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Kevin Wells's avatar

A couple things. I don’t think anyone thinks that the criterion of embarrassment is ever a knockdown. It’s merely one criteria to determine historicity. Interestingly, Bart Ehrman Has floated the idea that it was early Christian women who invented the story of the women at the tomb to upgrade their clout among their male counterparts. I found this humorously ironic because Bart is countering the criterion of embarrassment by saying essentially, “ Well, you know women probably made up the story because you know how women are…” not that I think he consciously thinks that way, but it is kind of funny.

Also, I don’t find that the women doing something like going to assume that they didn’t think they could access is unrealistic. These are fervently believing women who are grieving. They are going to do some irrational stuff. In any case they could’ve thought that there would be someone there (Remember Mary Magdalene thought there was a gardener on site) who could help them. This was not an optional task to them. This was something that must be done for a loved one within a certain time after death, it was a cherished Jewish tradition. I’m sure in their mind they must at least make the attempt. Strict verisimilitude is something we look for in historical fiction. We shouldn’t be surprised to see humans humaning in historically accurate accounts.

Scholars have been going back-and-forth as you know re. how seriously Women’s testimony has been discounted in first century Jewish culture. As a result of writing a paper during my postgrad on this very topic, I’ve come to the conclusion that it should be taken pretty seriously.

Your point is well taken that this gospel may not be targeting unbelieving fellow Jews at all. Well, Actually, it would seem strange given the problems that Christian Jews were having with nonbelieving Jews in the mid to late first century that the gospel writers wouldn’t try to make the Messiahship of Jesus seem as plausible as possible, Even in their own Internal writings. Jewish Christians were to varying degrees at different times during this period, subject to pressure to reject their faith and integrate back into mainstream Judaism. The gospel writers may have wanted to reinforce the readers faith.

Anyway, nice post I enjoyed it.

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