Freethought & Rationalism Archive

PhilosopherJay · 08-06-2011, 01:56 PM

Hi All,

This is an example of how much absurdity can be found in much of what passes as serious mainstream Christian scholarship.

If you look under Criterion of Embarrassment in Wikipedia, you find the first example that they use is the baptism of Jesus. They see Matthew, Luke and John all being embarrassed by John’s baptism of Jesus and moving further and further away from it.

Quote:

The baptism of Jesus fits the criterion of embarrassment. In the Gospel of the Hebrews, Jesus is but a man (see Adoptionism) submitting to another man for the forgiveness of the "sin of ignorance" (a lesser sin but sin nonetheless). The Gospel of Matthew attempts to explain this dynamic by omitting the words "for the forgiveness of sin" and adds John's statement to Jesus: "I should be baptized by you.". The Gospel of Luke says only that Jesus was baptized, without explicitly asserting that John performed the baptism. The Gospel of John goes further and simply omits the whole story of the Baptism. This might show a progression of the Evangelists attempting to explain away and then suppress a story that was seen as embarrassing to the early church.

I would like to focus on just the first part of the argument about the relationship of the Gospel of the Hebrews to the Gospel of Matthew. This part of the argument, I will argue, is absurd and fantastic enough to discredit the whole example.

To begin with think about how ridiculous it is to begin with a quote from the Gospel of the Hebrews to prove any thesis since there is no consensus about what the Gospel of the Hebrews was or when it was written. Ron Jones in an article entitled Matthew’s Hebrew Gospel and the Gospel of the Hebrews notes:

Quote:

There has been much scholarly speculation about the Gospel to the Hebrews and a wide variety of opinion.
The evidence for the Gospel of the Hebrews or the Gospel According to the Hebrews is not like the evidence for the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Peter. Those gospels were found intact, but the Gospel According to the Hebrews is found only in quotes from various church fathers. The quotes are often very brief with little context given and prefaced by or followed by brief statements about the gospel itself. It has also been associated with two groups, the Nazareans (also spelled Nazarenes) who attempted to combine Judaism and orthodox Christianity and the Ebionites who attempted to combine Judaism and Gnostic Christianity.
This has caused much speculation among scholars about this gospel with little consensus.

To prove something we usually start with things that are well known and accepted. In this case, the writer has started with something little known and hardly accepted by anyone.

Back in 1924, Montague Rhode James in The Apocryphal New Testament, noted:

Quote:

This is on a different level from all the other books we have to deal with. It was a divergent yet not heretical form of our Gospel according to St. Matthew. Even to sketch the controversies which have raged about it is impracticable here. What may be regarded as established is that it existed in either Hebrew or Aramaic, and was used by a Jewish Christian sect who were known as Nazaraeans (Nazarenes), and that it resembled our Matthew closely enough to have been regarded as the original Hebrew of that Gospel. I believe few, if any, would now contend that it was that original. It is generally, and I believe rightly, looked upon as a secondary document. What was the extent of the additions to or omissions from Matthew we do not know.

It is a radical assumption without good evidence that the text referred to as “the Gospel of Hebrews” gives a backstory which the Gospel of Matthew deviates from. The Gospel of the Hebrews is known mainly through the late Fourth century writer Jerome who quotes from it numerous time. He quotes two passages that relate to the Baptism of Jesus:

Quote:

Dialogue against Pelagius, iii.2. In the Gospel according to the Hebrews which is indeed in the Chaldean and Syrian speech but is written in Hebrew letters, which the Nazarenes use to this day, called 'according to the apostles', or, as most term it, 'according to Matthew', which also is to be seen in the library of Caesarea, the story tells: Behold, the mother of the Lord and his brethren said unto him: John Baptist baptizeth unto the remission of sins; let us go and be baptized of him. But he said unto them: Wherein (what) have I sinned, that I should go and be baptized of him? Unless peradventure this very thing that I have said is a sin of ignorance.

