Evidence · Case 10 · Islam
The criterion of embarrassment
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
A crucified messiah was an offensive, self defeating idea in the first century. No Jew expected a Messiah who would be executed as a criminal, and crucifixion was the most shameful death Rome could impose. Ehrman notes that early followers would not have invented the idea of a crucified messiah.
Sources
Objections & responses
- The criterion of embarrassment has been heavily criticized in recent scholarship as circular and as assuming we know what the early church found embarrassing. Isn’t presenting it as a straightforward tool dated?
The methodological critique is real; Rafael Rodriguez, Chris Keith, and the memory approach have pressed it hard. Even critics of the criteria approach agree, though, that a crucified messiah was a genuine liability in first-century Jewish and Roman contexts, because we have contemporary evidence of the offense: Paul calls it a stumbling block, and pagan critics such as Celsus mocked it. The crucifixion is the case where the criterion is least controversial, and it can be used here while conceding the general debate.