When an event takes place in history and there are enough people alive who were eyewitnesses of it or had participated in the event, and when the information is published, one is able to verify the validity of an historical event (circumstantial evidences).

William Lyon Phelps, for more than 40 years Yale's distinguished professor of English literature, author of some 20 volumes of literary studies, public orator of Yale, says:

"In the whole story of Jesus Christ, the most important event is the resurrection. Christian faith depends on this. It is encouraging to know that it is explicitly given by all four evangelists and told also by Paul. The names of those who say Him after His triumph over death are recorded; and it may be said that the historical evidence for the resurrection is stronger than for any other miracle anywhere narrated; for as Paul said, if Christ is not risen from the dead then is our preaching in vain, and your faith is also vain."

"Professor Ambrose Fleming, emeritus professor of Electrical Engineering in the University of London, honorary fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, receiver of the Faraday medal in 1928...one of England's outstanding scientists..." says of the New Testament documents:

"We must take this evidence of experts as to the age and authenticity of this writing, just as we take the facts of astronomy on the evidence of astronomers who do not contradict each other. This being so, we can ask ourselves whether it is probably that such book, describing events that occurred about thirty or forty years previously, could have been accepted and cherished if the stories of abnormal events in it were false or mythical. It is impossible, because the memory of all elderly persons regarding events of thirty or forty years before is perfectly clear.

"No one could now issue a biography of Queen Victoria, who died thirty-one years ago, full of anecdotes which were quite untrue. They would be contradicted at once. They would certainly not be generally accepted and passed on as true. Hence, there is a great improbability that the account of the resurrection given by Mark, which agrees substantially with that given in the other Gospels, is a pure invention. This mythical theory has had to be abandoned because it will not bear close scrutiny..."

Ambrose Fleming asserts that there is nothing in the Gospels that would cause a man of science to have problems with the miracles contained therein, and concludes with a challenge to intellectual honesty, asserting that if such a "...study is pursued with what eminent lawyers have called a willing mind, it will engender a deep assurance that the Christian Church is not founded on fictions, or nourished on delusions, or, as St. Peter calls them, 'cunningly devised fables,' but on historical and actual events, which, however strange they may be, are indeed the greatest events which have ever happened in the history of the world."

In a book which has become a best-seller, Who Moved the Stone?, Frank Morison, a lawyer, "tells us how he had been brought up in a rationalistic environment, and had come to the opinion that the resurrection was nothing but a fairy tale happy ending which spoiled the matchless story of Jesus. Therefore, he planned to write an account of the last tragic days of Jesus, allowing the full horror of the crime and the full heroism of Jesus to thine through. He would, of course, omit any suspicion of the miraculous, and would utterly discount the resurrection. But when he came to study the facts with care, he had to change his mind, and he wrote his book on the other side. His first chapter is significantly called, 'The Book that Refused to Be Written,' and the rest of his volume consists of one of the shrewdest and most attractively written assessments I have ever read..."

The noted scholar, Professor Edwin Gordon Selwyn, says: "The fact that Christ rose from the dead on the third day in full continuity of body and soul - that fact seems as secure as historical evidence can make it."

Many impartial students who have approached the resurrection of Chris with a judicial spirit have been compelled by the weight of the evidence to belief in the resurrection as a fact of history. An example may be taken from a letter written by Sir Edward Clarke, K. C. to the Rev. E. L. Macassey:

"As a lawyer I have made a prolonged study of the evidences for the events of the first Easter Day. To me the evidence is conclusive, and over and over again in the High Court I have secured the verdict on evidence not nearly so compelling. Inference follows on evidence, and a truthful witness is always artless and disdains effect. The Gospel evidence for the resurrection is of this class, and as a lawyer I accept it unreservedly as the testimony of truthful men to facts they were able to substantiate."

"To one's amazement, though no department of Columbia University in this generation has been noted for its defense of the Christian faith, nor for praise offered to Jesus of Nazareth, yet its great Encyclopedia, the most important single volume of an encyclopedic nature in the English world, says, without apology, 'The Gospels do not leave Jesus in His grave. On the first day of the week some of the women going to the tomb found it opened, and the body of Jesus gone. An angel at the tomb told them that He had risen from the dead. Soon they saw Him and talked with Him, and His disciples met Him, and many others as well.' "

Professor Thomas Arnold, cited by Wilbur Smith, was for 14 years the famous headmaster of Rugby, author of a famous three-volume History of Rome, appointed to the char of Modern History at Oxford, and certainly a man well acquainted with the value of evidence in determining historical facts. This great scholar said:

"The evidence for our LORD's life and death and resurrection may be, and often has been, shown to be satisfactory; it is good according to the common rules for distinguishing good evidence from bad. Thousands and tens of thousands of persons have gone through it piece by piece, as carefully as every judge summing up on a most important cause. I have myself done it many times over, not to persuade others but to satisfy myself. 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."

