Aleph82 said
Very interesting! Are there any other law analogies you can think of that apply to the historical-critical studies?
Yes. Several Christian lawyers have written books and articles on the subject. You can Google “legal apologetics” and find far more information than you probably want to read. In my opinion, most of it is illogical and misleading to non-lawyers. I am a wannabe writer working on a book from the skeptical point of view.
I agree that the “admission against interest” exception to the normal hearsay rule in court seems very similar to the embarrassment principle in historical writing. The hearsay rules are intended to keep unreliable evidence out of court hearings. It is a very broad category. While most non-attorneys think it covers only second or third hand reports of factual matters, it actually covers virtually all types of evidence from “out of court” including documents. However there are numerous exceptions including the above-mentioned admission against interest. And woe to the lawyer who doesn’t know these exceptions in trial.
However , historical study is not as conservative in its admission of evidence and while preferring soundly based evidence, may take far weaker evidence, if that is all there is. As an example, Professor Ehrman discusses a number of texts, which are known only from references by critics, technically hearsay, under the law.
Aleph82 said
The question is rather would the intended audience and community find the story embarassing.
Amen! but I think the criteria is would the author include something if it was he/she who found it embarrassing. It’s certainly easy enough to misapply Wouldn’t the Apostles be embarrassed by claiming Jesus rose from the dead if in fact he didn’t?
On the one hand, John performing the baptism makes Jesus look inferior, but and here’s some pure speculation, suppose that didn’t occur to the author? Suppose Mark is attempting to address something else. Imagine some resurgence of interest in John the baptist around the time Mark is writing his gospel. Suppose people are fighting over whether Jesus was the Messiah. Claiming he got John’s “seal of approval” (baptism) might go along way in settling that controversy. The point is embarrassment requires a great deal of speculation. Not only about the authors immediate concerns, whether a particular author would be embarrassed, but also whether the writer in question would willingly suffer a certain amount of embarrassment to claim something more important.
I also don’t think we can go with the people always make the right choice defense.
@john76
“The gospels of Matthew and Luke both used the gospel of Mark, so the baptism of Jesus in either of them cannot be assumed to be independent of the attestation in Mark. The gospel of John also probably uses Mark too”
There’s no assumption. The question is whether or not there is evidence. verbatim wording is evidence of copying so it falls under collusion. It’s not far fetched at all to think that when Luke read Mark, he sat there shaking his head going wtf is this guy talking about, it didn’t happen that way…”
where there’s no evidence of collusion, there’s no assumption of it either. Also, probably and “may well have” aren’t evidence.
edstrelow said
I agree that the “admission against interest” exception to the normal hearsay rule in court seems very similar to the embarrassment principle in historical writing. The hearsay rules are intended to keep unreliable evidence out of court hearings. It is a very broad category. While most non-attorneys think it covers only second or third hand reports of factual matters, it actually covers virtually all types of evidence from “out of court” including documents. However there are numerous exceptions including the above-mentioned admission against interest. And woe to the lawyer who doesn’t know these exceptions in trial.However , historical study is not as conservative in its admission of evidence and while preferring soundly based evidence, may take far weaker evidence, if that is all there is. As an example, Professor Ehrman discusses a number of texts, which are known only from references by critics, technically hearsay, under the law.
Ed isn’t it evidence that can’t be cross examined (or heard in court) rather than unreliable evidence that hearsay rules were designed for. This is to say that evidence that can’t or isn’t brought to court is beyond the very mechanism for deciding on whether it is in fact reliable or not. My testimony in court that I saw Bill shoot Ted can be examined and evaluated in due process.
@MikeyS
“We can understand why the later Christian/Greek Gentiles may have been embarrassed about John baptizing Jesus but only because by that time they had elevated Jesus to God or the eternal Son of God”
This is a very good point. Embarrassment/self interest is all very maleable. I don’t think it works unless you have the specifics of the case. People do things contrary to their interests all the time says the smoker to the thief. Maybe the most famous example is Clinton/ Lewinsky. Democrats were all to happy to argue that the president had a girlfriend. Never mind that he also had a wife.
This is to say they were willing to acknowledge something potentially embarrassing to stave off a criminal or moral issues. Oddly many failed to realize that with accusations of sexual harassment being made; a girlfriend that also happened to be an underling was almost as good as an admission of guilt. I would suggest that 1.) people don’t always recognize what their interests are, what they dictate or what might be “embarrassing.. 2.) That people don’t always make the right decision
The criterion from embarrassment is not a law of the universe. Like Occam’s Razor it’s a useful tool when used in tandem with other such tools. And I think Occam’s Razor really applies here. You can speculate and make up all manner of reasonable sounding explanations but what explanation is the simplest that accords with what we know from our sources? The figure of John is present in all the earliest sources and is attested to by extra-biblical sources like Josephus. (In fact Josephus makes much more of John than he does of Jesus.) So why not just accept that Jesus had some kind of relationship with John?
