Criteria of Embarrassment in secular history

[andrewcriddle]

The criteria of Embarrassment (If X didn't happen no one would want to claim it did) is an important tool in study of the Historical Jesus. It has been claimed that this criteria is not used outside religious studies.

I came across recently a counter-example. In M. Manlius and the Geese by Horsfall there is a discussion of the traditions of the Gothic (should be Gauls) sack of Rome c 387 BCE.

In the standard account the Goths (should be Gauls) failed to take the Capitoline Hill and an attempt to do so was foiled by the warning given to the Roman sentries by geese. However there is a minority tradition that the Goths (should be Gauls) did seize the Capitoline Hill and hence held briefly all Rome. Horsfall argues in detail that this minority tradition is prima-facie credible and is found in Roman as well as Greek sources. He then argues that we should believe this tradition because if it didn't happen Roman sources would never have claimed it did, while if it did happen there would be a strong tendency for a less humiliating version of the sack too develop.

This is in effect a use of the criteria of Embarrassment .

Andrew Criddle

[Secret Alias]

I am not against the use of the criteria of Embarrassment. Thank you Andrew.

[GakuseiDon]

I hope Andrew doesn't mind me jumping in here. The Criterion is common sense. Before people start dumping on the Criterion using strawmen, which ALWAYS happens , it's important to note that Meier, who coined the term, also noted that it has limitations. I have the following quote from Meier in my notes, but I didn't have the reference unfortunately:

"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 from 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."

As I said, the Criterion is common sense. It can certainly be criticised, but if someone wants to criticise it please use actual cases where it is used. Don't create strawman versions -- hypothetical scenarios where the Criterion doesn't even apply -- as though that is a critique of the Criterion.

Every discussion I've seen on the Criterion on this board ALWAYS involves strawmen examples. ALWAYS. I'd love to see a thread that doesn't use strawmen, that focuses on actual examples.

I'll start by saying that the reason the Criterion works is that we have four Gospels, telling the same story, written over a short period of time, in which themes evolve and change. One of the factors in the evolution of themes is arguably "embarrassment". But as Meier notes, there are only a handful of examples in the Gospels proposed by scholars. That's in contrast to the thousands of strawmen examples made by "critics" of the Criterion.

Let's buck the trend, focus on actual examples and keep the strawmen burning to a minimum! Good luck everyone!

[Giuseppe]

Richard Carrier is not opposed to the use of the Criterion of Embarrassment to argue that Jesus was a seditionist. But Carrier points out that before the historicity of Jesus has to be proved (independently from the criterion), and only after the criterion of embarrassment can have some force to argue that Jesus was a seditionist.

[mlinssen]

What Don said. Don't forget that at some point something becomes history, irreversible, chiseled in stone and filled with blood for good measure.
I think Matthew would have given an arm and a leg to revert the baptism of IS, he goes through enough trouble as it is

I think we see thousands of examples of the criterion of embarrassment in everyday politics: we all just know for (almost) certain that X did Y, yet they deny. They always deny - until they can't any longer. And then they can't any longer.
There's a threshold, there always is, and it exists for evertyhing but depends on so many factors, important ones of which involve time and place. You can grab (hey hello DSK) a cleaning maid by the ... in your hotel room behind closed doors, but I wouldn't repeat it to e.g. Oprah on her talkshow.
And so forth (I just happened to see the movie the other day, it was late, and it startled me LOL)

So, I would love for future applications of the criterion of embarrassment to involve an additional criterion: the criterion of undoing what was done.
I mean if your wife knows about it, you know that there's no way back. If the boss of your boss knows, and they have a bad relationship, you know you're toast. And so on

So

Oh yes it certainly was embarassing to have IS baptised - but could it be undone?
Because there's one thing I've learned over the years: for whatever extremely fascinating reasons, whatever was written in an NT text somehow became untouchable even before the ink had dried. We have plenty of examples outside, for instance the Apocryphon of John in 4 fairly different versions, but how controlled, managed and monitored was the entire "NT environment"? It must have been ruthlessly managed: once something was written, it was written - John's Pilate would love that

No one uses the criterion of embarassment for

Mark 7:18 And He says to them, “Thus are you also without understanding? Do you not understand that everything entering into the man from outside is not able to defile him, 19 because it does not enter into his heart, but into the belly, and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus purifying all foods.)

because we all know

Matthew 15:20 These are the things defiling the man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man.”

