On the Criterion of Embarrassment and anti-Roman propaganda

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Giuseppe
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On the Criterion of Embarrassment and anti-Roman propaganda

Post by Giuseppe »

I see often the Criterion of Embarrassment (CoE) used to derive only a historical Jesus. But it's more wise to use this (afterall) serious criterion as a tool to derive the more old Gospel tradition, not the more old memory of an hypothetical historical Jesus.

The result may be interesting.

The earliest Gospel may be an anti-Roman propaganda directed principally against the last Roman emperor.

Later, the same propaganda was converted in an anti-Jewish propaganda.

The result was the presence of what is called dissepta membra of sedition scattered in the Gospels.

In particular, the central fact of the Gospel story is identified by me in the surprise raised by the entry of Jesus in the Judea: he is the Jewish Messiah against any apparent expectation (or alternatively for the heretics: he isn't the Jewish messiah against any expectation).

The feature of the surprising/paradoxical arrival of the true messiah is something that is not found only in the Gospels and is not their exclusive invention.

The idea is found already in Josephus, with the his surprising identification of Vespasian with the Messiah. The idea is the same:

1) people expect x
2) but who arrives is y and not x.

The surprise is not that a banal servant of the power as Josephus did Roman propaganda. The surprise is in the particular form of the Roman propaganda given by Josephus. Vespasian is de facto the last person a Jew would call Messiah, but Josephus, even if or just because he is well aware of that, invented a fable to show Vespasian as the paradoxical Messiah of Israel.

"Mark" had only to replace Vespasian with Jesus. The effect surprise is already secured.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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