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Old 08-19-2013, 08:22 AM   #141
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paranoia taking over now?

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Wow spin, you surely deserve your name,
Send TedM back, whoever you are.

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Old 08-19-2013, 08:28 AM   #142
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In line with what some other people have said above, here are my reasons so far for viewing as a FAIL the application of the CoE to the crucifixion.

The NT scholar who uses the CoE to argue the historicity of the crucifixion reasons as follows. “Even though I can’t prove that the resurrection occurred, I can at least make a strong case that Jesus was crucified, because the early Christians would be embarrassed to preach a crucified messiah. They might have imagined or invented the resurrection to salvage their movement after its founder’s crucifixion, but they would not have made up the crucifixion itself—the probability would be too great that people would reject a cult of a crucified messiah.”

Against this:
1. I don’t have a background in prob. and stat., so my layman’s take may be off. It seems to me that, whatever the antecedent probability of success of a cult of a crucified messiah, the historical probability of its success is one. The face that it overwhelmed other cults shows that there were increasing numbers of people who did not reject the crucified messiah.

Why didn’t they?

2. Of the tradition that has reached us, there NEVER was a stage in which the message was anything other than the crucified AND resurrected messiah. A period of time during which the early Christians knew only a crucified messiah is itself an artifact of the gospels, the historicity of which is the subject of discussion. Away with a mere “crucified messiah.” The material under our scrutiny is all and only about a “crucified and resurrected messiah.” Even genuine or invented rebuttals from antiquity presuppose already a resurrected messiah. There are no nuggets of historical fact that can be detached as bare data from the tradition; all we have are various forms of the tradition.

3. And in that tradition is seen the genius of the cult’s message. It appeals to people of all stripes. Even the illiterate could look at pictures and see a Jesus who triumphed over the authorities who condemned and killed him. And so on.

So I think the CoE relies on unwarranted assumptions about intentions of people to whom, and in a time to which, we have no access outside of the already formed tradition of the crucified AND resurrected messiah.
And, how do we determine what would have been embarrassing to "early christians?" A comon mistake I see is exemplified by TedM's recent asertion that "average Jews" would have been repulsed by the christian story. This overlooks the probabilities that a) they were and b) early adherents to the Jesus cult were not "average Jews."
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Old 08-19-2013, 08:47 AM   #143
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Default A Metal Detector That Does Not Detect Metal

Hi TedM,

The Criterion of Embarrassment is meant to help distinguish a true or historical event from a false or fictional event.

There are two main arguments against the criterion of embarrassment, as I understand it.

1. It is difficult to know what a people or group might consider embarrassing at any particular place and time. This is especially difficult if people do not expressly tell us what they find embarrassing.

2. One may be as embarrassed by false things as by true things, so establishing embarrassment does not establish the true or historical nature of an event.

One may answer the first argument by declaring that a more complex understanding of a particular society, using whatever information we have available from that society will solve the problem. This is true and we are left to argue particulars. What evidence is there that this society or group found this embarrassing or not.

This same argument that better psychology and sociology will solve the problem cannot be applied to the second argument. The second argument cuts to the heart of the problem. Embarrassment cannot be summarily attached to truth because false things may equally well embarrass people.

This cannot be fixed by a more thoughtful application of the method. This criterion for delivering the truth simply does not deliver the truth. Let us say you give me a metal detector. You may say that it only works under certain conditions - there must be a certain amount of metal (at least 2 ounces), it must be between 3 and 10 feet from the surface of the ground, and the metal detector must be pointed in the correct direction. This I can accept. However, let us say that when all these conditions are met, the metal detector beeps when there is metal, but also when there is wood under the ground and plastic under the ground and even horse manure under the ground. In other words it beeps no matter what is under the ground. Now we can say that the metal detector is useless because it does not fulfill its basic function of detecting metal.

In the same way, even when we find and prove that some person or some group is embarrassed by data "A," we cannot say that data "A" is more likely to be true because people are embarrassed by it. The reason is that people are embarrassed by false things as well as by true ones.

I have already given examples such as the writers of Superman being embarrassed by Superman's not super enough leaping ability and Jim Carrey being embarrassed by the extreme violence portrayed in "Kick Ass 2". Here is another one.

In 1921, one of the leading comedians in Hollywood, movie star Roscoe Arbuckle, was arrested for the rape and murder of a young actress named Virginia Rappe. He went through three trials, the first two with hung juries, and was finally fully acquitted. The last jury deliberated for only five minutes before returning with a 12-0 not-guilty verdict. They also issued an apology saying that he should never have been arrested on such filmsy evidence. Apparently the woman had drunk too much at Arbuckle's party and passed out. The only things Arbuckle actually did to the woman was carry her from the floor to a bed and call a doctor to make sure she was okay. The overwhelming evidence in the case suggests that Virginia Rappe was not raped and/or murdered, but died of natural causes exacerbated by drinking.

The whole trial was an embarrassment for Arbuckle and for all of the Hollywood community. A section of the public, believing only malicious tales about Arbuckle's depraved Hollywood lifestyle, were never convinced of his innocence. He was banned from appearing in movies for the next ten years. Despite being totally innocent of the rape-murder charges, he felt that he had let his friends, family, community, and fans down. He was embarrassed by the events for the rest of his life. He died at age 44, a tragic, broken man.

This is another example of how something that did not happen can be an embarrassment to a person and group.

The "Criterion of Embarrassment" is like a metal detector that simply doesn't detect metal. it is a truth detector that doesn't detect truth.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin



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Why else would Jim Carrey be embarrassed by being in it, unless it was a true story?