But there’s another point that seems telling to me. Ask yourself, why is John in the story at all? He’s totally tangential to the main point of the story. If you’re making it all up you could have easily written the gospels and left him out completely. So why is John in the story? Because everybody knew about John and that Jesus had some kind of relationship with him. The writers are forced to include it but they try to mitigate it by adding the spin that John was the forerunner of Jesus. If somebody is making it all up why go to all that trouble of creating the character of John and then put yourself in the position having to diminish him?
Friar William was correct. Less is more.
Stephen said
The criterion from embarrassment is not a law of the universe. Like Occam’s Razor it’s a useful tool when used in tandem with other such tools. And I think Occam’s Razor really applies here. You can speculate and make up all manner of reasonable sounding explanations but what explanation is the simplest that accords with what we know from our sources? The figure of John is present in all the earliest sources and is attested to by extra-biblical sources like Josephus. (In fact Josephus makes much more of John than he does of Jesus.) So why not just accept that Jesus had some kind of relationship with John?But there’s another point that seems telling to me. Ask yourself, why is John in the story at all? He’s totally tangential to the main point of the story. If you’re making it all up you could have easily written the gospels and left him out completely. So why is John in the story? Because everybody knew about John and that Jesus had some kind of relationship with him. The writers are forced to include it but they try to mitigate it by adding the spin that John was the forerunner of Jesus. If somebody is making it all up why go to all that trouble of creating the character of John and then put yourself in the position having to diminish him?
Friar William was correct. Less is more.
The “John the Baptist baptizes Jesus” pericope could just be historical fiction. Historical fiction often includes real people in the narrative: e.g. Superspy Bob saves President Obama’s life.
john76 said
There is no reason to think that a Gospel writer would not say something negative about Jesus, so that any portrayal of Jesus in a negative light must be historical. In the Mahabharata [Hindu scripture written around the same time as the Tanakh], the stories of the heroes are full of their foibles, mistakes, wrong doings and more. It is the same with the Iliad and the Odyssey (Greek) — written close enough to a similar time. So the historical data shows ancient fiction and religious scripture is often written with imperfections and such to make the story believable, more interesting, relatable and more.And take the example of Jesus’ baptism by John The Baptist in the gospel of Mark. This is generally taken as historically sound material about Jesus because it passes the criteria of embarrassment, in that the early church would not want to make up a story about John baptizing the son of God, which is why later gospel writers changed the story.
Now, just to take this example, there is no reason to think the story was embarrassing to Mark at all, even if later writers found it so. Mark may have just thought he was writing a beautiful story about the beginning of Jesus ministry where John The Baptist is passing the torch to Jesus, in the same way as in 2 Kings 2 where Elijah gives a double portion of his miracle working power to Elisha, making Elisha his successor and superior. Mark certainly seems to interpret John The Baptist in terms of Elijah. Mark says “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ ; as it is written in the prophets.” Mark immediately interprets John the Baptist as a forerunner of the Messiah (a la Elijah in II Kings 1:8). Mark then clothes John similar to Elijah (Mark 1:6. II Kings 1:8.) He then says John ate locusts and wild honey,the food of the wildernes in which Elijah lived (and so on and so on).
Also, Mark probably didn’t have the high Christology of later writers, so there would be nothing embarrassing for Mark in John baptizing Jesus.
For this example, then, there is no reason to think that the criteria of embarrassment does anything to contribute to the historicity of John The Baptist’s baptizing of Jesus in Mark. There is, therefore, no reason to think John The Baptist ever baptized Jesus.
Lots and lots of speculation… Mark MAY HAVE? then again maybe he did not, then what? An act of baptism is not anything like “passing the torch.” it’s certainly not at all like giving away ” a double portion of his miracle working power” If baptism signified passing the torch, did that mean that “all the people” described by Mathew and Luke as being baptized when Jesus was, also received the torch?
“Mark then clothes John similar to Elijah”
Does he? Are you sure John didn’t dress that way because Elijah was said to have? Is it really hard to imagine that a man like John the Baptist might seek to emulate someone important?
The underlying assumption here is that if there are similarities, they must have been invented by the author. Speculation becomes insinuation. For all we know, Mark may have been trying to be as faithful as possible to his sources. Certainly if criticism is to gain any real traction, it can’t be based on the same bad intellectual habits as one thinks the gospel writers practiced: To paraphrase Steve Biko, a sloppy thinker is a sloppy thinker whether Christian or secular.
The Elijah vis Elisha exchange is an explicit passing of the torch. There are no crowds receiving Elijah’s “spirit”.
You’re right about the criterion of embarrassment. It often seems to get used to support whatever point someone wants to make.
