dogsgod

The following is worth taking into account if one is to consider the use of the criteria invented to support an historical Jesus:


1. Embarrassment:

The Embarrassment Criterion as Meier and others define it above suffers from several flaws. First, it focuses on things which would have embarrassed the early Church. The Gospels were not written by the early Church, however, but by specific individuals whose attitudes are often unclear. Whatever the early Church thought, it cannot apply to what the writer of Mark wrote.

Secondly, even assuming that a story is embarrassing tells us nothing about whether it is true. For example, an embarrassing story might be invented to cover up or mitigate an even more embarrassing story, or for reasons now lost.

A third problem with this criterion is that it assumes that history underlies the Gospel of Mark. Instead of finding out whether anything in Mark is history, it assumes there is history in Mark and then proceeds to sort out fiction from fact. Thus, it simply discovers its own premises about the writer of Mark and his relationship to his sources. If the stories are inventions of Mark, then this criteria cannot apply.

Fourth, the entire of an "early Church" is a construct that implicitly assumes the very history it is trying to establish. Finally, even assuming that it is correct to deploy this criterion in the face of everything above, judging whether a particular story is "embarrassing" contains a strong element of subjectivity.


2. Difference

The criterion of difference is closely related to the Embarrassment Criterion, focusing also on whether an event or saying differs from what later communities stated. Once again we run into the problem of subjectivity: how much distance between an event attributed to Jesus and a posture of the later Christian communities is required to satisfy this criterion?

Further, both this and the previous criterion of Embarrassment presuppose an early Christianity whose boundaries are identifiable, a supposition many would deny.

And again, that something is "different" does not at all mean that it contains history. Both communities and traditions evolve, and "difference" may simply relate to difference stages in the evolutionary process. Theissen and Merz (1998), rightly criticize this criterion as "dogmatics disguised" (p115), that favors the development of an anti-Jewish Jesus.

for more criteria fallacies:

http://www.michaelturton.com/Mark/GMark_method.html

ApostateAbe

Yeah, I do think that the criterion has little relevance for anyone who thinks that the interest of the Christians who initiated the myths differs significantly from the interests of Christians seen in our earliest evidence. I think wrote before to couch_sloth has equal relevance to the points you made, so I will quote myself below.

Minimalist

He accepts that and even admits to being one himself before wising up.

beallen041

Abe, how would you respond to what Richard Carrier said in his interview with Luke Muelhauser below:

Steven Carr

Notice that Ehrman does not even dream of giving examples of where similar methodologies are used by historians in other fields.

Ehrman also claims that the authors of Mark, Q, M and L were independent of each other.

Yes, mainstream Biblical scholars read one work, the Gospel of Luke, cut it up into pieces and declare that the pieces are independent of each other.


How does that work? How can works that lack provenance and often lack existence be known to be 'independent' of each other? Just how big was very early Christianity that writers could produce works the contents of which were a mystery to other Christian writers, despite being circulated enough to be used by other writers?

And notice that the criteria of multiple attestation is based on mostly hypothetical documents, according to Ehrman, and largely depends on claiming that the author of John's Gospel could never have learned any stories that 'Mark' wrote about from any person who had read 'Mark'.

For 'John' to be independent, 'John' could only have learned about stories that also appeared in 'Mark' by channels that had never had any contact with anybody who had read 'Mark'.

How does that work?

Steven Carr

EHRMAN
'In Mark, Jesus predicts that the end will come right away, during his own generation, while the disciples are still alive (Mark 9:1, 13:30). By the time John was written, probably from 90 to 95 CE, that earlier generation had died out and most if not all of the disciples were already dead. That is, they died before the coming of the kingdom. What does one do with the teaching about an eternal kingdom here on earth if it never comes? One reinterprets the teaching.'

CARR
But Ehrman argues elsewhere that John was independent of Mark and if something appears in Mark and also in John it is likely to go back to Jesus.

But if John reinterprets teaching found in Mark, how do we know he did not get the teaching from Mark?

How can a work be independent of another work and also reinterpret teaching found in that other work?

If you reinterpret teaching, then you are dependent upon that teaching existing.

TedM

There is a reason people make things up. There is also a reason people report history. The criteria of embarrassment is not invalid simply because we know that people make up embarrassing things. Should we throw out the criteria simply because we know it is not always reliable?

If the reason something seemingly embarrassing is known (maybe there was a good religious reason Attis cut off his balls) then we can discount the criteria as unreliable.

If the reason something seemingly embarrassing is not known yet there is evidence that it was IN FACT embarrassing, then it should not be discounted as 'evidence' for actual history.

Carrier surely is making a point, but I think it is relevant if we have evidence that something seemingly embarrassing really was or was not really embarrassing to them.

Steven Carr

So why is the embarrassment of later authors an argument that what 'Mark' said is true?

If Glenn Beck says something so embarrassing that even Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin disown it, does that make it likely that what Glenn Beck said was true?

ApostateAbe

Well, first of all, I am skeptical of Richard Carrier's claim that "Now in Roman culture this kind of emasculation is one of the most embarrassing insulting things that you do. It totally dehumanizes you and this whole sort of masculine, macho culture is like that. That’s the worst thing you could do and why on earth would you ever worship a eunuch as your savior?" I would like to know specifically where Dr. Carrier gets the impression that emasculation was especially embarrassing. The embarrassment would certainly apply in modern cultures, but some very powerful men in the ancient Greco-Roman world were believed to have been eunuchs (i.e. Halotus, Heraclius and Melito of Sardis).

Secondly, I don't think anyone would claim that non-historical myths that are embarrassing to the myth-tellers are impossible. But I do think that it can help us evaluate probabilities among all competing explanations.

In modern courts of law, there is an analogous principle known as declaration against interest. The principle is that, if a witness says something that is against his or her own interest, then it is more likely to be true and it counts for more than just hearsay. But, it doesn't actually work all of the time. Sometimes, they are still lies. Sometimes, the motivations of the witness are hidden and unknown. Sometimes, the witness is simply crazy. Richard Carrier would be able to pick out a few examples of such things and claim, "AH HA, see?? Declaration against interest is completely useless in courts of law!"

I like Bart Ehrman's approach in this matter. In his examples, the criterion of dissimilarity all alone does not decide any case. It is combined with other useful criteria, such as multiple attestation and contextual credibility. The whole point is to find the most probable hypotheses, and the set of interests of the myth-tellers is a very important element of that.

Steven Carr

Why would 'Mark' write 'against interest'? Are you claiming that he was forced under duress to tell the truth about Jesus being baptized, because Christians were being taunted by claims that no Elijah figure had anointed their so-called Messiah?

I also see that Ehrman never bothers to give any examples of his criteria actually working. Where are the controls? When have scholars ever used these criteria and got them to work?

Not only does the Emperor have No Clothes, but the tailors can't even be bothered to show us any clothes they have ever made.