skepticdude

For somebody interested in historiography questions, you sure do talk in absolute terms as if you were born yesterday.

First, the crucifixtion is played up by most New Testament authors as something that only LOOKED like a defeat for Jesus, but which was in fact his victory over sin. So the crucifixion, contributing to the apologetic purpose of the NT authors, does NOT qualify as the sort of embarrassing detail the scholars and historians are talking about when they say this criteria of embarrassment helps to make probability judgments on the level of truth in ancient claims.

Second, since you need a working real example of a genuinely embarrassing detail, Paul admitted that not everybody in his day accepted him as an apostle.

Since he did not credit their unbelief in this case to the devil or plain stupidity, his statement is simple and yet embarrassing. He'd know that if his followers felt his claims were true, they'd be asking him why doesn't every Christian trust his apostleship, which could generate blows to integrity to himself. Since I don't see how this admission of Paul contributed to his apologetic purpose, it is more likely to be true. Nobody, except you, is claiming that this criteirion 'resolves' any issue, but only makes resolution toward one particular hypothesis, more favorable.

skepticdude

Yes, you propose a valid objection that most haven't seen. Christian apologetics has been successful at least in getting people to think we should first assume the gospels are what the conservative evangelicals say they are, and only then to discuss whether there be evidence that they are something else. In fact, the idea that the gospels are totally historically reliable never deserved to be given the prominent place of presupposition.

skepticdude

Nope, no historian would deem some account true just because it had embarrassing details. Your understanding of this criterion is monstrously warped, you act like historians believe just any and every testimony which contains details embarrassing to their authors. That's not how it works, it is less forceful than this, since historiography is not concrete science.

On the other hand, you don't have the right to assume the criteria would lead us to believe false accounts, since whether the account is false is precisely the question that eludes us, for which we have to apply admittedly subjective criteria to help create a cumulative case, one of those critieria having to do with embarrassment.

If your neighbor accuses your faithful wife of 30 years, of adultery, you have the perfect rational right to doubt that testimony, and you'd have been rationally justified even if evidence arises later to show that she did indeed committ her first act of infidelity. The fact that we held a false view, doesn't automatically mean we were stupid or gullible to hold that view.

The hazard of trusting an ancient account which is ultimately false, is part of the job of the historian, who does not have the convenience of going back in time to compare the account with the real events, who thus must use tests to make probability judgments about the historical trustworthiness of ancient authors and their stories.

aa5874

My claim is that the criterion of embarrassment resolves NOTHING, it turns fiction into historical facts.

Some people born yesterday don't realise that.

ApostateAbe

I think you are right, and I don't want you to misunderstand. I actually think that a very significant portion of the gospels are lies. But you can't sell something if your words have absolutely no relation to observable reality.

skepticdude

No historian would continue leaning on the critiera of embarrassment to help bolster their belief that a story was true, once you demonstrated to their satisfaction that the embarrassment was part of the apologetic purpose of the author.

If you satisfied a historian that the message was political, then the incident are contributing to a political purpose of the author, and he would discontinue reliance on the embarrassing stuff.

Not if their stupidity creates a circumstance that allows the story hero to correct them.

Yes, but it's difficult to believe that ANYTHING "embarrassing" incident reported in the bible, was reported without apologetic intent. All embarrassing incidents help the author ingrain the moral story in the originally intended hearers heads.

Subjective judgment call, this might be showing a corrupt oral tradition too.

The definition should have explained it. In terms of likelihood, authors aren't likely to invent embarrassing details, therefore, absent some apologetic purpose for such embarrassing details, they are more likely representing truth.

In short, when people lie, they usually do it to help support their agenda, not to make themselves look less believable.