But isn't Mark just utterly painfully embarassing to all of the alleged Judaic clientele and future flock? Holy smoke, he is - and it just had to be undone - so Matthew goes ahead and does it.
Likewise for making the two one, a favourite Thomasine theme gone totally tits up - and Matthew even resorts to blasphemy, putting word into the mouth of Gawd without even blushing

Mark 10:6 but from the beginning of creation, ‘He made them male and female.’ 7 ‘On account of this, a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8 and the two will be for one flesh.’ Therefore they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

Matthew 19:4 And answering He said, “Have you not read that the One having created from the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘On account of this a man will leave the father and mother and be joined with his wife, and the two will become into one flesh’?

So. Embarassing, fine. But can it be undone, and the counterweight to that: how extremely important is it to undo it nonetheless?

[Sinouhe]

I have the following quote from Meier in my notes, but I didn't have the reference unfortunately:

A Marginal Jew : Tome 1 chapter 6 p170.

[mbuckley3]

Gauls not Goths !

I like Nicholas Horsfall's articles a lot. But here I suspect that Neil might point out that he was primarily a literary critic, not an historian, and that the sources he cites here are far from contemporary with the events...

[GakuseiDon]

I have the following quote from Meier in my notes, but I didn't have the reference unfortunately:

A Marginal Jew : Tome 1 chapter 6 p170.

Excellent! Thanks for that, Sinouhe.

[Leucius Charinus]

EXAMPLE 3: The Criterion of Embarrassment :

“Since Christian authors would not invent anything that would embarrass them,
anything embarrassing in the tradition must be true.”

Major Premise 1: Christians would not invent anything that would embarrass them.
Minor Premise 1: The crucifixion of Jesus would embarrass Christians.
Conclusion 1: Therefore, Christians did not invent the crucifixion of Jesus.

Major Premise 2: A report is either invented or it is true.
Minor Premise 2 (= Conclusion 1): The crucifixion of Jesus was not invented.
Conclusion 2: Therefore, the crucifixion of Jesus is true.

Another way to test rules of inference is to try them out on contrary cases. For example:

Major Premise 1: Cybeleans would not invent anything that would embarrass them.
Minor Premise 1: The castration of Attis would embarrass Cybeleans.
Conclusion 1: Therefore, Cybeleans did not invent the castration of Attis.

Major Premise 2: A report is either invented or it is true.
Minor Premise 2 (= Conclusion 1): The castration of Attis was not invented.
Conclusion 2: Therefore, the castration of Attis is true.

RESULT: This is obviously not a credible conclusion. We have no good reason to believe there was ever an actual Attis who was castrated and it is commonly assumed the story was invented for some particular symbolic reason. The same, then, could be true of the crucifixion of Jesus. Tacitus reports that the castration of Attis was indeed embarrassing (it is grounds for his disgust at the religion), yet the castration of Attis is not a credible story, therefore the criterion of embarrassment is in some manner fallacious.

An example within the Christian tradition is the astonishing stupidity of the Disciples, especially in the earliest Gospel of Mark. Their depiction is in fact so unrealistic it isn’t credible (real people don’t act like that), which means Mark (or his sources) invented that detail despite its potential embarrassment. Hence the flaw in the criterion of embarrassment is in assuming that historical truth is the only factor that can overcome the potential embarrassment of some reported detail, when in fact moral or doctrinal or symbolic truth can also override such concerns.

