By this time, a lot of Jews (Pharisees in particular) believed there was an afterlife, and would have been well aware of the relevant text in Daniel. They probably would not have wanted to take the risk of a nasty divine judgment if they actually did believe Jesus was the Lord's Anointed and did not publically acknowledge this (I believe there's a scripture about such attitudes as well). Feared persecution, but shrugged off the possibility of divine judgment?
As for the "Christian message about why Jesus died" - well that was still being hotly debated.
Just about got my head around what you are saying here.
What was the reason the Pharisees did not believe Jesus was God's Anointed? Like all people, they had a way of making sure they would be on the right side of God, should the afterlife turn out to be a reality. For them it was to avoid breaking any of the ten commandments, and just to make sure, they had a way of life that they thought minimized the possibility of breaking them, such as not eating with a Gentile, offering sacrifices in the temple etc. In fact all this did was create the outward appearance of not breaking the commandments. By itself, it didn't change the heart. It could make them feel safe from divine judgment even if they lacked the change of heart that was supposed to accompany it. I think they were so afraid to give up this way of life they had become so used to (the symbolic system of rituals set up by Moses) and that's why they rejected him.
So that's why I think people could have believed Jesus was the messiah without publicly acknowledging it: they didn't want to lose the system they had in place. The NT itself says much about the people in the churches who tried to persuade Gentile Christians to practice the Mosaic rituals. And because many believers were deceived by the doctrine of salvation by works, their religion could have easily been described in the way Josephus describes it, a "tribe of Christians".
Personally I feel that rather than dismiss the TF as forged, the possibility of it being genuine should be considered equally, and in the light of what the Bible teaches.
So for example, Josephus (?) says that Jesus possibly shouldn't be called a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works. Well maybe he had read John's or for that matter any of the gospels, and read that Jesus had done things only God can do. From the bits of his writing I have read, Josephus was clearly a God-fearing Jew, from the way he talks about Moses and the prophets. It would therefore be natural for him to believe that Jesus is the fulfillment of all that. The actual turning to Jesus for salvation may have happened and then become lukewarm, or he may have been concentrating on the history of the Jewish nation (whereas the Church was a united body of Jews and Gentiles, so might not have been something he would want to focus on, but made do with a brief mention or two of it).