Wilbur Smith writes of a great legal authority of the last century. He refers to John Singleton Copley, better known as Lord Lyndhurst (1772-1863), recognized as one of the greatest legal minds in British history, the Solicitor-General of the British government in 1819, attorney-general of Great Britain in 1824, three times High Chancellor of England, and elected in 1846, High Steward of the University of Cambridge, thus holding in one lifetime the highest offices which a judge in Great Britain could ever have conferred upon him. When Chancellor Lyndhurst died, a document was found in his desk, among his private papers, giving an extended account of his own Christian faith, and in this precious, previously-unknown record, he wrote: "I know pretty well what evidence is; and I tell you, such evidence as that for the REsurrection has never broken down yet."

"This statement of Lord Lyndhurst was sent to Mr. E. H. Blakeney, of Winchester College, by the late bishop H. C. G. Moule. References to the correspondence appeared in a British periodical, Dawn, some few years ago. I have since had it confirmed in a letter from Mr. Blakeney. In Marty Amoy's The Domestic and Artistic Life of John Copley and Reminiscences of His Son, Lord Lyndhurst, High Chancellor of Great Britain occurs the interesting note - 'A record of Lyndhurst's belief in the truth of religion, and his view of the scheme of redemption, was found in his own handwriting after his death, in the drawer of his writing table.' (Lord Lyndhurst died October 11, 1863, at the age of 91.)"

Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853) 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, upon Story's death in 1846.

H. W. H Knott says of this great authority in jurisprudence: "To the efforts of Story and Greenleaf is to be ascribed the rise of the Harvard Law School to its eminent position among the legal schools of the United States."

Greenleaf produced a famous work entitled A Treatise on the Law of Evidence which "is still considered the greatest single authority on evidence in the entire literature of legal procedure."

In 1846, while still Professor of Law at Harvard, Greenleaf wrote a volume entitled An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice. In his classic work the author examines the value of the testimony of the apostles to the resurrection of Christ. The following are this brilliant jurist's critical observations:

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. 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 represented 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. The laws of every country were against the teachings of His disciples. The interests and passions of all the rulers and great men in the world were against them. The fashion of the world was against them. Propagating this new faith, even in the most inoffensive and peaceful manner, they could expect nothing but contempt, opposition, revilings, bitter persecutions, stripes, imprisonments, torments, and cruel deaths. Yet this faith they zealously did propagate; and all these miseries they endured undismayed, nay, rejoicing. As one after another was put to a miserable death, the survivors only prosecuted their work with increased vigor and resolution. The annals of military warfare afford scarcely an example of the like heroic constancy, patience, and unblenching courage. They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith, and the evidences of the great facts and truths which they asserted; and these motives were pressed upon their attention with the most melancholy and terrific frequency. It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they have narrated, had not Jesus actually risen from the dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact. If it were morally possible for them to have been deceived in this matter, every human motive operated to lead them to discover and avow their error. To have persisted in so gross a falsehood, after it was known to them, was not only to encounter, for life, all the evils which man could inflict, from without, but to endure also the pangs of inward and conscious guilt; with no hope of future peace, no testimony of a good conscience, no expectation of honor or esteem among men, no hope of happiness in this life, or in the world to come.

"Such conduct in the apostles would moreover have been utterly irreconcilable with the fact that they possessed the ordinary constitution of our common nature. Yet their lives do show them to have been men like all others of our race; swayed by the same motives, animated by the same hopes, affected by the same joys, subdued by the same sorrows, agitated by the same fears, and subject to the same passions, temptations, and infirmities, as ourselves. And their writings show them to have been men of vigorous understandings. If then their testimony was not true, there was no possible motive for its fabrication."

