andrewcriddle

I think the point may be that if in an account of someone's life we come across the statement that his late arrivals home were not (as his wife suspected) because he was cheating on her, but because of either story 1 or story 2 then we are probably safe in assuming that he did frequently get home very late whatever the explanation.

An example from the secular history of the Ancient World may be the life of Alexander the Great where, when we find in Arrian's account (based on pro-Alexander sources like Ptolemy and Aristoboulos) claims that Alexander was not a drunkard but just a social drinker, we can safely assume that Alexander liked his drink whether or not he was by our standards an alcoholic. The same is true for other things tending to disparage Alexander found in Arrian. The tendency in Arrian's sources to emphasize the positive means that the less positive bits are probably historical.

Andrew Criddle

Littlejohn

Example of Littlejohn about the topic "embarrassing".

It is said that Mary (Mariamne) the mother of Jesus was Virgin.

She had at least one child (in reality it had THREE)

For a person who relies on rational logic is possible (but not certified) that Mary may have been a virgin before the birth. However, the rational component of our brain prevents us from believing that the woman might have remained a virgin during and after birth (the birth "cesareo"(*) was not very popular at that time ....)

At this point then raises the question: Why then the counterfeiters founders (and their successors) have always insisted in supporting the perennial virginity of Mary? ... To give a divine "chrism" at the birth of Jesus, as happened and had been for many divine characters of different mythologies? (it is unnecessary to list them all ).... Or in this way they wanted mystified the fact that non-Christians spoke of "virgin" about Mary ?.... (example of "embarrassing").

Please, bear in mind that at the time, the lies could not be denied overnight, when they were concerning much far different environments. When reached for clarification (for example in Rome, compared to Jerusalem), very often happened (because of very powerful support) that the lie had become widespread as "truth" and as such it was difficult if not impossible to remove it!

How a "hat" of everything that was said, I am convinced that Mary was a virgin before, during and after the birth ...

_____________

Note:

(*) - a birth obtained by surgical way

Littlejohn
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thedistillers

To clarify, the analogy was merely to point out there are good reasons for someone who makes up a story to embarrass himself, (roland gave a good reason as well) so there is no reason to think a story, or a piece of information, is true if it is embarrassing. In my analogy, there is no reason to think his excuse about starting to smoke again is true, even if it is "embarrassing" from his perspective.

But, maybe my understanding of the criterion of embarrassment is too superficial...

EarlDoherty

Why doesn't Jeffrey simply give us his (or scholarship's) definition of the criterion and then we can all measure our own idea against the official standard?

That way, the discussion can proceed, we can all know what we're talking about, and most significantly, Jeffrey can actually contribute something concrete to the proceedings.

Earl Doherty

Jeffrey Gibson

Come on, Earl. You mean you don't know already? And do you think the person who first used the term, let alone Pat, has used it correctly?

In any case, I note with interest that the person to whom I addressed the perfectly legitimate question has not given us his answer.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson

Can you please point me to where in my question to Pat I said or indicated anything of the kind?

In any case, do you think Pat knows what he's talking about vis a vis this criterion?

Jeffrey

patcleaver

Just of the top of my head.

The criteria of embarrassment is the hypotheses that in propaganda, statements that embarrass the cause are more likely to be true, because otherwise the propagandist would have no motivation for including them.

The criteria are not valid unless we know what causes motivate the propagandist.

The criteria assumes that the gospels are propaganda, but If they are propaganda, then they should not be believed.

The criteria ignores real experience that we have had with propaganda in which embarrassing details are sometimes added to convinces the audience that the propaganda is true. The motivation for adding embarrassing details is to make the story more believable.

The authors of fictional stories often include embarrassment as a literary technique to make the story more believable and to help us empathize with a character. Fictional stories typically utilize lots of fictional literary techniques and histories rarely include fictional literary techniques. The plethora of fictional literary techniques in the gospels indicate that they are more likely fiction then history.

mountainman

Jeffrey tangentiates from an actual examination of the evidence.

The first citation to be discussed is obviously the author Celsus. How can Celsus be a Eusebian forgery if Celsus says embarrassing things about christians? Celsus is the first independent literary embarrasement tendered by Eusebius in his long and lonely list of prenicene pagan "knowers of christians". (That is, if you dont count the forged imperial correspondence etc)

What utter bullshit to be thought to be and actually entertained as part of ancient historical truth.


Best wishes


Pete

skunker

This criterion is rarely used by itself, and is typically one of a number of criteria, such as the criterion of discontinuity and the criterion of multiple attestation along with the historical method. It's also just only one of several methods used in coming to a consensus for the historicity of Jesus.

Btw check out the new Wikipedia entry for JESUS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus

Fascinating. It aligns very close to what William Lane Craig has been saying all along. Seems to be the consensus after lots of internal fighting and reviewing in the talkback section of the entry. Yes, it also mentions Mr. Price.

Steven Carr

I imagine the early church would have been really embarrassed by stories of the child Jesus killing people.

Therefore, those stories must be true.