Quote:

On Isa. xi.2. (The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him) not partially as in the case of other holy men: but, according to the Gospel written in the Hebrew speech, which the Nazarenes read, 'There shall descend upon him the whole fount of the Holy Spirit'. . . .In the Gospel I mentioned above, I find this written: And it came to pass when the Lord was come up out of the water, the whole fount of the Holy Spirit descended and rested upon him, and said unto him: My son, in all the prophets was I waiting for thee that thou shouldst come, and I might rest in thee. For thou art my rest, and thou art my first begotten son, that reignest for ever.

Compare these quotes with Matthew:

Quote:

3.13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him
3.14 John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" 3.15 But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness."
3.16 And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; 3.17 and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."

Did Matthew cut material about Jesus and his family recommending the baptism to Jesus or did the Gospel of the Hebrews expand upon Matthew? Did Matthew cut material about the Holy Spirit explaining that all the prophets were really talking about Jesus and that Jesus will reign forever or is the Gospel of the Hebrews expanding from Matthew’s simple formula to add a great deal of new information?

The Wikipedia embarrassment article argues that subtraction is going on:

Quote:

In the Gospel of the Hebrews, Jesus is but a man (see Adoptionism) submitting to another man for the forgiveness of the "sin of ignorance" (a lesser sin but sin nonetheless). The Gospel of Matthew attempts to explain this dynamic by omitting the words "for the forgiveness of sin" and adds John's statement to Jesus: "I should be baptized by you."

In fact, the passage does not say that Jesus was asking for forgiveness for committing the “sin of ignorance”. He says, “Wherein (what) have I sinned, that I should go and be baptized of him? Unless peradventure this very thing that I have said is a sin of ignorance.” Jesus specifically says that he has not sinned "Wherein (what) have I sinned, that I should go and be baptized of him?" He admits only that there may be a sin that he does not know about. This could be a reference to the sin of being disobedient to mothers, which is not discussed at all in New Testament text by Jesus or any one else.

Jesus is being a good son by following his mother and brothers and getting baptized. Compare this to Matthew, where Jesus only goes through the motions of baptism because “it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness."

The Gospel of Hebrews, not only agrees with this notion that it is fitting to act righteous, but adds the illustration of Jesus acting righteous by obeying his mother and brothers.

We can thus see that the Gospel of Hebrews is not subtracting from Matthew, but expanding to include the specific statement that Jesus was without sin (only hinted at in Matthew) and to show Jesus as being obedient to his parents. He obeys his father in the New Testament gospels and here he obeys his mother too.

This quote comes from Jerome who was writing in the late Fourth century. It is only attested by him. At this point in time, the Catholic Church is being represented as a motherly figure and the Christian Roman government as a fatherly figure. This passage is certainly useful in showing that to be like Jesus one must obey one’s mother as well as one’s father. It is interesting to note in Rome, according to Jerome's Wiki biography that Jerome “was surrounded by a circle of well-born and well-educated women, including some from the noblest patrician families, such as the widows Lea, Marcella and Paula, with their daughters Brasília and Eustochium. They certainly would welcome this call to be obedient to mothers.

There is a perhaps relevant quote by Origen in his Commentary on John (2.6):

Quote:

If any one should lend credence to the Gospel according to the Hebrews, where the Saviour Himself says, My mother, the Holy Spirit took me just now by one of my hairs and carried me off to the great mount Tabor, he will have to face the difficulty of explaining how the Holy Spirit can be the mother of Christ when it was itself brought into existence through the Word. But neither the passage nor this difficulty is hard to explain. For if he who does the will of the Father in heaven Matthew 12:50 is Christ's brother and sister and mother, and if the name of brother of Christ may be applied, not only to the race of men, but to beings of diviner rank than they, then there is nothing absurd in the Holy Spirit's being His mother, every one being His mother who does the will of the Father in heaven.

The two quotes by Jerome on John's baptism of Jesus seem to be related to this passage, in that he talks about Jesus' mother in one quote from Hebrews and "the Holy Spirit" in the other. Here Origen quotes a passage from Hebrews Jesus' mother and immediately relates it to the Holy Spirit. Origen, writing 100 years before Jerome, doesn't think the passage is earlier than the Gospel of Matthew.

