[Avodah] Talmudic Process Question

[Moshe Y. Gluck]

R' Joel Rich:
The gemara in horiyot 6a discusses the issue as to the source of a ruling by R' Papa that "ein mita ltzibbur" by karbanot. 
In the back and forth, the gemara posits that one comparison is no good because the case at hand deals with the beginning of bayit sheni and no one who had sinned at the time of bayit rishon could have still been alive then.  The gemara then rejects that assertion based on Ezra 3:12 which famously records the crying of the zkenim (who remembered the bayit rishhon ) at the consecration of bayit sheni.

Question: What was the gemara's hava amina to posit an assumption  that CLEARLY wasn't true? (the usual answer I give is that there was something to be learned or differentiated by the assumption - but I'm stumped here)
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The Hava Aminah is that only the sinners had died, but not everyone else (the words "V'ha maysi l'hu hanach d'chat'u can be understood to mean precisely that). The Gemara's answer is that no, the sinners were still alive. 

Lulei D'mistafina, I would say that the Hava Amina is predicated on the assumption that it stands to reason that Hashem would have had Nevuchadnetzar's army kill anyone who worshipped Avodah Zarah (see the way Rabbeinu Chananel (bottom of 6b) puts it. I'm not sure that he's saying that, but he might be). And I would say that the Gemara's answer is to say that that assumption is incorrect and that we can learn a new P'shat in Ezra 3:12, that the ones who were crying were the sinners from the time of the Bayis Rishon, and that they were crying because of their sin of Avodah Zarah in the time of Tzidkiyahu (especially if, as I think the Pesukim read, the Korbanos from Ezra 8 were really being brought at the event described here at the end of Ezra 3), and not that they were crying because the Bayis Sheini was smaller than the Bayis Rishon (as the Mefarshim there explain). 


KT,
MYG