Simon Greenleaf (1783 – 1853)

Greenleaf was the Royall Professor of Law at Harvard and succeeded Justice Joseph Story as Dane Professor of Law. Greenleaf is considered as one of the paramount legal minds of Western history. The rise of Harvard Law School to its eminent position among law schools in the United States is attributed to Story and Greenleaf.

Greenleaf’s work A Treatise on the Law of Evidence is considered to be the greatest single authority on evidence of all writings on legal practice.

Furthermore, Chief Justice Fuller of the United States Supreme Court described Simon Greenleaf:

“He is the highest authority in our courts.”

On November 6, 1852, Simon Greenleaf wrote to the American Bible Society of Cambridge:

“Of the Divine character of the Bible, I think no man who deals honestly with his own mind and heart can entertain a reasonable doubt. For myself, I must say, that having for many years made the evidences of Christianity the subject of close study, the result has been a firm and increasing conviction of the authenticity and plenary inspiration of the Bible. It is indeed the Word of God.”

Simon Greenleaf declared in A Treatise on the Law of Evidence:

“If a close examination of the evidences of Christianity may be expected of one class of men more than another, it would seem incumbent upon lawyers who make the law of evidence one of our peculiar studies. Our profession leads us to explore the mazes of falsehood, to detect its artifices, to pierce its thickest veils, to follow and expose its sophistries, to compare the statements of different witnesses with severity, to discover truth and separate it from error.”

“The religion of Jesus Christ…not only solicits the grave attention of all, to whom its doctrines are presented, but it demands their cordial belief as a matter of vital concernment. There are no ordinary claims; and it seems hardly possible for a rational being to regard them with even a subdued interest; much less to treat them with mere indifference and contempt.”

“If not true, they are little else than the pretensions of a bold imposter…but if they are well founded and just they can be no less than the high requirements of heaven, addressed by the voice of God to the reason and understanding of man…such was the estimate taken of religion, even the religion, even the religion of pagan Rome, by one of the greatest lawyers of antiquity, when he argued that it was either nothing at all or everything. Aut undique religionem tolle, aut usquequa que conserva.”

Simon Greenleaf speaks of the Apostles:

“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 their writings show them to have been men of vigorous understandings. If then, their testimony was not true, there was no possible motive for this fabrication.”

Consider this statement from Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice with an Account of the Trial of Jesus:

“The character they portrayed is perfect. It is the character of a sinless Being – One supremely wise and supremely good…”

“The doctrines and precepts of Jesus are in strict accordance with the attributes of God, agreeable to the most exalted ideas which we can form of them, from reason or revelation. They are strictly adapted to the capacities of mankind, and yet are delivered with a simplicity wholly Divine. ‘He spake as never man spake.’ He spake with authority, yet addressed Himself to the reason and understanding of men, and He spake with wisdom which men could neither gainsay nor resist.”

Simon Greenleaf examined the evidence for the Resurrection and came to the conclusion that it happened. After rigorously applying the rules and precepts of law; he became a believer in Jesus Christ.

Testimony of the Evangelists

“The religion of Jesus Christ aims at nothing less than the utter overthrow of all other systems of religion in the world; denouncing them as inadequate to the wants of man, false in their foundations, and dangerous in their tendency.”

“These are no ordinary claims; and it seems hardly possible for a rational being to regard them with even a subdued interest; much less to treat them with mere indifference and contempt. If not true they are little else than the pretensions of a bold imposture, which not satisfied with having already enslaved millions of the human race, seeks to continue its encroachments upon human liberty, until all nations be subjected under its iron rule”

“But if they are well-founded and just, they can be no less than the high requirements of heaven, addressed by the voice of God to the reason and understanding of man, concerning things deeply affecting his relations to his sovereign, and essential to the formation of his character and of course to his destiny, both for this life and for the life."