>>yet they did not slay him, neither crucified him, only a likeness of that was shown to them.<<

That was Simon of Cyrene. If you read Matthew and Mark carefully, he was crucified in Jesus' stead. In a Gnostic work called the Second Treatise of the Great Seth there is a statement supposedly by Jesus stating that his persecutors killed the wrong man and specifically says it was Simon.

The accounts in the gospels also indicate that Jesus survived the crucifixion by feigning death--something the early Church held as doctrine. I think two accounts that orignally had Jesus trick his executioners were combined together.

Then there is also the mystical interpretation that they killed his body but his spirit lived on. What they miss with that interpretation is that it then applies to all of us. We will all be slain in the flesh but we won't really die.

Pick your poison.