GakuseiDon

That's right, that's what I'm saying.

I think you mean "explanatory power" rather than "predictive". I don't know of any independent research article that examines the CoE, I'm afraid. It's used to explain why we see the different versions of Jesus' baptism by John in the Gospels, and the de-emphasizing of Jesus' prediction that the end of the world was coming. But I'm not aware that these examples have been subjected to independent research.

Toto

That is not the use of the criterion of embarrassment in Historical Jesus studies. It is intended to separate out the original sayings of Jesus from later embellishments, even if they are within the same text.

David Deas

No. I mean predictive powder.

Explanatory power is useless since all theories about the historicity of Jesus Christ possess essentially the same explanatory power considering the almost utter lack of credible evidence and or information concerning early Christianity.

You do not need to study independent examples. You need to study the ability of your criteria to make accurate predictions about truth values.

I am aware that there have been no independent studies regarding the CoE. I was being sarcastic (as I guess you could not tell). However I thought you might have tried pointing out, for example, how flawlessly embarrassment criteria works at deciding rape cases or something of that nature? Rape is such an embarrassing victimization that it becomes inconceivable for women to lie about it. The available statistics on false rape convictions make that painfully obvious.

aa5874

So, in effect, embarrassing details may have been included in the NT to produce the opposite outcome.

Embarrassing details in the NT may have been to deceive.

David Deas

I don't know what "embarrassing details" anybody here is talking about.

I've seen the Nazareth issue raised as a potential candidate for the application of CoE, but the problem there is that only a small minority of scholars believe Matt 2:23 had no root in the Old Testament and was for some unknown reason fabricated entirely by Matthew himself. The other problem is that there is no prophesy anywhere explaining that the Messiah was to be born in the city of Bethlehem.

aa5874

Well, there is really no prophecy for the Jesus Messiah at all and that in itself is quite embarrassing.

Isaiah 7.14 was taken out of context and the rest is mythology.

GakuseiDon

How would it be used for its predictive power? What would it predict?

I didn't know that anyone had tried to use it for that purpose. Do you have any links on that? Meier and others always stress that it isn't a fail-proof guide to authenticity.

I haven't thought about it in terms of other cases. If it works at all, it is only because we have a number of documents -- Gospels, early letters -- dealing with one subject -- where we can see viewpoints changing over a few generations. The CoE attempts to explain what we see, to try to peer into the text for some original saying or action by Jesus. Of course, we are assuming that there was a historical Jesus, and we are assuming that the Gospels accurately reflect somewhat what he said and did, and we are assuming that we have an accurate picture of the text at the time.

Here is an example from "A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus" by John P Meier:

A similar case is the affirmation by Jesus that, despite the Gospels' claim that he is the Son who can predict the events at the end of time, including his own coming on the clouds of heaven, he does not know the exact day or hour of the end. Almost at the conclusion of the eschatological discourse in Mark 13, Jesus says: "But concerning that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (Mark 13:32). It is not surprising that a few later Greek manuscripts simply dropped the words "nor the Son" from the saying in Mark [11]. A significantly larger number of manuscripts omit "nor the Son" in the parallel verse in Matthew (Matt 24:36), which was more widely used in the patristic Church than Mark--hence the desire to suppress the embarrassing phrase especially in Matthew. The saying is simply not taken over by Luke. In John, not only is there nothing similar, but the Fourth Evangelist goes out of his way to stress that Jesus knows all things present and future and is never taken by surprise (see, e.g. John 5:6, ...). Once again, it is highly unlikely that the Church would have taken pains to invent a saying that emphasized the ignorance of its risen Lord, only to turn around and seek to suppress it. (page 169)

spamandham

Let's go with that. In Mark, John is said to be preaching baptism for the forgiveness of sin. Mark then has John baptize Jesus. Matthew changed this to omit the 'forgiveness of sin' part. This is used by proponents of the criterion to claim that Matthew must have connected the dots and realized this meant that Jesus was a sinner, and since that was embarrassing, he ommitted that part.

That seems reasonably plausible, and so for the sake of argument I'll grant that it is actually the case.

So now it's your turn. What are the proper conclusions to be drawn?

GakuseiDon

That John's baptism of Jesus appears to have been something rooted in the earliest traditions, and therefore reflecting something that actually happened. As the Wiki article states:

Stephen L. Harris[20] has stated that historians know little about the historical Jesus, but that they generally agree that he was baptized by John the Baptist. Scholars who follow the historical-critical method find this event credible because it satisfies the criteria of multiple attestation and dissimilarity, that is, multiple sources attest to its happening, and it is not the sort of detail that early Christians would make up. Like the crucifixion, it meets what they call the criterion of multiple attestation and the criterion of embarrassment. Even scholars who credit very little of the Gospel narratives, such as Paula Fredriksen, affirm the historicity of Jesus' baptism.

* Multiple Attestation: Three canonical Gospels and various non-canonical sources agree that John baptized Jesus. The fourth canonical Gospel and other canonical and non-canonical sources also attest to John's ministry of baptism. Josephus, for example, recounts John's ministry. Thus Jesus' baptism meets this criterion, while less well-attested elements of the Gospels, such as the Massacre of the Innocents, do not.

* Embarrassment: Scholars of this method give special credence to Gospel accounts that are "dissimilar" to the image that early Christians generally portray of Jesus. This why some refer to this criterion as that of "dissimilarity". Since Jesus was regarded as without sin (and not in need of baptism) and to be greater than John, early Christians would have had no motive to invent such a scene, which would have been an embarrassment to them. The last-written Gospel does not mention Jesus' baptism. Thus Jesus' baptism meets this criterion, while more glorifying elements of the Gospel narratives, such as his virgin birth, do not.

Continuing on with Meier's description of the criterion (my emphasis):

The fact that embarrassing material is found as late as the redaction of the Gospels reminds us that beside a creative thrust there was also a conservative force in the Gospel tradition [13]. Indeed, so conservative was this force that a string of embarrassing events (e.g. baptism by John, betrayal by Judas, denial by Peter, crucifixion by the Romans) called forth agonized and varied theological reflection, but no, in most cases, convenient amnesia. [14] In this sense, the criterion of embarrassment has an importance for the historian far beyond the individual data it may help verify.

Like all the criteria we will examine, however, 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 not numerous in the Gospel tradition; and a full portrait of Jesus could never be drawn with so few strokes. 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.

Meier goes on to give an example of this. Meier appears to see the CoE as helping to identify trends, such as a conservative force operating in the Gospel traditions, that might be useful for the historian when examining other passages, that goes beyond just the CoE.

aa5874

Your claim is misguided and completely FLAWED. The CoE did NOT help you to draw any conclusions about John's baptism.

You have ALREADY ASSUMED that the Gospels texts are accurate, and that Jesus was a figure of history.

You FIRST assume what you SEE in the text is accurate and then use the CoE to claim what You ASSUMED is what you SAW.