For example, I've said for years that the continuous complaining of the Exodus-Israelites, so shortly after seeing monster-miracles, defies belief. Do they therefore fulfill the criteria of embarrassment? Not at all, their unbelievable complaining in the face of miracles affords the Exodus author numerous opportunities to dramatize Moses' rebuke to them, an obvious literary tactic of drama that is used in all hollywood sitcoms, namely, making the dumb people unbelievably dumb so their correction will seem more dramatic. The complaining Israelites were embarrassing to Moses, not to the Exodus-author, so this "embarrassment" doesn't fulfill the meaning of the word as intended when historians talk about the "criterion of embarrassment"

skepticdude

That's why he called you an asshole. We are talking about historiography here, which any poster who deserves to post knows is not a concrete science guaranteeing anything nor providing "solid evidence". Yet you tromp through this discussion as if you couldn't know what we meant if God himself screamed it at you.

You will stop being an asshole the day you quit including such absolutist language in discussions about criteria that were never presented as absolute in the first place.

Neither position can be claimed absolutely. On the specific issue of whether Jesus said those words, or whether the author just put them ficitiously in his mouth, I'd say the apologetic purpose of the author makes his report totally suspect.

Fallacy of begging the quesiton, you don't have the luxery of knowing whether the Jesus story is total fiction before you apply criteria of historicity to it. or may you are the only member here who can go back in time to watch the events for yourself?

Indeed, unless you can come up with a way to show that the failed prophecies of Jesus contribute to the apologetic purpose of the author, the failed prophecies are the last thing dishonest inventors of "truth" would want to include in their story, so failed prophecies have a greater claim to historicity than those "fulfilled" prophecies, which certainly advance their agenda, which were also more likely written after the fact.

unless the intuition was based on reliable criteria of historicity.

skepticdude

That would mean the embarrassing bit contributed to the apologetic purpose of the author, which means those particular embarrassments weren't the stor of embarrassments historians and scholars are talking about when they talk about this criterion.

Can you show whether or not the events occured, apart from criteria of historicity that are supposed to DO that job?

What, do you have a videotape from the first century you can pop in your vcr to show, apart from criteria of historicity, that the events as told in the bible either did or didn't happen as written? JESUS DUDE!

The criteria of embarrassment says people are likely to lie to make themselves look GOOD (fulfilled prophecy), not BAD (false prophecy).

Since Jesus' promise of a 2nd coming failed, we have the perfect right to believe this doesn't contribute to the author's agenda and is therefore a more objective bit of evidence than some other thing that DOES promote his purpose.

It's real simple, and I'm starting to think you know better, you are just acting stupid to stimulate thread activity.

,

Did anybody say everything in the NT WAS embarrassing?

Your first lesson in historiography 101, you need to be a man and make your own subjective judgment calls.

And there you go with the false black-and-white thinking again. No skeptic says the non-embarrassing stuff is false, only that it has less claim to objectivity because non-embarrassing stuff tends to support the author's agenda, and supporting agendas is right where an author is more likely to lie about something.

It's a judgment call on level of probable truth. You'd probably agree with the critierion if you dropped your false view of it and realized it as a mere helpful tool, in a list of other tools, that helps one make a subjective cumulative case for historicity.

skepticdude

The obvious purpose of the authors was to say things about Jesus that would motivate people to trust his claims. Unless you can defeat that pretty solid bit of obviousness, they are least likely to knowingly attribute failed prophecies to Jesus. That's the job of the skeptic, who wants people to STOP believing in Jesus. As such, you'd need to explain why 4 ancient authors, with obvious motives to make people trust Jesus, would knowingly attribute false prophecies to him.

And if there was no other evidence to back up your claims (such as is the case for gospel claims about Jesus), we'd have to apply critiera to your story about Abe to help us determine what was more or less likely true in your account.

You involve absolutist thinking, in a discipline (historiography) which nobody claimed could yield absolute conclusions. We have to decide whether you really are this stupid or just pretending because your bus driver passed up the pharmacy.

skepticdude

The rules of historicity don't allow you to "confirm" anything about such an ancient story. However, rank amateurs have been confirmed to slow down progressive discussions about historicity because they are willingly deaf to everybody else telling them that the rules of historicity don't allow for absolutist talk, such as asking for "confirmation".