Samson Levey, _The Messiah: An Aramaic Interpretation: The Messianic Exegesis of the Targum_ (1974), 180pp., on XVII
https://www.amazon.com/Messiah-Aramaic-I...878204024/
https://archive.org/details/messiaharama...q=sporadic
Page n20
There are sporadic references to the Messianic hope in the Hebrew Scriptures, the earliest of any significance being those of Isaiah 9:6 ff. and 11:1 ff., born of the Assyrian crisis, 721-701 B.C.E.
Subsequent crises in the history of Israel such as the Exile, and the persecutions under Antiochus and Rome, gave impetus to the Messiah idea, to the point where it became a vital part of Jewish doctrine, with a prayer for the advent of the Messiah included in the daily liturgy as one of the Eighteen Benedictions, whose origins go back to the third century, B.C.E., and which was redacted during the end of the first century, C.E.
======================
Richard Carrier, _On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt_ (2014)
https://www.amazon.com/Historicity-Jesus...909697494/
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/24714
We might have evidence of a strand of that prior tradition in the early-first-century Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel on Isaiah 53 (a kind of paraphrastic commentary in Aramaic; Jonathan ben Uzziel was traditionally a student of Hillel, who died c. 10 CE, and a contemporary of Shammai, who died c. 30 CE), which explicitly identifies the suffering servant there as the Christ-but otherwise transforms the narrative to suppress or downplay the element of his dying.
But anyone who read this Targum, and then the original Hebrew (or Greek), could put two and two together:
'this servant is the messiah'
plus
'this servant dies and is buried and then exalted'
=
'the messiah dies and is buried and then exalted',
the very doctrine we see in the Talmud, which just happens to be the same doctrine adopted by Christians.
This Targum was multiply tampered with over the years, however (see Bruce Chilton, _The Glory of Israel: The Theology and Provenience of the Isaiah Targum_ [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1982], e.g., p. 94), so nothing conclusive can be decided by it (even though, again, it is unlikely Jews would change the Targum to make Isaiah 53 messianic after Christianity started using Isaiah 53 to support their cause), although Jintae Kim makes a case for the reading being early in 'Targum Isaiah 53 and the New Testament Concept of Atonement', _Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism_ 5 (2008), pp. 81-98.
_OHJ_, p. 75
https://www.amazon.com/Messiah-Aramaic-I...878204024/
https://archive.org/details/messiaharama...q=sporadic
Page n20
There are sporadic references to the Messianic hope in the Hebrew Scriptures, the earliest of any significance being those of Isaiah 9:6 ff. and 11:1 ff., born of the Assyrian crisis, 721-701 B.C.E.
Subsequent crises in the history of Israel such as the Exile, and the persecutions under Antiochus and Rome, gave impetus to the Messiah idea, to the point where it became a vital part of Jewish doctrine, with a prayer for the advent of the Messiah included in the daily liturgy as one of the Eighteen Benedictions, whose origins go back to the third century, B.C.E., and which was redacted during the end of the first century, C.E.
======================
Richard Carrier, _On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt_ (2014)
https://www.amazon.com/Historicity-Jesus...909697494/
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/24714
We might have evidence of a strand of that prior tradition in the early-first-century Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel on Isaiah 53 (a kind of paraphrastic commentary in Aramaic; Jonathan ben Uzziel was traditionally a student of Hillel, who died c. 10 CE, and a contemporary of Shammai, who died c. 30 CE), which explicitly identifies the suffering servant there as the Christ-but otherwise transforms the narrative to suppress or downplay the element of his dying.
But anyone who read this Targum, and then the original Hebrew (or Greek), could put two and two together:
'this servant is the messiah'
plus
'this servant dies and is buried and then exalted'
=
'the messiah dies and is buried and then exalted',
the very doctrine we see in the Talmud, which just happens to be the same doctrine adopted by Christians.
This Targum was multiply tampered with over the years, however (see Bruce Chilton, _The Glory of Israel: The Theology and Provenience of the Isaiah Targum_ [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1982], e.g., p. 94), so nothing conclusive can be decided by it (even though, again, it is unlikely Jews would change the Targum to make Isaiah 53 messianic after Christianity started using Isaiah 53 to support their cause), although Jintae Kim makes a case for the reading being early in 'Targum Isaiah 53 and the New Testament Concept of Atonement', _Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism_ 5 (2008), pp. 81-98.
_OHJ_, p. 75