I would like you read these words:
(OHJ, p. 74-75, my bold)First, the Talmud provides us with a proof of concept at the very least
(and actual confirmation at the very most). It explicitly says the suffering
servant who dies in Isaiah 53 is the messiah (and that this messiah
will endure great suffering before his death). The Talmud likewise has a
dying-and-rising 'Christ son of Joseph' ideology in it, even saying (quoting
Zech. 12.10) that this messiah will be 'pierced' to death .Modern scholars
are too quick to dismiss this text as late (dat ing as it does from the
fo urth to sixth century), since the doctrine it describes is unlikely to be.
For only when Jews had no idea what Christians would do with this connection
would they themselves have promoted it. There is no plausible way
later Jews would invent interpretations of their scripture that supported and
vindicated Christians. They would not invent a Christ with a father named
Joseph who dies and is resurrected (as the Talmud does indeed describe).
They would not proclaim Isaiah 53 to be about this messiah and admit that
Isaiah had there predicted this messiah would die and be resurrected. That
was the very biblical passage Christians were using to prove their case.
Moreover, the presentation of this ideology in the Talmud makes no mention
of Christianity and gives no evidence of being any kind of polemic or
response to it. So we have evidence here of a Jewish belief that possibly
predates Christian evangelizing, even if that evidence survives only in later
sources.
The alternative is to assume a rather unbelievable coincidence: that
Christians and Jews, completely independently of each other, just happened
at some point to see Isaiah 53 as messianic and from that same passage
preach an ideology of a messiah with a father named Joseph (literally or
symbolically), who endures great suffering, dies and is resurrected (in
accord with the savior depicted in Isaiah 53, as by then understood). Such
an amazing coincidence is simply improbable. But a causal connection is
not: if this was a pre-Christian ideology that influenced (and thus caused)
both the Christian and the Jewish ideologies, then we have only one element
to explain (the rise of this idea once, being adapted in different ways),
instead of having to believe the same idea arose twice, purely coincidentally.
Two improbable events by definition are many times less likely than
one. That means the invented-once theory is many times more likely than
the invented-twice one. Conversely, if we choose instead to fall on this
sword of improbability and insist, against all likelihood, that yes, the same
ideas arose twice independently of each other within Judaism, then this
entails the idea was very easy for Jews to arrive at (since rabbinical Jews,
independently of Christians, clearly arrived at it), which then entails it was
not an improbable development in the first place. And thus neither will it
have been improbable for Christians (or their sectarian predecessors among
the Jews), any more than it was for Talmudic Jews. Clearly dying messiahs
were not anathema. Rabbinical Jews could be just as comfortable with the
idea as Christians were (more on this point in Chapter 1 2, §4).
And I ask you reader a simple question:
What will be your logical conclusion if I point out that at least a Talmudist author used Zech 6:12 in order to prove that Joshua son of Josedec was the Ἀνατολὴ ???
