aa5874

Your post is mis-leading. You don't really know what Jesus said, and it has not even been established that Jesus existed.

And you have already stated that the COE does not remove doubt, so the criterion could not have helped at all.

The so-called apocalyptic prophecy could have been written by the unknown author . And it has not even been established with any certainty when the so-called apocalyptic prophecy was written.

ApostateAbe

aa, thanks for your opinions.

Toto

This is my thread, and I think it got hijacked.

The point stands: NT scholars have used various criteria, including the criterion of embarrassment, to identify historicity in the gospels. No other discipline has used anything similar, beyond a vague indication that self-serving statement are less likley to be true than statements against interest, and certainly no other discipline has elevated that vague indication to a major tool in the search for historical truth.

These criteria have been criticized, but it is still common to hear historicists in the Jesus debate claim that the criteria are useful tools that have established some things as either facts or highly probable. If the Jesus Project does what it sets out to do, the criteria will be assigned to the dust bin of historical method.

Ben C Smith

A hijacked thread? In this forum? Come now.

Ben.

Toto

You are confusing "likely" with "more likely." If something has a likelihood of 1%, raising that probability to 2% makes it "more likely" but still not likely enough to be true.

I've read a bit on historiographical method, and I don't recall any historian who felt a need for a criterion of historicity. That is a unique feature of NT studies, where the actual existence of the founding figure of the religion is important, and the evidence is somewhat lacking.

The problem with most ancient accounts is that we have no way of knowing whether they are true, or embellished truth, or just a story. Most modern historians just leave things at that. Only NT scholars feel a need to force a decision on whether there is a real person behind the myths.

Jeffrey Gibson

Am I reading you correctly? Are you actually claiming that any tool used for determining truth X by discipline A that is not also used by disciplines B,C,D, etc., not only is, but must be judged, worthless for determining truth X? That the validity as well as the utility of a method for determining something is dependent upon how widely that method is used?

Jeffrey

Toto

No, that is not the logic of my statement. The criteria of embarrassment is invalid based on its own internal problems.

But scholars generally operate on a consensus, and it is significant that scholars in other fields have not adopted this criterion as a tool in historical research.

You do like to refer to scholarly consensus, don't you?

Ben C Smith

Historians use criteria, but they often call them something else, such as tests. Louis Gottschalk, Understanding History, page 150:

The historian, however, is prosecutor, attorney for the defense, judge, and jury all in one. But as judge he rules out no evidence whatever if it is relevant. To him any single detail of testimony is credible — even if it is contained in a document obtained by force or fraud, or is otherwise impeachable, or is based on hearsay evidence, or is from an interested witness — provided it can pass four tests:

(1) Was the ultimate source of the detail (the primary witness) able to tell the truth?

(2) Was the primary witness willing to tell the truth?

(3) Is the primary witness accurately reported with regard to the detail under examination?

(4) Is there any independent corroboration of the detail under examination?

Any detail (regardless of what the source or who the author) that passes all four tests is credible historical evidence. It will bear repetition that the primary witness and the detail are now the subjects of examination, not the source as a whole.

Or conditions. Gilbert J. Garraghan, A Guide to Historical Method, page 260:

For the reliability of the popular tradition of a historical fact, certain conditions must be fulfilled.

(a) Broad conditions: (1) Unbroken series of witnesses; (2) several parallel and independent series of witnesses.

(b) Particular conditions: (1) Content a public event of importance; (2) general belief for a definite period; (3) absence of protest during that period; (4) relatively limited duration; (5) influence of the critical spirit, and application of critical investigation; (6) absence of denial by the critically minded.

And sometimes a test is used that is not called a test or a condition or a criterion at all. Louis Gottschalk, Understanding History, page 163:

Even when the fact in question may not be well-known, certain kinds of statements are both incidental and probable to such a degree that error or falsehood seems unlikely. If an ancient inscription on a road tells us that a certain proconsul built that road while Augustus was princeps, it may be doubted without further corroboration that that proconsul really built the road, but would be harder to doubt that the road was built during the principate of Augustus. If an advertisement informs readers that "A and B Coffee may be bought at any reliable grocer's at the unusual price of fifty cents a pound," all the inferences of the advertisement may well be doubted without corroboration except that there is a brand of coffee on the market called "A and B Coffee."

Here incidental and probable could easily be read as a criterion, but Gottschalk does not frame his point that way.

It may be the case (and I personally think it largely is the case) that the particular criteria selected by NT scholars do not always line up with the tests or conditions used by historians in other fields. And I think Crossan was right about NT scholars scattershooting (my word, not his) their criteria rather unrigorously at times.

Ben.

Toto

But obviously, the gospels fail all of those "tests" miserably. That's why historicists resort to their "criteria."

Jeffrey Gibson

I see. I guess I thought that when you pointed out that ""No other discipline has used anything similar, beyond a vague indication that self-serving statement are less likley to be true than statements against interest, and certainly no other discipline has elevated that vague indication to a major tool in the search for historical truth", you were saying something else.
Assuming that you are correct, are you claiming that the reason they have not done so is because they have come to the same conclusion about this criterion that you have?

Whether I do or don't, it's certain that you are doing so here -- and (apparently) as something that proves your claim.

Jeffrey