Note 22 — Chapter VIII · SUPPLEMENTARY MYTH

When this solution is met by the Unitarian thesis that the idea of a Messiah Ben Joseph is late in Judaism, and that it arose out of the gospel story, we can but appeal to the common-sense of the reader.22 For the Rabbis to set up such a formula on such a motive would be an inconceivable self-stultification. The lateness of Rabbinical discussion on the subject can be quite reasonably explained through its Samaritan origination. All the while, the Joseph story in the gospels belongs precisely to that late legend which the neo-Unitarian school is bound in consistency to reject as myth. But the prepossession in favour of a “human Jesus” balks at no inconsistency, and selects its items not on critical principles but simply in so far as they can be made to compose with a “human” figure that is to be conserved at all costs.