THE RESURRECTION DEBATE (2b)
Farrell Till jftill@midwest.net
Sun, 15 Nov 1998 00:05:38 -0800 (00911138738, 2.2.32.19981115080538.0089c56c@midwest.net)
At 07:26 PM 11/13/98 -0500, Michael D Fitzpatrick wrote:
>TILL
>> The major problem in it is that it is based on an assumption that the
>>NT records are historically accurate, but that is the very thing that he is
>>supposed to be proving, that the NT claim that Jesus rose from the dead is a
>>historical fact. If Mr. Fitzgerald is just going to believe that X is a
historical >>fact just because the NT said that it happened, then why are
we even
>>having this debate? It is very obvious that the NT claims that Jesus
>>rose from the dead, and I would never deny that it makes this claim. The
>>issue, however, is not whether the NT claims that Jesus rose from the dead
>>but whether the NT is historically accurate in claiming that this event
happened.
>>Fitzgerald, therefore, needs some kind of evidence to support his case
>>rather than the mere fact that the NT SAYS that Jesus rose from the
>>dead. . . I am not asking for anything that he himself would not ask for
>>in a debate with someone who believed in the truth of a different holy
>>book.
>>
>FITZPATRICK
>Now let me address the question of whether the NT is historically
>accurate in claiming that the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth took
>place. In other words, are the four Gospels good evidence for the events
>they declare? The inquiry into the goodness of this evidence is actually
>a legal question.
>
>One man who was highly skilled at dealing with evidence was Dr. Simon
>Greenleaf. He was the famous Royall Professor of Law at Harvard
>University and succeeded Justice Joseph Story as the Dane Professor of
>Law in the same university. The rise of Harvard law School to its eminent
>position among the legal schools of the United States is to be ascribed
>to the efforts of these two men. Greenleaf produced his famous
>three-volume work, A Treatise on the Law of Evidence, which still is
>considered one of the greatest single authorities on this subject in the
>entire literature of legal procedure.
>Greenleaf examined the value of the historical evidence for the
>resurrection of Jesus Christ to ascertain the truth. He rigorously
>applied the principles contained in his three-volume treatise on
>evidence. His findings were recorded in his book, An Examination of the
>Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered
>in the Courts of Justice.
>
>Greenleaf came to the conclusion that, according to the laws of legal
>evidence used in courts of law, there is more evidence for the historical
>fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ than for just about any other
>event in history.
>
>Dr. Simon Greenleaf's great work, "An Examination of the Testimony of the
>Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of
>Justice" can be found at the following Web page:
>http://www.primenet.com/~jpott/greenleaf.html. Now although I am a
>Registered Patent Agent, am somewhat familiar with legal reasoning, and
>can practice Patent Law before the Patent Bar, I am not a regular
>attorney, and am not, therefore, legally competent to pass judgement on
>this work. It is highly convincing to me and seems to cover all the
>bases, legally speaking. Perhaps one of your skeptic friends who is an
>attorney of law can assess the strength of Dr. Greenleaf's legal
>reasoning here. If, as I believe, the evidence for the resurrection of
>Jesus Christ is good enough to stand up in any court of law, then, on
>that basis, I re-present the argument of my previous e-mail. Mr. Till,
>what is your answer to the legal reasoning of Dr. Simon Greenleaf
>concerning the strength of the evidence for the four Gospels and thus for
>the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead?
>
TILL
Simon Greenleaf was an 18th-century professor of law at Harvard University,
but he was also a devout believer in Christianity and the inspiration of the
Bible. That, of course, would not prove that his claims that Mr.