On this basis alone, we can strongly doubt that this fourth century quote from Jerome represents any First or Second century material. However the other quote about baptism provides more evidence. “the whole fount of the Holy Spirit descended and rested upon him, and said unto him: My son, in all the prophets was I waiting for thee that thou shouldst come, and I might rest in thee. For thou art my rest, and thou art my first begotten son, that reignest for ever.”

This quote not only include the ideas expressed by Matthew “And lo, a voice from the heavens, saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” But adds the specific ideas that 1) it was the whole fount of the Holy Spirit speaking, 2) that the holy spirit “rests” in Jesus alone, and 3) Jesus reigns for ever.

The term “Fount of the Holy Spirit” was first used in a contemporary document in the 370’s by Basil, bishop of Caesarea. In his work On the Holy Spirit, he writes (chapter 15:174), “But whether in this place one understands the Fount to be the Father or the Son, we certainly do not understand a fount of that water which is created, but the Fount of that divine grace, that is, of the Holy Spirit, for He is the living water”

Saint Ambrose repeats the concept in Three Books On the Duties of the Clergy (chapter15), “The Holy Spirit is Life equally with the Father and the Son, in truth whether the Father be mentioned, with Whom is the Fount of Life, or the Son, that Fount can be none other than the Holy Spirit.
Thus the terminology we find quoted by Jerome in the Gospel of the Hebrews is Fourth century terminology. How does a first or second century text know the future so well that it uses terminology that becomes popular among Church fathers in the late Fourth century?

We do find some text used by Jerome that is earlier. Clement of Alexandria in Stromata 2.9 writes “in the Gospel to the Hebrews it is written, "He that wonders shall reign, and he that has reigned shall rest.”

This actually comes from the second saying of the Gospel of Thomas as found at Oxyrhincus “"Let him who seeks not cease until he finds, and when he finds he shall wonder; wondering he shall reign, and reigning shall rest." See Fragments of the Greek Gospel of Thomas. Jerome has mashed up this Thomas saying with Matthew’s gospel and Basil’s work On the Holy Spirit to get this Gospel of Hebrews saying “And it came to pass when the Lord was come up out of the water, the whole fount of the Holy Spirit descended and rested upon him, and said unto him: My son, in all the prophets was I waiting for thee that thou shouldst come, and I might rest in thee. For thou art my rest, and thou art my first begotten son, that reignest for ever.”

Jerome seems to be mashing up the Clement/Gospel of Thomas quote with the writings of Cyril and Ambrose. One has to consider it most likely that Jerome has been fooled by contemporary text pretending to be the mythological Gospel of the Hebrews, or he is the perpetrator of the hoax.

Furthermore Jerome and the Gospel of the Hebrews has been questioned by modern scholars such as Helmut Koester (Introduction to the New Testament: History and literature of early Christianity. P. 209):

Quote:

This hypothesis has survived into the modern period. but several critical studies have shown that it is untenable. First of all, the Gospel of Matthew is not a translation front Aramaic but was written in Greek on the basis of two Greek documents (Mark and the Sayings Gospel Q). Moreover, Jerome's claim that he himself saw a gospel in Aramaic that contained all the fragments that lie assigned to it is not credible, nor is it believable that he translated the respective passages from Aramaic into Greek (and Latin). as he claims several times. Rather, Jerome found a number of these quotations in the writings of other church fathers (e.g.. Origen and Eusebius) and arbitrarily assigned them to his "Gospel According to the Hebrews" It can be demonstrated that some of these quotations could never have existed in a Semitic language.

Rather than believe in a Gospel of Hebrews, one might speculate that it was invented by the idea that Church fathers had that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew. A few stray quotes from other gospels were mistakenly attributed to it and by the time of Jerome in the late Fourth Century, he was able to string together a dozen or so quotes that supposedly came from it. If the evidence of Church fathers that such a work did exist is to be taken seriously at all, it is most likely that such a work was created by people using the Gospel of Matthew as a foundation.

