Several men bearing the name are known from actual history, including Gaius Cassius Longinus, one of the assassins of Yulius Kaisar, but it is a name from fiction that is attached to this particular Gospel.
Though no name is given in any of the Gospels, the soldier who pierced Jesus in the side with his spear has acquired the name Longinus, and quite possibly the assassination of Julius Caesar may have lain behind it - a similar treacherous stabbing of a similarly megalomaniacal-messianic leader.
The fact that the entire crucifixion tale is historically unsound only makes this worse - the Roman Cross was x-shaped, not t-shaped, the Passover Supper was probably not introduced until after the fall of the Temple in 70 CE, the Jewish Sanhedrin had no authority to convene on the Eve of Passover, and no authority over Jesus at any time, Caiaphas wasn't named Caiapahas but... the Christian version, created some time in the early Middle Ages, takes the ancient Risen Lord myth (in the Osher version he is gored in the thigh by his wicked uncle Set disguised as a boar; in the Ya'akov - Jacob - version he wrestles with a night-demon, who grabs his testicles and herniates his groin) and renders it Jesuitic by having a Roman centurion create the last of the "Five Holy Wounds", of which nailing each of his hands and feet constituted the first four; John the Evangelist states that no bones were broken.
Once the legend was established, it needed fleshing out, and so Longinus also became the man who gave Charlton Heston his worst ever line: "Surely this man was the son of God." When even that was not sufficient, legend had him (Longinus, that is; I have no knowledge of the religious position of Charlton Heston) convert to Christianity after the Crucifixion, and he is now venerated as a saint.
Copyright © 2020 David Prashker
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