John Locke was probably the greatest philosopher of his century. This British scholar says in his work, A SEcond Vindication of the REasonableness of Christianity, Works, cited by Wilbur Smith:

"There are some particulars in the history of our Saviour, allowed to be so peculiarly appropriated to the Messiah, such innumerable marks of Him, that to believe them of Jesus of Nazareth was in effect the same as to believe Him to be the Messiah, and so are put to express it. The principal of these is His Resurrection from the dead; which being the great and demonstrative proof of His being the Messiah, it is not at all strange that those believing His Resurrection should be put forth for believing Him to be the Messiah; since the declaring His Resurrection was declaring Him to be the Messiah."

Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901), English scholar who was appointed regius professor at Cambridge in 1870, said: "Indeed, 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. Nothing but the antecedent assumption that it must be false could have suggested the idea of deficiency in the proof of if."

Clifford Herschel Moore, professor at Harvard University, well said, "Christianity knew its Saviour and REdeemer not as some god whose history was contained in a mythical faith, with rude, primitive, and even offensive elements...Jesus was a historical not a mythical being. No remote or foul myth obtruded itself of the Christian believer; his faith was founded on positive, historical, and acceptable facts."

Benjamin Warfield of Princeton expressed in his article, "The Resurrection of Christ an Historical Fact, Evinced by Eye-Witnesses":

"The Incarnation of an Eternal GOD is necessarily a Dogma; no human eye could witness His stooping to man's estate, no human tongue could bear witness to it as a face and yet, if it be not a fact, our faith is in vain, we are yet in our sins. On the other hand the Resurrection of Christ is a fact, an external occurrence within the cognizance of man, to be established by other testimonies and yet which is the cardinal doctrine of our system: on it all other doctrines hand."

Wilbur Smith introduces an outstanding scholar of this century: "One of the greatest physiologists of our generation is Dr. A. C. Ivy, of the Department of Chemical Science of the University of Illinois (Chicago Campus), who served as head of the Division of Physiology in Chicago Professional Colleges, 1946-1953. President of the American Physiological Society from 1939-1949 and author of many scientific articles, his words are wholesome:

" 'I believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. As you say, this is a "personal matter," but I am not ashamed to let the world know what I believe, and that I can intellectually defend my belief...I cannot prove this belief as I can prove certain scientific facts in my library which one hundred years ago were almost as mysterious as the resurrection of Jesus Christ. On the basis of historical evidence of existing biological knowledge, the scientist who is true to the philosophy of science can doubt the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, but he cannot deny it. Because to do so means that he can prove that it did not occur. I can only say that present-day biological science cannot resurrect a body that has been dead and entombed for three days. To deny the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the basis of what biology now knows is to manifest an unscientific attitude according to my philosophy of the true scientific attitude.' "

Michael Green says that "...two able young men, Gilbert West and Lord Lyttleton, went up to Oxford. They were friends of Dr. Johnson and Alexander Pope, in the swim of society. They were determined to attack the very basis of the Christian faith. So Littleton settled down to prove that Saul of Tarsus was never converted to Christianity, and West to demonstrate that Jesus never rose from the tomb.

"Some time later, they met to discuss their findings. Both were a little sheepish. For they had come independently to similar and disturbing conclusions. Littleton found, on examination, that Saul of Tarsus did become a radically new man through his conversion to Christianity; and West found that the evidence pointed unmistakable to the fact that Jesus did rise from the dead. You may still find his book in a large library. It is entitled Observations on the History and Evidences of the REsurrection of Jesus Christ, and was published in 1747. On the fly-leaf he has had printed his telling quotation from Ecclesiasticus 11:7, which might be adopted with profit by any modern agnostic: 'Blame not before thou hast examined the truth.' "

"The evidence points unmistakably to the fact that on the third day Jesus rose. This was the conclusion to which a former Chief Justice of England, Lord Darling, came. At a private dinner party the talk turned to the truth of Christianity, and particularly to a certain book dealing with the resurrection. Placing his fingertips together, assuming a judicial attitude, and speaking with a quiet emphasis that was extraordinarily impressive, he said, 'We, sa Christians, are asked to take a very great deal on trust; the teachings, for example, and the miracles of Jesus. If we had to take all on trust, I, for one, should be sceptical. The crux of the problem of whether Jesus was, or was not, what He proclaimed Himself to be, just surely depend upon the truth or otherwise of the resurrection. On that greatest point we are not merely asked to have faith. In its favour as living truth there exists such overwhelming evidence, positive and negative, factual and circumstantial, that no intelligent jury in the world could fail to bring in a verdict that the resurrection story is true.' "

Armand Nicholi, of Harvard Medical School, speaks of J. N. D. Anderson as "...a scholar of international repute and one eminently qualified to deal with the subject of evidence. He is one of the world's leading authorities on Islamic law...He is dean of the faculty of law in the University of London, chairman of the department of Oriental law at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and director of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in the University of London."