Thus, the article in Wikipedia begins by demonstrating the criterion of embarrassment by taking a radical stance and going against the vast majority of scholars and assumes that a fourth century quote, allegedly from the Gospel of the Hebrews actually represents a document that is earlier than the Gospel of Matthew. The quote reflects fourth century language and issues. The quote seems to add a number of dogmatic points that would be more appropriate to the fourth century than any time before.

However, these problems, deadly enough to kill the argument a hundred times, aren’t the worse thing about it. The worse thing is that the movement from the Gospel of Hebrews to the Gospel of Matthew would actually indicate a lessening of embarrassment by writers of the gospels. The writer of the passage labeled as from the Gospel of the Hebrews actually has Jesus submitting to baptism due to obedience to family. The author of the gospel of Matthew has him submitting because it is generally a good thing. The authors of the Hebrews passage are so embarrassed that they have to find a specific reason for Jesus undergoing baptism – to please his family. They are more embarrassed than Matthew who just gives the general reason that it is good to do good things (“it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”)

Let us say that two people are picked up by police for attending an anti-government demonstration. When asked why they did it, one says, “I did it because it is a good thing to protest against the government and I always do good things.” The other says, “I did it because my family wanted me to and I always do what my family wants.” It is quite obvious that the second man who blames his actions on his family is the more embarrassed.

Thus this example of the criterion of embarrassment proves that embarrassment over Jesus’ baptism lessened from one text to another when it means to prove the opposite. The alleged original document, Hebrews, is more embarrassed than the supposed later document of Matthew.

The criterion of embarrassment may not be absurd, but the illustration used to explain it here is embarrassing absurd.

Toto · 08-06-2011, 04:19 PM

The article footnotes Doug Shaver's criticisms on the CoE, and the talk page references Richard Carrier's criticisms. But the whole article has been rated as low importance.

aa5874 · 08-06-2011, 05:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

....The criterion of embarrassment may not be absurd, but the illustration used to explain it here is embarrassing absurd.

As soon as Scholars claimed the Gospels were UNRELIABLE sources then any event in the NT may not have happened and were INVENTED.

And if the accounts in the NT were not historical accounts from the start then it really does NOT matter how embarrassing the stories appear.

For example, the author of the Long-Ending of gMark appears to hav been embarrassed by the Short-ending gMark resurrection story and invented an ending but both versions are fiction.

Unreliable sources FIRST NEED indepedent corroboration.

PhilosopherJay · 08-06-2011, 05:34 PM

Hi Toto,

Thanks for this.

I think the Wiki article says something about the state of New Testament scholarship. Even when illustrating one of the most generally used strategies for making points about the development of text, they can't come up with a simple and clear example.

When I first read the passage, I was surprised that the Gospel of the Hebrews was used instead of Mark. I thought perhaps the case was clearer in the Gospel of the Hebrews. When I started researching GOH, it became clear that the writer was putting in his/her own special agenda of somehow suggesting that there was a pre-New Testament Gospel source that was clearer to the facts about the historical Jesus.

I really wanted to examine the idea that the gospel of John was the Fourth Gospel based on the idea of the Criterion of Embarrassment. My original point was going to be that if we apply the criterion of embarrassment intelligently, we get to the position that Mark introduced the baptism of Jesus based on his reading of the Gospel of John. John the B. has no relationship in the Gospel of John to Jesus except that of witness. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is an unauthorized competitor to John. Mark was embarrassed by that and wanted to make Jesus a baptized disciple of John to give him some of John's authority. In Mark, Jesus is kind of an outlaw, hiding in the shadows and telling people to keep quiet about him. By having John baptize him, Jesus isn't just a John copy-cat (as the Gospel of John portrays him) but he's the legitimate heir of John. That's why Mark does it. Matthew and Luke are later embarrassed by it, so Matthew has Jesus force John to dip him and Luke is ambiguous (as usual) about the whole thing.
Unfortunately the Gospel of Hebrews nonsense stopped me in my tracks.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

The article footnotes Doug Shaver's criticisms on the CoE, and the talk page references Richard Carrier's criticisms. But the whole article has been rated as low importance.

