spamandham

Abe, on the one hand you quote the NT to derive quotes from JtB, but in regard to why he was killed, you dismiss what the NT explicitly tells us in favor of some vague apocalyptic preaching explanation!?

Why?

(I reject it, but that's because I view the gospel as closer to fiction than history and place the beheading of John by Herod in the same category as the slaughter of the innocents by Herod)

ApostateAbe

In my way of thinking, yes, Mark was not familiar with Matthew and Luke, but that is not relevant to the point that we can understand Mark in part by also looking at Matthew and Luke, because they all shared the same religion, the same language, the same way of thinking in the same time and place, and Matthew and Luke were intimately familiar with Mark. No modern scholar understands the way of thinking of the author of Mark nearly as accurately and thoroughly as the authors of Matthew and Luke. So, yeah, that would explain my perspective, but, if you go about understanding Mark differently, then that is OK by me.
OK, I'll play the thought experiment. The author included the story of the baptism account because JtB was a known religious authority figure, and the baptism of JtB would enhance the authority of the character of Jesus, given that it was an event augmented by a revelation of God.

So, what is the problem? We can explain the evidence using your model, can we not? Of course we can. So what could my objection be?

The problem is that the evidence is not strongly expected from your model.

I would like to be clear on the definition of "explanatory power" just so you know exactly what I am talking about. The author of the methodology of the "Argument to the Best Explanation" states the criterion as:

"The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory power than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must make the observation statements it implies more probable than any other."

Given your model, that John the Baptist was a known religious authority figure, and Jesus was a character of an even greater religious authority, then what account do we expect?

I'll tell you: we expect Jesus to baptize John the Baptist. We don't even need the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus or God saying anything. Such a baptism would be symbolic enough of Jesus' importance in the minds of the fans of the gospel of Mark that God isn't even needed. The message is that Jesus is so exalted that the Baptizer whom everyone loves is willing to be baptized by Jesus. But, the gospel of Mark has it backward. Jesus is baptized the same as hundreds of other people who want to be. If it were not for the miracle story and the extreme deference of JtB, it would be a "So what?" With the miracle story and the extreme deference of JtB, it is more of a "Huh, why? Um, OK."

Now, maybe I have you wrong. If so, then tell me:

1) What is the evidence?
2) How does your model make the evidence more probable than any other model would?

I am phrasing those two questions that way (question #2 is a rephrasing of the definition of "explanatory power") because it seems a lot like you are telling me that your model expects JtB to be an authority figure to the Christians, and, if so, I am telling you that every other explanatory model also does so, because that is what the evidence directly implies, and your model is given no advantage.

ApostateAbe

I trust the gospels to reflect what Christians actually thought, but not what Herod thought. Christians took their best guess as to why Herod put John the Baptist to death--they thought it was about JtB's teaching about marriage conflicting with what Herod practiced. That made sense to Christians, but that is not the most plausible explanation. If JtB was preaching apocalypticism to a large and growing audience, then it would be an existential threat to the king.

mountainman

Seasons Greetings aa5874,

This does appear to be the logical conclusion of all the evidence.

The HJ spectrum of belief merges into the MJ spectrum of belief where the "historicity" of the "HJ" drops close to zero. There is little if any evidence with which to compute the estimated historicity for the HJ. If the criterion of embarrassment if applied to the evidence itself, what would it say?

The question remains as to how and when and why the myth was assembled in the Greek language and preserved with a highly distinctive nomina sacra encoding from its earliest beginnings. It perhaps had to do with exploiting the highest technology of antiquity - the codex.

Logical

The embarrassment factor does not necessarily indicate historicity. It may simply indicate adaptation and evolution.

For example, the gospels mention that Jesus of Nazareth was born in Bethlehem. They invent the story of the census and the manger to justify why a man from Nazarene origins would be born in Bethlehem.

The embarrassment theorists would say this proves that there was a real Jesus, who was from Nazareth, because if Jesus was fictional, the gospels would have had him originally from Bethlehem without needing to complicate matters with an additional explanation (i.e. He was born in Bethlehem even though everyone knows him as being from Nazareth).

That's a possibility. But another possibility is that the original Jesus myth never said he was the Christ, and so it was never required that he be born in Bethlehem, so it had a fictional Nazarene Jesus. But as the myth evolved and adapted, Jesus became the Christ, and all of a sudden there was a need to make him a man from Bethlehem to fulfill the Christ prophecies WITHOUT contradicting the preexisting fictional myth that he was from Nazareth. Hence the story of the "First Christmas".

I'm surprised that Christopher Hitchens is so impressed with the embarrassment theory, and often used this birth in Bethlehem myth as evidence that Jesus probably was historical, and ignored this other possibility that I just mentioned.

show_no_mercy

Against Heresies 1.26.2: Those who are called Ebionites (Heb. "The Poor"; cf Gal 2.10; Rom 15.26) agree that the world was made by God; but their opinions with respect to the Lord are similar to those of Cerinthus (represented Jesus as having not been born of a virgin, but as being the son of Joseph and Mary according to the ordinary course of human generation, while he nevertheless was more righteous, prudent, and wise than other men. Moreover, after his baptism, Christ descended upon him in the form of a dove [...] and performed miracles. But at last Christ departed from Jesus, and that then Jesus suffered and rose again, while Christ remained impassible, inasmuch as he was a spiritual being 3.26.1) and Carpocrates.

