Aside from the fact that, of course, he was not the mashiach, how did it ever get into their heads that mashiach = G-d??? (or “son of G-d??)
I actually had this argument with someone on another (secular) message board once.
The crux of his argument (which may or may not be the normative thinking) was that God said He will send a messiah from the House of David and then decided to do one better and send Himself instead.
My counter-argument to that was that that would be fine if the speaker didn’t know the future.
For example, if my father sent me a letter saying “your brother’s coming and he’s going to do this for you…” and then he shows up himself, that’s fine — my father could change his mind. God, on the other hand, already knows whom He is going to send when He made the original proclamation, and He’s *not* going to change His mind. As a result, I argued, if HKBH Himself would show up one day and say “I’m Moshiach,” I would turn around and say “No, you’re not, because You didn’t say You were going to send Yourself. You said that You were going to send a descendant of Dovid.”
At that point, we had to simply agree to disagree. He could not accept that I would hold God to His word so literally. I could not accept that God would say one thing knowing He was going to do something else.
The Wolf