PhilosopherJay · 08-06-2011, 05:59 PM

Hi aa5874,

I am not arguing that the Gospels were invented. I am arguing how they were invented. Besides the Gospels themselves being mythology, the history surrounding their production is also mythological. The idea that the apostle Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew or that there was a Gospel of the Hebrews before the Greek Gospel of Matthew is part of that mythology.

The Gospel of the Hebrews plays an interesting role in the development of the Gospels which has not been explored yet. Why do we have half a dozen Church Fathers telling us of this Gospel without making the least effort to find it and use it for information regarding Jesus? Why do they not write commentaries on it? Why do they not denounce its falsehoods if they believe it was not the actual Gospel of the Hebrews that Matthew wrote?
The totally blase attitude they have towards this gospel as opposed to their venom against the heretical gospels suggests to me that they found this gospel useful. As long as people thought that the Gospel of the Hebrews written by Matthew existed, the Gospel of Matthew could not be closed. Something from the Greek Gospel of Matthew could always have been eliminated as not conforming to the mysterious unknown Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, or something could always be added. Christians of the Second and Third Centuries did not want a closed canonical Gospel of Matthew. They wanted to cut and add things at will to deal with new and arising situations. They mythological Gospel of the Hebrews allowed them to do that at will. It allowed them to add a birth narrative in Bethlehem, move Jesus to Nazareth and to have a squad of Roman soldiers guarding Jesus' tomb to keep his disciples from stealing the body.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

....The criterion of embarrassment may not be absurd, but the illustration used to explain it here is embarrassing absurd.

As soon as Scholars claimed the Gospels were UNRELIABLE sources then any event in the NT may not have happened and were INVENTED.

And if the accounts in the NT were not historical accounts from the start then it really does NOT matter how embarrassing the stories appear.

For example, the author of the Long-Ending of gMark appears to hav been embarrassed by the Short-ending gMark resurrection story and invented an ending but both versions are fiction.

Unreliable sources FIRST NEED indepedent corroboration.

GakuseiDon · 08-06-2011, 06:26 PM

I thought that it had been agreed on FRDB that the criterion of embarrassment example was "Superman is weakened by kryptonite, this is embarrassing, therefore Superman is real"? :huh:

Anyway: I've never seen the Gospel of Hebrews used in the context of CoE for the baptism by John. Usually it starts with the Gospel of Mark. An example of how Meier uses the CoE in context of the baptism by John can be found here. He starts with GMark. No mention of the Gospel of the Hebrews.

Neil Godfrey's view of the CoE and the baptism by John is here. He uses GMark. No mention of the Gospel of the Hebrews.

Doug Shaver's link at the bottom of the Wiki article shows he starts with GMark, and again no reference to the Gospel of the Hebrews.

Initially I suspected that the author meant "the Gospel of Mark", but "sin of ignorance" is definitely from the Gospel of the Hebrews. So I have to wonder where that example actually came from? Which scholars are using the Gospel of the Hebrews instead of the Gospel of Mark in this context?

aa5874 · 08-06-2011, 06:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

Hi aa5874,

I am not arguing that the Gospels were invented. I am arguing how they were invented. Besides the Gospels themselves being mythology, the history surrounding their production is also mythological. The idea that the apostle Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew or that there was a Gospel of the Hebrews before the Greek Gospel of Matthew is part of that mythology....

Well, I really can't use UNRELIABLE sources that may been forged and perhaps written at some unknown time to make any claims about the Gospel of Hebrews.

Justin Martyr wrote nothing about the Gospel of Hebrews.

DCHindley · 08-07-2011, 06:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

Hi Toto,

Thanks for this.

I think the Wiki article says something about the state of New Testament scholarship. Even when illustrating one of the most generally used strategies for making points about the development of text, they can't come up with a simple and clear example.

