coffee addict to me: You know bar kochba also “started the process”
Bar Kochba was after the churban, and he waged a war to return Eretz Yisrael to the Jews, which seems to be “part of the process”. What did yoshke – who was in the times of the Beis Hamikdash – do to start the process?
yankel berel writes that yoshke allegedly claimed that he was the messiah. But that doesn’t seem to me as being part of the process. If anyone today would claim to be Mashiach and not do anything other than that, I don’t believe you would say that he had started the process.