(February 2, 2016 at 12:51 pm)Rhythm Wrote: This is -beyond- speculative, it's purely imaginative, and as already explained, incredibly irrational from the outset -as- a question. Even if we could determine what would be embarrassing to an anonymous author, which we can't, we can't conclude from it's inclusion or their embarrassment or any combination thereof that the event happened (or didn't). That would be a massive non-sequitur. It gives us neither either way in that regard.
First, you've already made up your mind that you can't determine what would be embarrassing to the authors. So nothing will convince you that we can determine, for example, that the author(s) of Matthew found certain accepted things regarding Jesus as the Messiah to be embarrassing, and hence tried to rectify them.
Second, the argument is that certain embarrassments in the Gospel regarding Jesus are indicators that they probably wouldn't have been accepted by believers of the Messiah if they weren't historical facts. Again, there is no hard proof here, just parsimony and the most reasonable explanation given the current evidence.
