Simon Greenleaf Essay

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Is Simon Greenleaf Still Relevant? By Robert R. Edwards, B.A., B.S., J.D. Part I SIMON GREENLEAF DIED October 6, 1853. Born on December 5, 1783, Greenleaf was an agnostic, some say atheist, who believed the resurrection of Jesus Christ was either a hoax or a myth. No stranger to truth, and to the proof of the truth, Greenleaf was a principal founder of the Harvard Law School and a world-renowned expert on evidence. Challenged by one of his students one day to “consider the evidence” for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Greenleaf set out to disprove it, but ended up concluding that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was indeed fact, not fiction. Being a man of conviction and reason, and in accordance with his conclusions, Greenleaf converted from Agnosticism to Christianity. His life and works went on to inspire such scholars as John Warwick Montgomery, Josh McDowell, Ross Clifford and Lee Strobel. But is Simon Greenleaf still relevant today? Greenleaf’s most famous apologetic is an essay entitled, Testimony of the Evangelists Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice. Therein, Greenleaf applied the evidentiary rules of his day to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and concluded that the admissible evidence emitted thereby was sufficient to prove in any fair court of law that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was indeed fact—not hoax, myth or fiction. In short, Greenleaf reasoned that copies of the original Gospels extant (i.e., known to be in existence) in his time were at least as authentic as other works of antiquity the authenticity of which was acceptable in courts of law; that the veracity of the testimonies contained therein was demonstrable by internal and external examination (i.e., by examining the consistencies and resolving the paradoxes contained between them, and by comparing the Gospel accounts to
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