When I first read the passage, I was surprised that the Gospel of the Hebrews was used instead of Mark. I thought perhaps the case was clearer in the Gospel of the Hebrews. When I started researching GOH, it became clear that the writer was putting in his/her own special agenda of somehow suggesting that there was a pre-New Testament Gospel source that was clearer to the facts about the historical Jesus.

I really wanted to examine the idea that the gospel of John was the Fourth Gospel based on the idea of the Criterion of Embarrassment. My original point was going to be that if we apply the criterion of embarrassment intelligently, we get to the position that Mark introduced the baptism of Jesus based on his reading of the Gospel of John. John the B. has no relationship in the Gospel of John to Jesus except that of witness. In the Gospel of John, Jesus is an unauthorized competitor to John. Mark was embarrassed by that and wanted to make Jesus a baptized disciple of John to give him some of John's authority. In Mark, Jesus is kind of an outlaw, hiding in the shadows and telling people to keep quiet about him. By having John baptize him, Jesus isn't just a John copy-cat (as the Gospel of John portrays him) but he's the legitimate heir of John. That's why Mark does it. Matthew and Luke are later embarrassed by it, so Matthew has Jesus force John to dip him and Luke is ambiguous (as usual) about the whole thing. Unfortunately the Gospel of Hebrews nonsense stopped me in my tracks.

The Wiki article in question is not exactly representative of modern NT criticism. If one follows the article's link to The Gospel of the Hebrews, which is much better written and actually draws on the secondary literature, nowhere mentions the criterion of embarrassment or dissimilarity.

Most modern critical interpretation of the baptism pericope preserved in Jerome's Commentary on Isaiah book IV (on Is. 11:2) has centered on whether it should be interpreted to mean that the Nazaraeans had an adoptionist POV about Jesus (Jesus the man adopted as Son by God).

Schneemelcher's New Testament Apocrypha (ET 1991 rev ed vol 1 pg 174) has this to say:

The story of the baptism (No. 2) also bears upon it mythical imprints. In the first place what happens is presented as inspiration and adoption. But the fact that it is not the voice (of God) which speaks out of the opened heaven as in the synoptic story of the baptism, but the Holy spirit that has come down, and also the content of the words tell against the view that not until his baptism was Jesus inaugurated as the Son of God.

It is true that the last sentence has the ring of an adoption formula, but that ring is as faint as as it is in Lk. 3:22 (contrasted with Mk. 1:11); for the two foregoing sentences assume Jesus' sonship, as the address "my Son" shows, and they characterise it otherwise than as a messianic dignity ("thou are my rest").

The Holy Spirit waits for the coming of his Son, clearly for his coming forth from pre-existence,; he has waited for him in all the prophets, but till now in vain; he waits for him that he may "rest" upon him.

This "resting" of the Spirit upon his Son is clearly something other than the resting of the Spirit of the Lord upon the Messiah (Isa. 11;2), and is not inspiration but complete and final union of the spirit with his Son ("the whole fount of the Spirit" comes down upon him: "thou art my rest"). The Holy Spirit speaks here as does the hypostatized divine Wisdom in the Jewish Wisdom Literature. As the spirit waited in vain to find "his rest" in all the prophets until the Son came, so Wisdom "seeks" her "rest" in vain in all peoples until she finds it in Israel. [citation is made to Ecclus. 24:7] ...

The "rest" that the Holy Spirit waits for and finally finds in his Son is the eschatological rest. This is also the objective of the pre-existent Redeemer who, according to the Jewish-Christian-gnostic Kerygmata Petrou. after endless change in form becomes incarnate in Jesus:

From the beginning of the world he runs through the ages, changing his form at the same time as his name, until in his time, anointed of God's mercy for his toil, he shall find his rest for ever. (ps. Clem.Hom. III 20.2:cf,Rec.II 22.4)

I find this warren of allusions variously to passages of the fragments (pp 177-178), gospel passages, church fathers and the editor's previous interpretations of the materials, kind of baffling. What he seems to be saying is that while the fragments of the Gospel of the Hebrews dealing with Jesus' baptism implies that Jesus was adopted and inspired at that moment, the language betrays a kind of preexistence of this Son at the same time, with the Spirit "resting" upon him as the actual revealing of this prexistent figure.