Warmly,

Jay Raskin
Come on Jay. You're smarter than that. Why are all the folks here who don't like the criteria of 'embarrassment' so eager to simplify how it is is applied?
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Old 08-19-2013, 08:53 AM   #144
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paranoia taking over now?
No, the TedM I remember wouldn't have been such a putz as to fuck around with someone's name.

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Wow spin, you surely deserve your name,
Send TedM back, whoever you are.

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as that last post was a perfect example of how you hone in on requiring perfection in the meaning of words to such an extent that you end up discarding common sense and overlooking plain and obvious meaning.

First of all, whether Paul says the churches of Judea had the same faith or whether he says that OTHERS said they had the same faith is completely unimportant, yet you think it makes some kind of difference. What matters is what Paul was saying. He clearly was making a point that the faith WAS the same.

Secondly, your distinction regarding his use of "church of God" between universal usage and local doesn't change the fact that this is the term he uses for CHRISTIANS, whether they be universal or localized. You seem to be implying that the usage in Galatians is an interpolation, the favorite escape plan for those that don't like what they find in a verse: just make it disappear. And 1 Cor 10:32 is almost definitely a universal usage. He mentions Jews (universal), Greeks (universal), and the "church of God." Local? Doubtful.

Third, you minimize the context as I showed that the argument for persecuting Christians and then discovering his error through God's revelation is a lot more convincing than persecuting "messianists" who didn't believe in Jesus' resurrection from crucifixion.

Lastly, you skipped right on by the KILLER evidence, repeating your claim about the messianists again:

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21 Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. 22 I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea which were in Christ; 23 but only, they kept hearing, “He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy.”
How does this become a group that doesn't believe in Jesus' resurrection?

In summary, ALL of the above is very strong evidence that your preference for a generic messianic group that knew nothing of claims for a resurrected crucified Jesus are total unfounded and are clearly contradicted by what Paul tells us in Galatians was the situation. It just doesn't fit spin.

Of course the implications are HUGE, but you seem very committed to not be willing to take the step and just accept them, favoring instead extreme atomistic focus on certain things and complete blindness to the most important things.

And think about it: what would be the need for Jewish 'Christians' who followed the law but didn't believe Jesus had been a resurrected Messiah? And Paul, for whom the resurrection meant EVERYTHING--even willing to give up his own life for it, not only was submissive to the group ("lest I had been running in vain"), but he didn't even bother to mention that those so-called 'Christians' didn't believe Jesus had been resurrected? It's ludicrous to think that Paul would have ignored a difference in opinion over the truth of Jesus' resurrection in favor of a discussion about eating meat and requiring circumcision or not. It is simply too much of a stretch to be taken seriously.

Time to get serious and take a stand spin...go where the evidence leads you.
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Old 08-19-2013, 09:56 AM   #145
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The criterion of embarrassment is totally useless in the determination of historical accounts unless it can be shown that there cannot ever be embarrassing details in fiction or myth fables .
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Old 08-19-2013, 10:10 AM   #146
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...

Against this:
1. I don’t have a background in prob. and stat., so my layman’s take may be off. It seems to me that, whatever the antecedent probability of success of a cult of a crucified messiah, the historical probability of its success is one. The face that it overwhelmed other cults shows that there were increasing numbers of people who did not reject the crucified messiah.

Why didn’t they?
I think this is true, especially give your second point:

Quote:
2. Of the tradition that has reached us, there NEVER was a stage in which the message was anything other than the crucified AND resurrected messiah. . . .
This nails it. It might be embarrassing to have your Messiah crucified, but not if he defeats the crucifixion by rising from the dead, as the Jews thought their nation could rise from the defeat by the Roman army.
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Old 08-19-2013, 10:21 AM   #147
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as the Jews thought their nation could rise from the defeat by the Roman army.

No truth in that at all Toto. Which Jews?

Jews knew going against the Roman military was suicide, what they wanted and what they prayed for, and what would really happen is 4 different things.

Not only that Hellenistic Jews did not want to fight the Romans, they profited from working hand in hand with Romans and had it great over the typical oppressed Jew who followed any sort of "kingdom of god"
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Old 08-19-2013, 10:26 AM   #148
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as the Jews thought their nation could rise from the defeat by the Roman army.
Which Jews?

...
The Jews who invented the myth of the resurrected Christ and the other Jews who were attracted to it.
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Old 08-19-2013, 10:33 AM   #149
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paranoia taking over now?
No, the TedM I remember wouldn't have been such a putz as to fuck around with someone's name.
A little sensitive I see...yet with seemingly little reason to be since you are the one who chose a name that is ideally suited for comments like mine on a board in which you are providing your own interpretations of things. Unless you are telling me that is your real name, I don't see any reason for either one of us to see it as anything but a minor acceptable dig to illustrate my point.
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Old 08-19-2013, 10:48 AM   #150
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...

Against this:
1. I don’t have a background in prob. and stat., so my layman’s take may be off. It seems to me that, whatever the antecedent probability of success of a cult of a crucified messiah, the historical probability of its success is one. The face that it overwhelmed other cults shows that there were increasing numbers of people who did not reject the crucified messiah.

Why didn’t they?
I think this is true, especially give your second point:

Quote:
2. Of the tradition that has reached us, there NEVER was a stage in which the message was anything other than the crucified AND resurrected messiah. . . .
This nails it. It might be embarrassing to have your Messiah crucified, but not if he defeats the crucifixion by rising from the dead, as the Jews thought their nation could rise from the defeat by the Roman army.
Embarrassment isn't exactly the right criteria to apply to the idea of a crucified Messiah. I would say it is more along the lines of an 'unexpected, against the grain, concept that the Jews would be highly resistant to accept'. Furthermore there is no indication in the NT writings that anyone thought Jesus was going to come back and fight the Romans, so you appear to be making things up to remove the 'embarrassment'.
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