Fitzpatrick summarized above are incorrect, but it does give sufficient
reason to question his objectivity. One thing that is very evident in
apologetic literature is that those who believe in the Bible have no
difficulty finding reasons to believe that it is "the word of God," and so
it was with Simon Greenleaf. I don't have a copy of Greenleaf's work that
Fitzpatrick cited above, but I have read quotations from it in apologetic
literature. From what I have seen, it is evident that Greenleaf, like
Fitzpatrick and almost all biblical inerrantists, based his defense of the
resurrection on the assumption that the NT records were historically
accurate. The following is a quotation from Greenleaf that can be found in
Josh McDowell's *Evidence That Demands a Verdict,* p. 192. In reading it,
please notice that from beginning to end Greenleaf assumed the accuracy of
the NT. I will interrupt the quotation from time to time to comment on
Greenleaf's reasoning.
"The great truths which the apostles declared, were, that Christ had
risen from the dead, and that only through repentance from sin, and faith in
Him, could men hope for salvation...."
Now how could Greenleaf possibly have known that the apostles preached that
Christ had risen from the dead and that only by repentance and faith in
"Him" could men have hope of salvation? He could make this statement only
by assuming that the NT records are historically accurate, because as I have
already pointed out several times in the short duration of this debate,
there were no unbiased, disinterested contemporary records left about
preaching activities of a group of men who believed that someone named Jesus
had risen from the dead, so what Greenleaf said that the apostles did is
what the NT claimed that they did. Hence, Greenleaf assumed the historical
accuracy of the NT.
"This doctrine they asserted with one voice, everywhere, not only
under the greatest discouragements, but in the face of the most appalling
errors that can be presented to the mind of man. Their master had recently
perished as a malefactor, by the sentence of a public tribunal. His
religion sought to overthrow the religions of the whole world...."
This reads more like a sermon than the work of a legal scholar trying to
find objective evidence to prove the accuracy of certain ancient documents.
The fact is that Greenleaf did not present (at least in the parts of his
work I have seen quoted) any line of argumentation intended to prove that
the accuracy of the NT could be trusted. He merely assumed that the NT was
accurate and proceeded on that assumption to argue that the zeal and conduct
of the apostles gave credibility to what they preached. This is an argument
that may have been fresh in Greenleaf's time, but it has certainly been
rebuttal many times over since then. How could Greenleaf possibly have
known that the apostles "asserted with one voice" the doctrine of the
resurrection and did so in the face of "the greatest discouragements" unless
he had assumed that the NT was historically accurate in making these claims.
A stubborn fact that Mr. Fitzpatrick must deal with in this debate is that
NO unbiased, disinterested contemporary reports of the activities of a
religious group known as the "apostles" exist. Therefore, to state that the
apostles did such and so and then argue that they would not have done this
unless they had known that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead is a
flagrant resort to begging the question of the historical accuracy of the NT.
"The laws of every country were against the teachings of His
disciples...."
Such as? What laws? Of what countries? The NT claims that the apostles
were opposed in some places, but it also teaches that they were accorded the
courtesy of being allowed to speak in synagogues. In addition to begging
the question of NT accuracy, Greenleaf also made unproven assertions that
conflicted with what the NT says.
"The interests and passions of all the rulers and great men in the
world were against them...."
Oh, really? That's a strange comment coming from someone who has obviously
assumed the accuracy of the NT. What was Greenleaf's explanation for the
speech attributed to Gamaliel in Acts 5, in which he urged the Jewish
leaders in Jerusalem to let the apostles alone in their activities (v:39)
and leave it to God to determine what should be done about them? Why did
the Epicurean philosophers in Athens accord Paul the opportunity to speak to
them and explain what "this new teaching was" that he was preaching in the
city (Acts 17)? Why was Paul allowed to reason daily in the school of
Tyrannus in Ephesus for a period of two years (Acts19:9-10)? If Greenleaf
was going to assume the accuracy of the NT, he should have at least
recognized that the NT doesn't teach that everyone opposed the apostles.
The NT does claim that the apostles confronted considerable opposition, but
since there is no independent corroboration of this claim, competent
historians would look with suspicion on the claims, especially since they
were made by zealous adherents of the Christian religion.
