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An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists
1846 · 561 pages
An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists
by Simon Greenleaf
Why our edition. The free text is a proofread transcription from Project Gutenberg rather than a page scan, so there is no scanning damage to report. What ours adds is the typesetting: one clean file, in three formats, without the boilerplate. The full text is public domain and free — linked below.
Worth knowing about this scan: A transcription, not a scan: no recognition damage in the text. The Harmony is printed in parallel columns. In this edition each Gospel is given under its own heading, because columns cannot reflow on a screen.
On this page: a summary of An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists, and our clean edition as a PDF or EPUB.
Greenleaf wrote the American standard work on evidence, the book courts used to decide what testimony may be believed. Then he applied his own rules to the four Gospels: who the witnesses were, what they had to gain, whether they agree in the way honest witnesses agree rather than rehearsed ones. The method is the interesting part, and it is the method Lee Strobel would use again a century and a half later.
Summary
Greenleaf wrote the American standard treatise on evidence — the book courts used to decide what testimony may be believed — and then applied his own rules to the four Gospels. The question he asks is the one a court asks of any witness: were they competent, had they the means of knowing, what had they to gain, and do they agree in the way honest witnesses agree rather than the way rehearsed ones do.
His answer to the discrepancies is the lawyer's answer. Witnesses who agree in every particular are suspected of collusion; real testimony differs in detail and coheres in substance, and that is exactly the pattern the Gospels show. He also presses the point that the evangelists record what no forger would invent — their own cowardice, their misunderstandings, the women at the tomb.
The Harmony that follows sets the Gospels side by side, episode by episode, in a hundred and seventy-two sections across nine Parts, with his notes on the points a cross-examiner would press. Three appendices on the trial of Jesus close the book, including a Jewish account of the trial by M. Salvador printed in full and then answered.
Who was Simon Greenleaf?
Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853) was Royall Professor of Law at Harvard and, with Joseph Story, built its law school into the first of its kind in America. His Treatise on the Law of Evidence was the standard authority in American courts for most of the nineteenth century.
He came to this book late, and by his own account as an exercise in his own discipline rather than in apologetics. The method — examine the witnesses rather than argue the doctrine — is the one Lee Strobel would use again a century and a half later.
Which edition of An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists is this?
The text is free at Project Gutenberg, transcribed from Greenleaf's own revised edition of 1847, and that transcription is the source of ours. What our edition adds is navigation: the book's 232 numbered sections grouped into his own twelve divisions, each section linked individually from the contents, and the Harmony's parallel columns stacked so they can be read on a screen.
Common questions
- Do I need to read the Harmony as well as the Dissertation?
- No. The Dissertation is the argument and stands alone — forty-eight sections, about 14,000 words. The Harmony is the evidence it rests on, arranged for reference, and most readers dip into it rather than read it through.
- Why are the Gospels not in parallel columns here?
- Because columns cannot reflow on a screen, and on a phone two columns of text interleave into nonsense. Each Gospel is given under its own heading inside the section Greenleaf assigned it to, so the parallel is preserved and the text is readable at any size.
A note on the text. An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists is in the public domain. What you’re buying is our edition: the careful typesetting and correction. The original text is also available free here.
That free text is already well proofread — we measure about 0.6 errors per 1,000 characters. What our edition adds is the typesetting, not a rescue: one clean file, in the formats above, without the archive boilerplate.
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A Narrative of Some of the Lord’s Dealings with George Müller, Written by Himself
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Also filed under dramatic conversions & evangelists.
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Mere Christianity
C. S. Lewis · 1952
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Questions of the Soul
Isaac Hecker · 1855
Also among american on the apologetics shelf.
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