If he "needed" to die for our sins, he could have simply been struck by one hundred bolts of lightning as a rain of frogs blew down in a storm of blood, proper old-testament style.

But such a showy and declarative act was unnecessary, because of the weakness of mortals. Instead of an Act of God delivering absolution in spectacular form, we get a bunch of tax auditors paying a shill 30 bucks because some loan sharks got kicked from a community center. If anything, I'd say we were robbed of quite the deific spectacle because of the debacle.