he was dead from torture. the sacrifice is his actual physical death that god accepted as the blood sacrifice for everyones' sin, since the wages of sin is death, and jesus paid that price. the witness of jesus from scripture is compelling enough for me to have faith that it is true. sure, you can never go back to the past and see what actually happened, just like our own history. but at least we can see the landmarks, and the oral traditions, and other circumstantial evidence. but it's even more than that, because god is spirit, and scripture could never hold the actual faith/truth that needs to happen to follow him.