist in simplistic TV adaptations of the Easter story and in Mel Gibson’s drunken rants."  American Christians hold to the NT, this writer avers, out of "historical [in]competency."  David Klinghoffer, an Orthodox Jewish writer, states that "if Gibson is an anti-Semite, then to be consistent you would have to say that so was Maimonides," and admonishes, "I don't think it's very wise for a few Jewish leaders to try to tell millions of Christians what they are supposed to believe. Would we want some Christians to try to edit our scriptures and to tell us what we should believe?"

Ex-Pope Benedict Ratzinger in his latest book revels in the political correctness of the times, first by repudiating  (implicitly) the many proclamations in the Acts in favor of an interpretation that implicates only the "Temple aristocracy" and a fortuitous gathering of Barabbas supporters.  If Ratzinger were to travel back in time, he could correct the evangelists!  He seems to imply curiously (for a Catholic) that the chant of the crowd that appears in Matthew's gospel alone should be understood mystically, as an unknowing cry for salvation, finding some way for the text to have some  metaphysical truth, if not literal truth. These unnecessary detours eventually lead to some essential truth: that Jesus' blood  "does not cry out for vengeance and punishment, it brings reconciliation. It is not poured out against anyone, it is poured out for many, for all."  Well, shoot, he could've just started there.

The New Testament writings are synoptic on these points: (1) that Jesus was killed because God's chosen people rejected him and turned him over to death in their hardness of heart,  (2) that they were too blind to understand what they were doing, and (3) that there is nothing but forgiveness in the heart of the suffering Messiah for that betrayal and rejection.

Having taken the curse upon himself, "on the tree" as Paul says, he repudiates the curse.  Where Jerusalem says, "Let his blood be upon us and our children," Jesus can only reply, "Father, forgive them."  Those that look for anti-Semitism in the New Testament, whether moralizing secularists or anti-Semites, they are barking up the wrong tree.