spamandham

Really? I'm certainly not a professional historian, but as a layman who is interested in the subject and reasonably well read, I can't recall this principle being used much at all outside the domain of Biblical history. Even the wiki entry states that it is a tool used by Bible scholars:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterion_of_embarrassment

Either a technique is generally applicable to all historical analysis, or it's quackery.

ApostateAbe

It really is a technique generally applicable to all historical analysis. I did a research paper on the Modoc War a few years ago, where a rogue tribe of Native Americans in northern California slaughtered a group of federal soldiers, but were still captured and hung in the end. There are over a dozen different eyewitnesses accounts of the events, each one colored by a certain perspective. One of the ways you evaluate them is to see which account seems designed to enhance his or her own reputation or the reputation of the group. The blunt and cynical account given by a low soldier in the field is generally more trustworthy than that of a general, for example. Everybody uses such a method every day. I was talking to a Jehovah's Witness yesterday. He said that "disfellowshipping" someone is done out of love for the apostate. I can evaluate his claim in part on the basis that he is coming from a perspective of someone interested in defending the cult from outside attack. It certainly isn't the only criterion to rely on, but I take it as a very big one. Sometimes, it may be almost all we have. All four gospels say that Jesus was buried in a tomb of a rich man. Since that is a claim required for prophecy fulfillment, then we have a very good reason to be skeptical of it, not just because it is in the gospels.

Toto

That is a statement against interest, from an eyewitness. But the gospels were not written by eyewitnesses, and we don't know the particular theological stances of the authors. So we have to guess which details might be regarded as against interest, or in the service of prophecy or some other reason. There is no reason to see any of the gospel statements as being so completely against any possible interest that they must be historical.

ApostateAbe

Yes, which perhaps leaves the criterion of dissimilarity to be useless in your eyes. If they are not eyewitnesses, then you think maybe that leaves all estimates of mythical knowledge to be hopelessly useless. From my perspective, probability is still key. We can at least make a few good guesses of the motivations of the gospel authors, or at least I and the scholars can--you would prefer to leave such speculation alone as completely useless, which I understand. It is only for those comfortable with subjective judgments of probability. For example, the gospel of Mark seems to be colored by the theme that only the despised and lowly outsiders could grasp the message of Jesus, which, following from the criterion of dissimilarity, then makes Mark's claims concerning women, Gentiles and sinners to be less trustworthy. To you, maybe that is arrogantly attempting to read the author's mind. Well, fine. Others are more comfortable with such arrogance.

bacht

Speaking as a non-academic, I think the general point is that people make subjective judgments and do 'arrogant' mind-reading all the time. Scientificially trained specialists are supposed to resist this temptation and make public statements based on logic and evidence reviewed by their peers.

What qualifies as 'probable' will differ depending on one's knowledge base and one's aptitude for rigorous logic. The problem as I see it is that logical fallacies far outnumber clear thinking, many people commit them without even knowing or caring. The academy is supposed to monitor this tendency and prevent it as much as possible.

ApostateAbe

I think that is a worthy criticism. What do you suggest they do to fix the problem?

bacht

Well, the complaint that gets raised here all the time is that biblical scholars don't follow proper academic procedure, instead using 'bogus' techniques like the criterion of dissimilarity. If this is true then biblical studies hasn't caught up to the modern world yet.

ApostateAbe

OK, sure, yeah. At least you may appreciate their use of the criterion of dissimilarity for the fact that Biblicist scholars and apologists almost never use it, because God's perspective is not an expense to the truth. The way I see it, the whole of the modern world uses something like the criterion of dissimilarity all of the time. When President Clinton said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman... Miss Lewinsky," then you can evaluate the strength of that claim based on what is in President Clinton's apparent interest. The skeptics may retort that the gospel authors do not have interests that are easily apparent, but that is a criticism that I think reflects a greater degree of skepticism than what is really practical. Who can disagree, for example, that the gospel authors were interested in propagating belief in the Christian religion? I imagine a few can disagree, but, if we are serious about believing what is most probable, then we are best to accept the facts of motivations that are strikingly on the face of the texts. For example, the beginning of the gospel of Luke makes its own motivation very much explicit. Whatever you may think of the criterion of dissimilarity, I think that calling it bogus and premodern is a little too strong.

bacht

The critique I'm familiar with is that we just don't know enough about 1st C Judaism or early Christianity to really know which bits would be 'dissimilar'. I believe the Jesus Seminar struggled with this.

The basic problem remains: we only have Christian texts of unknown date, authorship and place of origin to give us any idea about what happened before the apologists and catholic theologians took over.

ApostateAbe

OK, so, supposing that we had satisfyingly sufficient knowledge about dates, authorship and places of origin, do you think the criterion of dissimilarity would be acceptable? I ask because that may actually be the more relevant issue, not the idea that they are using the criterion of dissimilarity by itself. I figure that they are justified in using it if they have at least pretty good guesses about date and place of origin and a rough profile of the authors. To the skeptics, those guesses are not good enough, which I think may be the reason why they don't accept the criterion of dissimilarity. Do you at least agree that a good working assumption should be that the gospels were written to encourage belief in the Christian religion, whatever the details of the authorship may be? I think we can make some very good judgments using the criterion of dissimilarity on that assumption alone.