For example, Dennis MacDonald argues this attribute emulates the equally unrealistic stupidity of the crew of Odysseus and thus stands as a marker of the same things that their stupidity represented. That may be true. But I also argue it furthers a literary theme found throughout Mark of the Reversal of Expectation. [2] Thus everything that seems embarrassing in Mark might be an intentional fabrication meant to convey a lesson. Mark echoes the gospel theme that “the least shall be first” in his construction of all his stories: although Jesus tells Simon Peter he must take up the cross and follow him, Simon the Cyrenean does this instead; although the pillars James and John debate who will sit at Jesus’ right and left at the end, instead two nameless thieves sit at his right and left at the end; although the lofty male Disciples flee and abandon Jesus, the lowly female followers remain faithful, and as a result the least are the first to discover that Christ is risen; and while Mark begins his Gospel with the “good news” of the “voice crying out” of the lone man who boldly came forward as a “messenger who will prepare our way,” he ends his Gospel with several women, fleeing in fear and silence, and not delivering the good news, exactly the opposite of how his book began. So since details that seem embarrassing in Mark might serve his literary intentions, we can’t be certain they’re true.

This final example exposes the importance of testing criteria by comparing them with alternative theories of the evidence. You must ask yourself, what if I’m wrong? What other reasons might Christians have for inventing potentially embarrassing stories? And how do those reasons compare with the theory that they reported embarrassing stories because they were true? Bayes’ Theorem suits exactly such an analysis.

Richard C. Carrier, Ph.D.
“Bayes’ Theorem for Beginners: Formal Logic and Its Relevance to Historical Method — Adjunct Materials and Tutorial”
The Jesus Project Inaugural Conference
“Sources of the Jesus Tradition: An Inquiry”
5 December 2008 (Amherst, NY

Also relevant from same above source:

1. Essential Reading on “Historicity Criteria”

* Stanley Porter, The Criteria for Authenticity in Historical-Jesus Research: Previous Discussion and New Proposals (Sheffield Academic Press: 2000).

* Christopher Tuckett, “Sources and Methods,” The Cambridge Companion to Jesus, edited by Markus Bockmuehl (Cambridge University Press: 2001): pp. 121-37.

* Gerd Theissen and Dagmar Winter, The Quest for the Plausible Jesus: The Question of Criteria (John Knox Press: 2002)

[GakuseiDon]

Major Premise 2: A report is either invented or it is true.
Minor Premise 2 (= Conclusion 1): The castration of Attis was not invented.
Conclusion 2: Therefore, the castration of Attis is true.
...
Richard C. Carrier, Ph.D.
“Bayes’ Theorem for Beginners: Formal Logic and Its Relevance to Historical Method — Adjunct Materials and Tutorial”
The Jesus Project Inaugural Conference
“Sources of the Jesus Tradition: An Inquiry”
5 December 2008 (Amherst, NY

This is exactly what I referred to above: use of hypothetical examples rather than actual examples. If Dr Carrier wanted to argue against someone's usage of the CoE, then fair enough! But since it should be used in conjunction with other criteria where possible, then he'd need to show what other criteria was being used. Otherwise it is indeed a strawman.

This is from Carrier's "Proving History" where he discusses the CoE in relation to Attis:

But sometimes we cannot even fathom the motivation. The castration of Attis and his priests was widely regarded by the ancient literary elite as disgusting and shameful, and thus was a definite cause of embarrassment for the cult, yet the claim and the practice continued unabated. No one would now argue that the god Attis must therefore have actually been castrated.

And he is right. We can't fathom the motivation. So why even give it as an example of CoE in the first place? If someone else has proposed that "therefore the castration of Attis is true", then by all means bring it up. But otherwise it is a strawman that even Carrier should recognise as a strawman.

On his comment about Dennis MacDonald: I'd like to see the full argument. It sounds like a disagreement over premises, which is fair enough. But the conclusion wouldn't be "therefore the CoE is never useful" but rather "therefore the CoE doesn't apply in this particular case."