ApostateAbe

All early Christian writings are relevant when we are trying to understand the early Christian perspective, regardless of whether or not some writings are based on others. The additions, omissions and edits would all shed light. Also, Matthew and Luke were based on Mark and the lost gospels of Q and L. The gospel of John was derived from its own independent tradition that gives a separate (though late) Christian perspective, and it is also useful. It is the only gospel that corroborates the Pauline inference that Peter was also named Cephas.

The point that there was a rivalry with the John the Baptist cult would make plausible historical sense, given that both the early Christian and JtB cults are closely associated in the same time, place and target audience. Josephus spends twice as much space writing about JtB and his cult, with no relation to Christians, than he does writing about Jesus and his following. The explanation that the historical baptism was embarrassing to Christians serves as an explanation, and it seems to be the best explanation we have for the details of the stories. A contrary position that depends on there being no explanation at all for the details should be seen as relatively weak, in my opinion. Though one explanation may excel above the others, we do have to be conscious that there is no absolute certainty of any explanation.

aa5874

Embarrassment is NOT evidence of anything. The CRITERION of Embarrassment produces false results.

In the NT, Peter attempted to walk on the sea towards Jesus and the same Jesus while walking on the sea saved Peter from sinking. See Matthew 14.

When the criterion of EMBARRASSMENT is used, the fiction story becomes true.

The Criterion of Embarrassment is most absurd and illogical since it implies that ONLY true stories can have embarrassing scenes.

How many times must the criterion of embarrassment be debunked as complete nonsense?

spamandham

In the Superman II movie, the Kryptonites stripped superman of his powers and superman finds himself rather weak and gets a bloody nose after a fight. Since this is embarrassing, therefor it is historical.

The 'criterion of embarrassment' has got to be one of the stupidest straws Historical Jesus Apologists in sheep-skin clothing have invented to grasp at. There's a reason no other historical field uses it - it's quackery at it's finest.

spamandham

The probability that an ancient writer would write something he considered embarrassing to himself or one of his heroes is fleetingly small.

If someone writing later on considered embarrassing something an earlier author wrote, in no way does that indicate anything about the veracity of what either author wrote. It indicates only that perspectives of the story had changed.

ApostateAbe

If we could make the most plausible explanatory sense of the Christian gospels as works of fiction designed for entertainment, then we most certainly could make sense of "embarrassment" that happens to a protagonist. It would be normal and expected. The best explanation for the Christian gospels would be that they were written by people who seriously believed the myths (i.e. Luke 1:1-4), and the explanation that it was originally a fiction story would be a stretch, though perhaps better than the position that the story was a myth with no further details beyond that.

ApostateAbe

I figure a lot of embarrassing details about the life of Jesus would be left out of the gospels, as long as the authors could get away with it. For something that was centrally important to the figure of Jesus, a gospel writer would have a choice between omitting it or putting a spin on it. Omitting it may be seen as considerably more embarrassing, so they put a put spin on it. That is what occurs in all modern cults. The explanation that Jesus was actually baptized by John serves as a plausible explanation, and it is seemingly the best explanation. Such an explanation loses when there is another explanation with greater explanatory power, explanatory scope, plausibility, consistency, and least ad hoc, be it a fictional explanation or whatever.

spamandham

There are substantial signs within the gospels that what we have is not the original version. If you examine Mark without the extended ending, it easily could be a Jew-esque version of a Greek tragedy. Luke is a later rework of the story.

Ok, by the time Luke was written, people had started taking the story seriously. ...and since in modern times there is a real Church of the Jedi writing what amounts to apologetics for the Star Wars series, therefor the original Star Wars movie is based on historical events. This is the most probable history of the church of the Jedi.

spamandham

We are discussing stories that are so filled with absurdities that they couldn't pass for crappy comic books in modern times, and you are arguing that the authors couldn't have left things out because ...why exactly? -because leaving it out would damage their credibility!? This is a story that involves a pig whisperer convincing a herd of pigs to commit suicide.

The ancients were not so stupid/smart that they would accept such obvious BS at face value while simultaneously critically recognizing an author is engaging in spin by leaving out embarassing stories.

This is so absurd, it's pointless to discuss.

If you think there is validity to the criterion you are supporting, demonstrate it's efficacy with case studies. Surely the crackpots....er uhm...mainstream HJ scholars who have come up with this idea didn't just pull it out of their asses.

ApostateAbe

Alright, so I think you are conscious of the challenge that your explanation has. It requires that the gospel of Luke, written in roughly the same style as the gospel of Mark, was intended to be believed as truth, and it was based on the gospel of Mark, which was intended to be read as entertaining fiction. If your explanation can account for the contents of the gospels with more explanatory power and plausibility, then you have the advantage, though I think you have an uphill battle. The beginning of the gospel of Mark lacks a sensible explanation for the status of Jesus, which Matthew and Luke both seem to attempt to fix with a miracle-birth story, though you think Luke was oriented toward the religious side. Without the ad hoc ending of the gospel of Mark, the gospel ends insensibly and abruptly, which I don't think you would expect in a Grecco-Jewish tragedy, which is expected to make elegant structural storybook sense from beginning to end.

ApostateAbe

The baptism of Jesus was central to the figure of Jesus. Jesus highly respected JtB (Matthew 11:11), and Christians retained the tradition of baptism. It would have been in the earlier times of the rivalry that Christians spun the baptism story of Jesus into something that benefits Jesus with respect to JtB instead of humiliates Jesus. The tradition of Mark spun it into a miracle story (Mark 1:9-11), where God uses the event to declare to Jesus in the presence of JtB, "You are my beloved son, in you I am well pleased."

"If you think there is validity to the criterion you are supporting, demonstrate it's efficacy with case studies. Surely the crackpots....er uhm...mainstream HJ scholars who have come up with this idea didn't just pull it out of their asses."

I figure it is a criterion we use in our day-to-day lives. You are less likely to believe the claims of those who are interested in you believing their claims, and you are more likely to believe the claims of those who are uninterested in you believing their claims. That is a simplified way to express the criterion of dissimilarity, but I think the essential point is that we need to find the best explanations for claims within the gospels that seem embarrassing. If those who argue that Jesus didn't exist fail against that criterion, then I am thinking maybe the criterion isn't really the problem. They want the gospels to be all false, but that does not seem to be the best explanation when the criterion of dissimilarity is applied to find passages that don't make sense unless they have historical elements. Apologists also have trouble with it. They want the gospels to be all true, but that does not seem to be the best explanation when the criterion of dissimilarity is applied to find historical claims that are apparently corrupted by the wishful thinking of the authors. I wouldn't recommend dismissing such a sensible and valuable method of judging explanations just because your position does not measure up when the method is applied. I would instead recommend changing your position. The antagonism against the criterion is strongly misplaced. Such methods are used throughout all academic and professional fields. It seems to me to be common sense. What sort of case study would you prefer?