Simon Greenleaf and Evidence

Simon Greenleaf is one of my heroes. He was a lawyer in Main and Massachusetts from 1806-1848 (The first wagon went up the Oregon Trail from St Louis in 1836). He was a reporter of the Supreme Court of Maine for 12 years and published nine volumes of their records (no computer!).

He was an intelligent man and one of the principal founders of the Harvard Law School and he was an expert on what was admissible evidence in court.[i] The thing that impresses me about Greenleaf is that he applied the principals of his profession to see if the Bible would stand up in court as reliable evidence. He applied the evidentiary rules to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and he concluded that the admissible evidence from these books was sufficient to prove in any fair court of law that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was indeed fact—not hoax, myth or fiction.[ii]

Greenleaf's principal work of legal scholarship is a Treatise on the Law of Evidence (3 vols., 1842–1853), and it remained a standard textbook in American law throughout the Nineteenth century. [iii]

I’m fascinated by Simon Greenleaf. He let his life go where the evidence took him. He went on to write Testimony of the Evangelists[iv]

There are several tests the judicial system uses before accepting a document as admissible in court. One principal is how much time has passed between a written document and the original document. Here is a table of some documents we generally accept as authentic:

Name	Date Lived	Current Document Date	Time Lapse – Original to Current Copy	Number of Copies of Original
Aristotle	384-322 BC	1100 AD	1400 Years	5
Caesar	100-44 BC	900 AD	1000 Years	10
Homer	900 BC	400 BC	500 Years	643
Plato	427-347 BC	900 BC	1200 Years	7
Thucydides	460-400	900 BC	1300 Years	8
Seutonius	75-160 AD	950 AD	800 Years	8
Quran	650 AD	750 AD	100 Years	Debatable

                                                       

In comparison we have more than 24,000 copies of manuscripts and portions of the Bible in written in Greek, Latin, and other versions and some of these go back to 175-225 AD. It’s safe to say that the Bible is one of the most authentic historical documents known to man.[v]

You don’t want to read all of my excitement about Simon Greenleaf. Let’s

 finish with some quotes from his work[vi]:

Every document, apparently ancient, coming from the proper repository or custody, and bearing on its face no evident marks of forger, the law presumes to be genuine, and devolves on the opposing party the burden of proving it to be otherwise.

In examining the evidence of the Christian religion, it is essential to the discovery of truth that we bring to the investigation a mind freed, as far as possible, from existing prejudice, and open to conviction.

Either the men of Galilee were men of superlative wisdom, and extensive knowledge and experience, and of deeper skill in the arts of deception that any and all others, before them or after them, or they have truly stated astonishing things which they saw and heard.

And my favorite:

I hope you enjoy Simon Greenleaf as much as I do.

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[i] http://www.creationstudies.org/Education/simon_greenleaf.html

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Greenleaf

[iv] You can read a copy of this work online here: https://archive.org/stream/testimonyevange00tiscgoog#page/n0/mode/1up

[v] A statement taken from http://www.creationstudies.org/Education/simon_greenleaf.html as a reference from “Is the Bible Authentic”

[vi] http://www.azquotes.com/author/45030-Simon_Greenleaf