Greenleaf’s Harmony of the Resurrection Accounts
Adapted by W. R. Miller.
In 1874, Harvard Law professor and attorney Simon Greenleaf's The Testimony of the Evangelists Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administrated in Courts of Justice was published. This is available in its entirety online courtesy of the University of Michigan at http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;idno=AGA1251.0001.001. In addition to demonstrating why the Gospel accounts would be acceptable in a court of law, the 1874 edition featured a section called “Harmony of the Gospels,” which chronologically reconciled the testimonies from the King James Bible and addressed alleged discrepancies.
Regarding the differences in the accounts, Greenleaf wrote in § 34, “The character of their narratives is like that of all other true witnesses, containing -- as Dr. [William] Paley observes -- substantial truth, under circumstantial variety. [From A View of the Evidences of Christianity, 1794. See Appendix 2.] There is enough of discrepancy to show that there could have been no previous concert among them; and at the same time such substantial agreement as to show that they all were independent narrators of the same great transaction, as the events actually occurred.”