Greenleaf's quotation continues at length in McDowell's ETDAV, but it is
just more of the same, i.e., argumentation that was based entirely on the
assumption that the NT was true in whatever it said. Whether Greenleaf, who
died in 1853, started the trend I'm not qualified to say, but it has become
fashionable in Christian apologetics to whine about the great abuses and
persecutions that the apostles suffered and then to argue that this must
prove that the resurrection really happened, because they would not have
been willing to die for what they knew to be a lie. That within itself is a
fallacious claim that is not supported by cases of martyrdom in other
religions, but it is also an argument that is based on the assumption that
the NT accurately reported persecutions that the apostles experienced. The
fact is that the NT recorded the death of James (Acts 12:2) but says nothing
else about the death of other apostles, and we really have no way to
determine if the NT account is accurate in its claim that Herod killed
James. Those who have been on the list for some time know that many
would-be apologists have been put on the spot by our demands that they
present more than just contradictory traditions that the apostles suffered
martyrdom and that early Christians were persecuted to the extremes that it
has become fashionable to claim in present-day apologetic circles. If Mr.
Fitzpatrick knows of any unbiased, disinterested contemporary records that
corroborate these claims, we would like to hear about them.
As for the NT claims about the resurrection itself, the simple fact is that
the only "testimony" to the resurrection was all of the hearsay type with
the possible exception of the apostle Paul's claim that he saw Jesus, but
Luke's secondhand account of Paul's testimony about this sighting in Acts
26:19 was that he had seen Jesus in a "vision." I don't know if Greenleaf
ever commented directly on this statement or not, but I wonder if he really
believed that testimony of what someone had seen in a vision would be
accepted in "any court of law." If he really believed that visionary
evidence was reliable evidence suitable for presentation in the courtroom,
then he had no business teaching law. As for the so-called testimony of the
others, it was all hearsay. Paul SAID that about 500 "brethren" had seen
Jesus at one time (1 Cor 15:6), but there are no records of anything that
any of these 500 ever wrote themselves. Hence, this kind of statement is
hearsay of the crassest sort. Furthermore, the same is true about the
"testimony" of the women who allegedly saw Jesus while leaving the tomb.
Where is the firsthand testimony that any of them left? It simply doesn't
exist. Certain anonymous writers of books that are called "gospels" SAID
that these women said that they had seen Jesus, and that is again hearsay
evidence. I don't know what Greenleaf thought about this kind of evidence,
but if he had ever been my lawyer in a trial, I would have asked the court
to appoint another one if he had allowed without objections witnesses to
testify that they had HEARD so and so SAY such and such. Surely Mr.
Fitzpatrick has seen enough courtroom dramas on TV to know that secondhanded
testimony would bring a lawyer immediately to his feet to object on the
grounds that such statements were hearsay.
To conclude the matter of Greenleaf's competence in this area, let's look at
another quotation from him that McDowell cited on pp. 243-244.
"The grave-clothes lying orderly in their place, and the napkin
folded together by itself, made it evident that the sepulchre had not been
rifled nor the body stolen by violent hands; for these garments and spices
would have been of more value to thieves, than merely a naked corpse; at
least, they would not have taken the trouble thus to fold them together.
The same circumstances showed that the body had not been removed by friends;
for they would not thus have left the graveclothes behind. All these
considerations produced in the mind of John the germ of a belief that Jesus
was risen from the dead."
So once again we can see that Greenleaf's approach to proving the
reliability of "evidence" in the NT was simply to assume that whatever the
NT said was accurate. With that kind of reasoning, one could prove the
historical accuracy of any book. How could Greenleaf have known that the
grave-clothes were left lying orderly in their place and the napkin folded
together? This is something that was said in "John's" gospel account, and
so Greenleaf simply begged the question of NT accuracy. All of this leaves
Mr. Fitzpatrick right where he has been from the beginning of the debate,
i.e., begging the question of NT accuracy. He will have to do better than
that if he hopes to present a credible case for his position on the
resurrection.
Farrell Till
Skepticism, Inc.
jftill@midwest.net