How many years after the prophecy of the cross in Isaiah was the actual crucifixion?

Answer 1

Since the Book of Isaiah never mentions the cross or the crucifixion of Jesus, it is not really possible to answer this question objectively. Nevertheless, Burton L. Mack describes a trick that can be used to make any Old Testament book say what you want it to say. By this means, books such as Isaiah have been made to refer to Jesus, even though that does not appear to have been the intention of its author. Mack says in Who Wrote the New Testament that at first the study of a text may not seem to support a traditional Christian conviction, or the answer one hopes to find in The Bible. But with a little ingenuity, one can set up the comparison again with other emphases and make the answer come out right. This trick seems to come naturally when studying the Bible, and Mack sees it happen all the time in the classrooms of the School of Theology at Claremont.

Some see Isaiah chapter 53 as a prophecy of the crucifixion, because it mentions death and suffering. This was written about a "suffering servant" before and after the time of writing and does not mention Jesus or the crucifixion. In fact, it can not be a reference to Jesus, because verse 10 talks about the servant seeing his children, and Jesus is believed not to have had children. Isaiah chapter 53 was written late in the time of the Babylonian Exile, about 550 years before the crucifixion of Jesus.