I would have to say the problem is not with the criteria but with its application
spiker said
Ed. Isn’t it evidence that can’t be cross examined (or heard in court) rather than unreliable evidence that hearsay rules were designed for. This is to say that evidence that can’t or isn’t brought to court is beyond the very mechanism for deciding on whether it is in fact reliable or not. My testimony in court that I saw Bill shoot Ted can be examined and evaluated in due process.
You are correct. In legalese, hearsay is a statement that: (1) a party offers in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement and (2) the declarant does not make while testifying at the current trial or hearing.
In layman’s terms, hearsay is secondhand information that someone claims is true. If your friend tells you to bet on a horse because he heard reliable inside information from the jockey, that is hearsay. The Harry Potter books are not hearsay because J.K. Rowling does not claim they are true.
The principal justification for the hearsay rule is that most hearsay statements, being made out of court, are not subject to cross-examination. Just think of the questions you would like to ask Matthew, Mark, Luke or John.
Thanks, Law!
This is the key reason why the Court Room apologetic fails: You can’t use evidence that is inadmissible in court while claiming to be applying its standards. Admittedly, the courtroom approach has a number of advantages: format for one. And in the case of your book, it would be a great way, maybe even fun, to present your disagreement with, uhm, whatsherface: Defense V Prosecution in the Case of…. the Missing Jesus! (Q Dramatic music) Case of the Empty Tomb??? And if you can get Andy Lincoln as co-counsle, The Case of The Walking Dead!!!
As you probably know, the Historians “due process” is a bit different from the lawyers. Historians often only have hear-say and their methods of “cross examination” are very different. The historian has really just 3 tests to work with, but their value lies in the ability to increase probability with the quantity and combination of them. The problem or limitation is one of application rather than the tests themselves.
spiker said
The historian has really just 3 tests to work with, but their value lies in the ability to increase probability with the quantity and combination of them. The problem or limitation is one of application rather than the tests themselves.
What are the three tests?
I’m not sure I see your reasoning. First of all, it’s an apocryphal work–meaning it’s never been part of the accepted canon. No Christian is obliged to believe it. (In this sense, it was an embarrassment.) It was never accepted by the church fathers, and there is a story that its author was discredited in the Christian community when his authorship of it became known. It’s a bit like applying the Criterion of Embarrassment to Primary Colors, which is a work of fiction based on fact. This is very unlikely to be based on anything but lurid imagination, however.
Secondly, I think you’ve badly misunderstood the doctrine in question–what it means is that if you see something in the CANONICAL texts that conflicts with what early Christians would want to believe, that makes it more likely to be something that was known to have happened. They would have otherwise consigned it to the rubbish heap. (Though then, as now, sexy writings were popular enough to get copied and distributed, and everybody has guilty pleasures.)
Does it really cast Paul in such a terrible light, though? My take on this rather bizarre (and somewhat #MeToo) story is that Paul is just deflecting the issue, putting the man off, ending the exchange as quickly as possible. Paul was not, in my opinion, comfortable with matters of sex–his writings on the subject indicate that he’s almost certainly celibate himself, and would prefer everyone to be.
It’s deeply embarrassing to the Paul we see in this story that this man wants him to act as a procurer, a pimp. He wants no part of it, and he correctly says he has no power over Thecla to compel her to sleep with this man, which seems to be what is being asked of him.
The only objectionable thing is that he claims not to know her, but not knowing Greek, I can’t read the passage for context–is he saying he doesn’t know her at all, or just in the biblical sense? Did Alexander (who is pretty clearly a pagan) assume Thecla was Paul’s concubine, and therefore assumed he could purchase her favors from Paul? It certainly sounds like that’s exactly what’s being described. Otherwise he could just go to Thecla herself.
Because Christians of the opposite sex interacted differently in some ways than most people of that time, and women played a much bigger role in early Christianity than in other faiths of the time, misunderstandings like this would happen fairly often. Thecla has a status that someone like Alexander can’t possibly comprehend. He just knows that she’s an attractive woman traveling without a husband. (The story does make Paul and Thecla’s relationship seem romantic in a weird way, but they are not sexually involved.)
Obviously it would look better for Paul to upbraid the man for his licentiousness, but Alexander may have powerful friends there. The simplest answer to this awkward situation is to just avoid the issue. (I could imagine Paul thinking that problems like this wouldn’t happen if women would stay home. I think he respected the faith of women like Thecla, but was never comfortable with them being active in the church–his upbringing as a Pharisee would leave a lasting mark.)
But see, this is me rationalizing a story that could be a complete flight of fancy. We can’t use embarrassment or dissimilarity here, because this was never a widely accepted text, and did not make it into the canon.
So I have to reject your argument. (Unless you want to offer money and gifts.)
😉
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
1 Guest(s)