by Clarrie Briese, creation.com
Clarrie Briese, B.A., Diploma of Criminology (Cantab), A.O., is a former Chief Magistrate (judge)1 of N.S.W., Australia (now retired). He is renowned in Australia for his work in rooting out corruption—no matter where it was found—and in Christian circles for defeating a high-profile humanist attempt to destroy creation ministry with lies (see interview, Blowing the whistle on corruption). Here he applies his formidable legal knowledge to the testimony of the Apostles.
The truth of the Resurrection stands or falls on the truth of the witnesses. Are they reliable? Of the New Testament writers, there are six witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, if we include the apostles Peter and Paul. These people have left us writings in the form of historical documents which give us their testimony concerning the resurrection.
The question is—are these historical documents reliable? Can we trust them? One way of determining whether the documents are reliable is to put the people who wrote them through the test a good magistrate or judge would put them through. The accuracy of these witnesses depends on five things: their honesty, ability, their number and consistency of their evidence, the conformity of their testimony with our own personal experience, and lastly, the coincidence of their testimony with other circumstances and facts.
Honesty
Were he authors of the four accounts of the Resurrection—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, together with Paul and Peter in their letters—honest? There is general consensus that Mark and Luke were almost certainly the writers of the Gospels that bear their name.2 There is no doubt that all were dedicated followers of the man Jesus Christ.
As for Paul, we know that he began his career as Saul, the learned Pharisee who was steeped in the knowledge of the Old Testament, who had studied at the feet of the famous Gamaliel. He was a bitter opponent of the early Christian church and did his best to stamp out the Christian movement by persecution and death for its adherents. Then he had an experience which revolutionised his thinking, changed his life, converted him to the cause of Christ, and made him the most powerful advocate for it in the then known world.
Well, how does one ascertain if witnesses are honest in the sense of being sincere?
Taking character first. What observations are available? First, a general reading of the writings of the witnesses gives the distinct impression that these men are men of integrity and truthfulness.
They portray Jesus as one who taught with great authority and conviction, as one who had a passion for truth, who abominated hypocrisy and abhorred lying and deception. They themselves were committed disciples of the man they were writing about. As men of Jewish stock, steeped in the Old Testament, they knew the requirements of their law that witnesses be true. The only logical and sensible inference from all this is that they themselves were honest men who were concerned for the truth. They were not deceitful.
Put in another way, the writings of these five men contain some of the highest moral and ethical teaching the world has known. If these men were not honest, then they represent a baffling contradiction of what they themselves were proclaiming.
As dishonest, conspiratorial men, the character they have created in the man Jesus Christ is such that it would have been an impossible task for them to have done it. How could five men conspire together to create a sublime character in a superb piece of fiction which surpasses anything to be found in the literature of the world? That does not ring true. Indeed it is so preposterous that there is scarcely a single intelligent critic who argues today that the testimony of these witnesses is deliberately false.
When one turns to the motives of these men, if the story they were telling about Jesus Christ was not believed by them to be true, what possible motive could have prompted them to proclaim it as they did and to die for it as they did? They certainly knew when they went out to challenge the world with the proclamation that Christ had been raised from the dead that the only reaction they could expect from the authorities, both Jewish and Roman, would be opposition, persecution and death.
Now it is true that many people in history have died because they believed in and fought for a lie, but in every case these people did not believe it to be a lie. They thought it to be the truth, worth dying for.
Click on Link Below to Continue Reading
This certainly leaves no questions unanswered in ascertaining authenticity. It completely resolves any doubts which can be raised about the source.
This is an expert’s expert. It’s stupendous, remarkable, and phenomenal.
As a disclaimer, I admit I didn’t read the whole thing: it’s tiring applying so much concentrated attention to it. To me, anyway.