GakuseiDon

I think we can see that from the time of Paul. Paul has no problem in bringing two separate passages together to "find" Jesus prophecized in them. It then took on a momentum of its own. Karen Armstrong writes in Chapter 3 of her "History of God":

"[Justin Martyr] argued that Christians were simply following Plato, who had also maintained that there was only one God. Both the Greek philosophers and the Jewish prophets had foretold the coming of Christ - an argument that would have impressed the pagans of his day, since there was a fresh enthusiasm for oracles."

Eventually prophecies about Christ make their way into the Sibylline books themselves.

Solo

A very interesting take on the shame of the cross by Mark Goodacre. Goodacre argues that Mark as the earliest crucifixion narrative, cannot be understood except as the mors turpissima crucis (the shameful death of the cross).

One shocking idea of Goodacre:
I have resisted a similar interpretation, believing that Paul's insulting "you fools" in the verse would not be sustained by a hyperbole of crucifixion, only the real thing. What can I say ? wow !

Best,
Jiri

Chili

Not shameful at all and the best things the Jews did and did it often . . . ."for many are the children of the wife deserted -- far more than of her who has a husband" (Gal.4:27 here). The trick here is to crucify only the bare naked ego that was created by conjecture in Gen.3:6-7 when we became a rational being.

archibald

It appears to be the former.

Doesn't mean it wasn't made up, of course, but I think it is more of a point in favour of HJ than against.

The interesting thing is that it didn't seem to prevent people converting, or at least one could say that while it may have put some off, it didn't put others off. One man's criminal execution is another man's heroic miscarriage of justice, or something a bit like that.

Toto

The argument as stated only makes sense in modern times, where materialist thinkers have rejected the supernatural and reinterpreted the gospels in rationalist terms. They reject the resurrection (or explain it as a hallucination) and so the crucifixion appears embarrassing, therefore it would not have been invented.

The original story was not about a simple crucifixion, but about a divine being who went through crucifixion and transcended it by rising from the grave.

Ancient apologists would not have used the embarrassing nature of the crucifixion to show that Jesus existed, because that was not an issue. (They either thought they knew or didn't care - but it was just not an issue.) They would not have been trying to show that Christianity persisted in spite of the crucifixion, therefore it was true - because Christianity was not that well established as it appears in hindsight.

archibald

The OP is about the crucifixion in relation to whether he was the messiah.

Toto

The OP is a rather confused conglomeration of apologetic claims about Christianity. I think it came from JP Holdings "The Impossible Faith."

archibald

The OP title seems to be asking the question, 'was there a crucified man?' (modern question, modern criterion of embarrassment applied) but the subsequent OP questions seem to be asking, 'would a messiah be crucified?' (ancient question, ancient criterion of embarrassment - or if you like, shame - applied). That's how I read it. I took the questions to be actually the latter, with an ambiguous OP title preceding it. Maybe it wasn't as clear-cut as that, in the mind of the poster. :]

By the way, I just finished Carrier's rebuttal to Holding. Not bad. But enough to make me want to read his forthcoming HJ book. Pity about the incessant attacks on Holding's arguments, which are not exactly robust (Holding's arguments, I mean), but I guess that's what the book is about. I just didn't realise before shelling out £25 on it.

Ktotwf

I don't see how the crucifixion would be embarrassing. By being crucified and then resurrecting again, Jesus was basically doing two things:

1. Flipping the bird to the Romans, who the Jews resented with a passion

2. He was establishing himself as a Messiah who Suffered, rather than an all conquering ubermensch, thus establishing him as a beacon of empathy for society's downtrodden, which is where early Christian belief started.

The crucifixion makes LESS SENSE if you see the Jesus story as about a historical man.

vijeno

My OP wasn't really so much about one specific instance of the criterion of embarrassment, but rather about the form of argument itself.

In the meantime, I came across an interesting read on the subject - the author tries to refute the criterion of embarrassment as a means of asserting historical accuracy altogether: http://tomverenna.wordpress.com/2011...is-inadequate/

I have to admit that I used to think that the criterion itself was pretty valid, but upon re-thinking it, it doesn't altogether seem to be.