Note 8 — Chapter XV · THE METHOD OF M. LOISY

Strauss, in pointing to this detail in Jewish Messianism (Das Leben Jesu, Abschn. III, Kap. i, § 112) abstained from stressing it on the score that there are no certain traces of it before the Babylonian Gemara, the compilation of which took place in the Christian era, and the book Sohar, of which the age is doubtful. Principal Drummond (The Jewish Messiah, 1877, p. 357) further agreed, with Gfrörer, that the doctrine of a Messiah Ben-Joseph is extremely unlikely to have been pre-Christian. The obvious answer is that it is overwhelmingly unlikely to have been post-Christian! But that thesis is apparently not now maintained even by orthodox scholars. Bousset, who in his confused way suggests that the notion of a suffering and dying Messiah “would seem to have been suggested by disputations with the Christians” (The Anti-Christ Legend, 1896, p. 103), avows immediately that Wünsche traces “a very distinct application of Zechariah xii, 10, to the Messiah Ben Joseph” in the Jerusalem Talmud; and goes on to suggest that the notions of the “two witnesses” and the two Messiahs “may rest upon a common source, which, however, is still to be sought further back than Jewish tradition.” ↑