How this fits into the "embarrassment" debate does relate to whether the canonical Gospels made use of an Aramaic gospel written by the apostle Matthew. To those who think the Jewish-Christians held Jesus as an adopted Son of God, represented in this Gospel of the Hebrews, then "changes" to this depiction by the canonical Gospel writers, for whom Jesus is the manifestation of a preexisted Son of God, represent "embarrassment".

If one were to ask me, this whole line of argument makes all sorts of unstated assumptions drawing oh the high christology of the Pauline letters and Hebrews, not all of which are obviously alluded to in the canonical Gospels.

DCH

Doug Shaver · 08-07-2011, 06:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

The article footnotes Doug Shaver's criticisms on the CoE, and the talk page references Richard Carrier's criticisms.

It's not a footnote, strictly speaking, but I'm more than happy with whatever notice I can get.

mountainman · 08-08-2011, 08:18 AM

Hi Philosopher Jay,

The further the WIKI article proceeds the more absurd it gets. The final section seems to make an attempt at dealing with the limitations which have been acknowledged in the use of the criterion of embarassment. It makes reference to the psychopathic Infant Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

Quote:

Originally Posted by WIKI on CoE

Limitations

The criterion of embarrassment has its limitations and must always be used in concert with the other criteria. One built-in limitation to the criterion of embarrassment is that clear-cut cases of such embarrassment are few and far between. A full portrait of Jesus could never be based on such few data.

Another limitation stems from the fact that what we today might consider an embarrassment to the early Church was not necessarily an embarrassment in its own eyes.

Also, embarrassing details may be included as an alternative to an even more embarrassing account of the same event. As a purely hypothetical example, Saint Peter's denial of Jesus could have been a substitution for an even greater misdeed of Peter.[7]

A good example of the latter is found in the stories of the Infancy Gospels. In one account, a very young Jesus is said to use his supernatural powers first to strike dead, and then revive, a playmate who had accidentally bumped into him. If this tradition had been accepted as worthy of inclusion at some key juncture in the formation of the Christian Bible (and hence integrated in one way or another among the Canonical Gospels), arguably many modern Christians would find it quite embarrassing—especially, strict believers in biblical inerrancy; but apparently, as is strongly suggested by the mere existence of this early non-canonical pericope, it must not have been embarrassing to at least some early Christians.

It is more than reasonable to suspect that the Psychopathic Infant Jesus Story in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas was purposefully authored to be embarrassing for orthodox canonical Christians. I see it as a political comment against the books of the canon, aimed at discrediting its humorless authority.

Best wishes

Pete

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08-06-2011, 04:19 PM	#2
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	The article footnotes Doug Shaver's criticisms on the CoE, and the talk page references Richard Carrier's criticisms. But the whole article has been rated as low importance.

08-06-2011, 06:26 PM	#6
GakuseiDon Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 5,714	I thought that it had been agreed on FRDB that the criterion of embarrassment example was "Superman is weakened by kryptonite, this is embarrassing, therefore Superman is real"? :huh: Anyway: I've never seen the Gospel of Hebrews used in the context of CoE for the baptism by John. Usually it starts with the Gospel of Mark. An example of how Meier uses the CoE in context of the baptism by John can be found here. He starts with GMark. No mention of the Gospel of the Hebrews. Neil Godfrey's view of the CoE and the baptism by John is here. He uses GMark. No mention of the Gospel of the Hebrews. Doug Shaver's link at the bottom of the Wiki article shows he starts with GMark, and again no reference to the Gospel of the Hebrews. Initially I suspected that the author meant "the Gospel of Mark", but "sin of ignorance" is definitely from the Gospel of the Hebrews. So I have to wonder where that example actually came from? Which scholars are using the Gospel of the Hebrews instead of the Gospel of Mark in this context?

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