Note: A longer version of the post below appears at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD.
Estimates are that around 50,000 people lived in Jerusalem in Jesus’ time. But the number in town swelled by more than double, perhaps by five times, for holidays such as Passover. One might imagine the city fairly bursting at the seams, with visiting relatives and other pilgrims.
Imagine how the average resident or visitor have reacted to the crucifixion of three men, one of them whom some said was the messiah. While crucifixion was considered to be a particularly shameful, ignoble death, the practice wasn’t a rarity. Indeed, a generation or so later in 70 AD, one Roman general would crucify more than 500 Jews 
in a single day.
So perhaps people in Jerusalem simply shook their heads—another madman, proved wrong—and went about the Passover observance. Perhaps those who had lost a relative to a bad end heard his mother had been there to the end, and gave a sigh for her. Perhaps others prayed for the day the Lord would send the true, promised savior.
Some of those who had followed Jesus went underground, fearful they would be the next to die. Some were so frightened at the prospect of being publicly associated with the dead man that they lied about it. Some grieved inconsolably.
And perhaps a few remembered what Isaiah had prophesied about the suffering servant:
The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 53:11-12)
… and in remembering, perhaps they dared to believe, if not say, that this was not the end.
