Dr. Greenleaf, the Royal Professor of Law at Harvard University, is among the greatest legal minds that ever lived. He wrote the famous legal volume entitled, A Treatise on the Law of Evidence, considered by many scholars as the greatest legal volume ever written. Dr. Greenleaf was a bitter opponent of Christianity. He believed the resurrection of Jesus Christ was history’s greatest hoax. After being challenged by some zealous Christian students, Dr. Greenleaf determined, once and for all, to expose the silly “myth” of the resurrection. After thoroughly examining the legal evidence for the resurrection — Dr. Greenleaf came to the exact opposite conclusion! He wrote the famous book entitled, An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice. After his exhaustive study to “disprove” the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Dr. Greenleaf wrote the following incredible words:

“it was IMPOSSIBLE that the apostles could have persisted in affirming the truths they had narrated, had not JESUS CHRIST ACTUALLY RISEN FROM THE DEAD, . . .”

(Simon Greenleaf, An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice, p.29).

Although Dr. Greenleaf was a legal scholar who came to the conclusion the resurrection of Jesus happened, so did Thomas Arnold who was a scholar of ancient history:

Professor Thomas Arnold, for fourteen years the headmaster of Rugby, author of the three-volume History of Rome, and holder of the chair of modern history at Oxford, was well acquainted with the value of evidence in determining historical facts.

I have been used for many years to study the histories of other times, and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God hath given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead. 

We also find textual critics who have come to the same conclusion:

Brooke Foss Wescott, English scholar, said, "Taking all the evidence together, it is not too much to say that there is no historic incident better or more variously supported than the resurrection of Christ." 

As well as professors of ancient history

Dr. Paul L. Maier, professor of ancient history at Western Michigan University, concluded that, "If all the evidence is weighed carefully and fairly, it is indeed justifiable, according to the canons of historical research, to conclude that the tomb in which Jesus was buried was actually empty on the morning of the first Easter. And no shred of evidence has yet been discovered in literary sources, epigraphy or archaeology that would disprove this statement." 

As well as judges who have been on the high court like our supreme court:

Lord Caldecote, Lord Chief Justice of England, has written:

My faith began with and was grounded on what I thought was revealed in the Bible. When, particularly, I came to the New Testament, the Gospels and other writings of the men who had been friends of Jesus Christ seemed to me to make an overwhelming case, merely as a matter of strict evidence, for the fact therein stated ... The same approach to the cardinal test of the claims of Jesus Christ, namely, His resurrection, has led me, as often as I have tried to examine the evidence, to believe it as fact beyond dispute.

Dr. Frank Morrison, a lawyer who had been brought up in a rationalistic environment, had come to the opinion that the resurrection was nothing but a fairy-tale happy ending which spoiled the matchless story of Jesus. He felt that he owed it to himself, and to others, to write a book that would present the truth about Jesus and dispel the myth of the resurrection.

Upon studying the facts, however, he, too, came to a different conclusion. The sheer weight of the evidence compelled him to conclude that Jesus actually did rise from the dead. Morrison wrote his book-but not the one he had planned. It is titled, Who Moved the Stone? The first chapter, very significantly, is called, "The Book That Refused to Be Written."

The literary scholar, C. S. Lewis, former professor of Medieval and Renaissance literature at Cambridge University, when writing about his conversion to Christianity, indicated that he had believed Christians "to be wrong."

The last thing Lewis wanted was to embrace Christianity. However, "Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. 'Rum thing,' he went on. 'All that stuff of Frazer's about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once.'

"To understand the shattering impact of it, you would need to know the man (who has certainly never since shown any interest in Christianity). If he, the cynic of cynics, the toughest of the toughs, were not -as I would still have put it -'safe,' where could I turn? Was there then no escape?"

After evaluating the basis and evidence for Christianity, Lewis concluded that in other religions there was "no such historical claim as in Christianity." His knowledge of literature forced him to treat the Gospel record as a trustworthy account. "I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myth."

Finally, contrary to his strong stand against Christianity, Professor Lewis had to make an intelligent decision:

"You must picture me alone in my room, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 1 gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."

Although most of these brilliant thinkers began by desiring to disprove the gospel account of Jesus resurrection, they all became believers because of the legal evidence that Jesus rose from the grave.

My prayer for you is to also look to the evidence and be willing to acknowledge, accept that Jesus both died for you and rose again to come back for you, if you are willing to come to Him in faith.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me

May the Lord bless your week

Rick