Prophecy and Fulfillment

The Pain, Suffering and Death of Christ Prophesied

Prophet Isaiah - 740 BC
Isaiah 53: 1-12 NIV

Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
11 After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

The Historicity of Jesus

Source: Wikipedia
A chronology of Jesus aims to establish a timeline for some of the events of the life of Jesus in the four canonical gospels. The Christian gospels were primarily written as theological documents rather than historical chronicles and their authors showed little interest in an absolute chronology of Jesus. However, it is possible to correlate the New Testament with non-Christian sources such as Jewish and Greco-Roman documents to estimate specific date ranges for the major events in Jesus' life.

Two independent approaches can be used to estimate the year of birth of Jesus, one based on the nativity accounts in the gospels, the other by working backwards from the date of the start of his ministry. Most scholars assume a date of birth between 6 and 4 BC.[5] Three independent approaches to estimate the dates of the ministry of Jesus are: first, the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, second: the date of the building of the Jerusalem Temple and third, the date of the death of John the Baptist. Scholars generally estimate that the ministry of Jesus began around 27-29 AD and lasted at least one year, and perhaps three years, or more.

Diverse approaches have been used to estimate the date of the crucifixion of Jesus. One approach uses the attestations of non-Christian sources such as Josephus and Tacitus. Another method works backwards from the historically well established trial of Apostle Paul in Achaea to estimate the date of his conversion. Scholars generally agree that Jesus died between 30-36 AD.