As part of an essay we wrote several years ago exploring what the four Gospels have to say about Jesus and suffering, we could easily have begun with any number of historical or scriptural references—from Liberty Jail and the Prophet Joseph in the winter of 1838-39 to Job, whose friends blamed his afflictions on his supposed sins, to the multiple souls described in the Gospels who were plagued by disease, misfortune, natural disasters, or simply the consequences of bad or even impetuous decisions.
