Is the criterion of embarrassment used in other contexts?
Posted: Mon Aug 05, 2024 5:03 am
Thanks in advance for any answer.
https://christiancadre.blogspot.com/201 ... ia-of.html
The Criterion is just common sense. The difficulty is applying it. As Meier wrote in his book "A Marginal Jew":
"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." (p170)
The CoE gets attacked as though it is used extensively when analysing early texts. But it isn't. There are only a handful of examples that use it. And even there, it is because we have four Gospel texts, written within a short span of each other, telling essentially the same story, but with certain details changed. It's a situation that lends itself to the use of the Criterion that is rare for ancient texts. But even there, there are noted limited applications.
Here's how this topic usually proceeds: someone makes up a silly strawman example ("Attis was castrated! That was embarrassing so it must have been true!") without noting any of the stated limitations of the Criterion, and then declares any use of it is problematic. So let's go! Let's have your strawman examples!
What I'd like to see is criticism of actual examples -- few as they are -- of its use. That might be fruitful.