3.11.7: Those, again, who separate Jesus from Christ, alleging that Christ remained impassible, but that it was Jesus who suffered, preferring the Gospel by Mark, if they read it with a love of truth, may have their errors rectified.

So we can see who the baptism of Jesus was embarrassing to. It was not embarrassing to heretics, it was embarrassing to the proto-orthodoxy. In order to claim embarrassment, we have to assume that there was one unified church who existed before all othere "heresies" that also wrote all four gospels. This is simply not the case at all. As early as Paul we have Christians - "eminent-apostles" - preaching another (αλλο) Jesus and an altogether different (ετερος) gospel.

The criterion of embarrassment, if we actually state it with its inherent assumptions in mind, makes absolutely no sense. Who cares whether the proto-orthodox was embarrassed by something? There were other Christians who were not embarrassed by certain dogmas. The baptism of Jesus is no embarrassment to the Christians who separated Jesus from Christ, who thought that no one was good except for god (Mk 10:18). Of course, Mark 10.18 doesn't make sense if you think that Jesus was god as later (proto-orthodox) Christians did.

aa5874

The Criterion of embarrassment is an ABSURD criterion since it FIRST ASSUMES history and then ASSUMES the ASSUMED history is embarrassing which was ALREADY ASSUMED to be history.

Consider the following:

1. There are stories about Jesus in the NT but it is NOT known if Jesus did actually exist.

2.There are Baptism stories about Jesus in the NT but it is NOT known if they are fiction or actual history.

3. There are EMBARRASSING stories in the NT but it is NOT known if those stories are fiction or actual history.

4. There are NO credible external non-apologetic sources to corroborate any story of Jesus, embarrassing or not.

5. The NT is an UNRELIABLE historical source for Jesus.

ApostateAbe's "solution" for historicity is to FIRST ASSUME that the EMBARRASSING stories are true and then DECLARE Jesus did exist.

What absolute nonsense. How rather illogical!!!.

The Criterion of Embarrassment is a WORTHLESS tool and is no different to the approach used by FUNDIES and INERRANTISTS.

If one ASSUMES the NT contains the actual history of Jesus then it must be OBVIOUS that the ONLY ASSUMED outcome is that Jesus did exist.

ApostateAbe

Great, thank you for making yourself clear. My argument has not been: given the doctrines of the church, they were embarrassed by JtB baptizing Jesus. My argument has been: given the contents of the gospels, they were apparently embarrassed by JtB baptizing Jesus, and it makes plausible sense given the historical context. I am saying that the embarrassment is apparent upon reading the accounts. If a Separatist sect of Christians wrote Mark, then it does not follow that they would not have been embarrassed by JtB baptizing Jesus--both the characters of Jesus and Christ were believed to be much more respected than JtB. If you must insist that they would not have been embarrassed by JtB baptizing Jesus, then, well, you should explain the details of the baptism account in Mark with an equal or better explanation as the explanation of embarrassment, or else maybe the proto-orthodox church really did write Mark, and the heresies really did originate decades afterward, as the scholars believe.

ApostateAbe

Yes. I believe I heard Christopher Hitchens also argue that there is no reason to expect that the Christian myth would have it that only women would be the ones to discover the empty tomb of Jesus. They would be seen as stupid, hysterical and uneducated, who wouldn't be admitted to testify in court by a misogynistic society, and yet, somehow, Christian myth has them being the ones to testify that Jesus rose from the dead. Maybe Hitchens overlooked something on this point, too. Maybe the earliest Christians were a relatively feminist society, for example.

The reason such arguments hold water, despite the alternative possibilities, is because a new supposition, or an ad hoc argument designed to keep a hypothesis seeming consistent and plausible, is seen as strongly bringing down the probability of a hypothesis. You can do such a thing for any hypothesis that is otherwise inconsistent with the evidence or implausible.

You see it all the time in Christian apologetics, if you have ever argued with them on any historical point. There are two seemingly very different accounts of how Judas committed suicide; one has him hanging from a tree, and another has him falling headlong into a pit. Maybe they are both true--Judas hung himself from a tree at the edge of a ravine, the rope broke, Judas' body flipped over, and he fell headlong.

Toto

Have you noticed that this story originates in Mark, where the stupid, hysterical, uneducated women are the first to learn of the resurrection but run away without telling anyone? It is only later editors who twist this story to have them testify to the resurrection.

Most commentators think that Paul wrote before Mark. Paul does not record any women as the first to testify as to Jesus' resurrection. Jesus appears after his resurrection to men - from 1 Cor 15 first to Cephas, then the Twelve, then the five hundred brothers, then to James, then to all the apostles, then to Paul. No hysterical women in the list.