@Greatest I am,
Greatest I am wrote:
Only the really stupid will see god saying, -- let's have a really great sacrifice to end sacrifices.
What is stupid is the way you think about God. God is not like a human individual. God is the underlying creative force behind nature and all that happens in the universe. He doesn't think, "let's have a really great sacrifice to end sacrifices." Rather, culture/society evolved the practice of blood sacrifices and scapegoating and conscience evolved to question it and eventually what happened with Jesus happened and the resulting transformation of culture altered morality regarding sin, how to deal with it, and whether to condemn/execute people for sin.
There was no human puppet-master controlling the evolution of culture that led to Jesus' crucifixion and the subsequent 2000+ year carrying forth of the story to generation after generation. It was an act of God; a very big and long-lasting act of God.