This outstanding British scholar who is today influential in the field of international jurisprudence says: "The evidence for the historical basis of the Christian faith, for the essential validity of the New Testament witness to the person and teaching of Christ Himself, for the fact and significance of His atoning death, and for the historicity of the empty tomb and the apostolic testimony to the resurrection, is such as to provide an adequate foundation for the venture of faith."

The Testimony of the Early Church Fathers

Professor W. J. Sparrow-Simpson says that "next to Christology, the Resurrection is undoubtedly the doctrine which held the chief place in early Christian literature.

"The sub-apostolic age presents many references, but the second century yields treatises exclusively devoted to it; as, for instance, Athenagoras, and the work ascribed to Justin Martyr."

Professor Bernard Ramm comments: "In both ecclesiastical history and creedal history the resurrection is affirmed from the earliest times. It is mentioned in Clement of Rome, Epistle to the Corinthians (A.D. 95), the earliest document of church history and so continuously throughout all of the patristic period. It appears in all forms of the Apostles' Creed and is never debated.

Sparrow-Simpson says:

"The substance of Ignatius' Gospel [ca 50-ca 115] is Jesus Christ, and the Christian religion consists in 'faith in Him and love toward Him, in His Passion and Resurrection.' He enjoins upon Christians to 'be fully convinced of the birth and passion and resurrection.'

'Jesus Christ is described as 'our hope through the Resurrection.' The Resurrection of Jesus is the promise of our Resurrection also.

"Ignatius further declares that the Church 'rejoices in the Passion of our LORD and in His Resurrection without wavering.' The main facts upon which he dwells are Christ's Cross and Death and Resurrection. These he groups together. Speaking of certain heretics, he says: 'They withhold themselves from Eucharist and prayer, because they confess not that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which flesh suffered for our sins, and which in His lovingkindness the Father raised up.' Again, he says that the Resurrection 'was both of the flesh and the spirit.' "

Sparrow-Simpson adds:

"In the Epistle of S. Polycarp to the Philippians (about A.D. 110) the writer speaks of our LORD Jesus Christ having 'endured to come so far as to death for our sins, whom GOD raised, having loosed the pains of death.' He says that GOD 'raised our LORD Jesus Christ from the dead and gave Him glory and a throne on His right hand, to Whom were subjected all things in heaven and on earth.' The Risen Jesus 'is coming as Judge of quick and dead.' And 'He that raised Him from the dead will raise us also, if we do His will and walk in His commandments.'

"To S. Polycarp the exalted Jesus is 'the Eternal High Priest.' And the saintly bishop's final prayer before his martyrdom was that he 'might take a portion in the number of the martyrs in the cup of Christ, to the resurrection of eternal life both of soul and body in the incorruption of the Holy Ghost.' "

Professor Sparrow-Simpson says of Justin Martyr's treatise on the resurrection (ca 100-165): It "...deals with distinctively Christian doctrine. Contempory opposition to the faith asserted that the Resurrection was impossible; undesirable, since the flesh is the cause of sins; inconceivable, since there can be no meaning in the survival of existing organs. They further maintained that the Resurrection of Christ was only in physical appearance and not in physical reality. To these objections and difficulties Justin...[made reply]..."

Elgin Moyer in Who Was Who in Church History mentions another church father, Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian:

"(ca 160-220) Latin church father and apologist, born in Carthage, North Africa...Thorough education prepared him for successful writing in both Greek and Latin, as well as for politics, the practice of law, and forensic eloquence. For thirty or forty years lived in licentiousness. In about 190 he embraced Christianity with deep conviction. The rest of his life faithfully devoted to defending the Christian faith against heathen, Jew, and heretic. He was...a strong defender of the faith."

Bernard Ramm concludes: "Unbelief has to deny all the testimony of the Fathers...It must assume that these men either did not have the motivation or the historical standards to really investigate the resurrection of Christ. The Fathers, considered by the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church and by the Roman Catholic Church and Anglican Church as authoritative or highly authoritative, respected by the Reformers, and given due weight by all theologians, are written off the record by unbelief. They are deemed trustworthy for data about apostolic or near-apostolic theology, yet in matters of fact they are not granted a shred of evidential testimony. But this must be, or unbelief cannot make its case stick."

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