page_title: Criterion of embarrassment
hierarchical_section_title: Criterion of embarrassment
caption_attribution_description: English: Baptism of Christ
context_page_description: The criterion of embarrassment is a type of critical analysis in which an account likely to be embarrassing to its author is presumed to be true as the author would have no reason to invent an account which might embarrass him. Certain Biblical scholars have used this as a metric for assessing whether the New Testament's accounts of Jesus' actions and words are historically probable. The criterion of embarrassment is also used as an argument by those who say that the Torah is the word of God; the Jews in the Torah are often described in very critical, very unflattering terms.
  The criterion of embarrassment is one point listed in the Criteria of Authenticity used by academics, the others being the criterion of dissimilarity, criterion of language and environment, criterion of coherence, and the criterion of multiple attestation.
context_section_description: The criterion of embarrassment is a type of critical analysis in which an account likely to be embarrassing to its author is presumed to be true as the author would have no reason to invent an account which might embarrass him. Certain Biblical scholars have used this as a metric for assessing whether the New Testament's accounts of Jesus' actions and words are historically probable. The criterion of embarrassment is also used as an argument by those who say that the Torah is the word of God; the Jews in the Torah are often described in very critical, very unflattering terms.
  The criterion of embarrassment is one point listed in the Criteria of Authenticity used by academics, the others being the criterion of dissimilarity, criterion of language and environment, criterion of coherence, and the criterion of multiple attestation.
caption: Baptism of Christ by Francesco Albani. Since it positions John as superior to Jesus, the criterion of embarrassment has been used to argue for the historicity of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist.
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