hallq

I recently checked out Simon Greenleaf's The Testimony of the Evangelists from a university library. I also got his treatise on evidence.

My first question is: when was the first book written? What evidence I can find points to a posthumous publication in 1874. I am particularly interested to know whether it was written before or after Strauss' Life of Jesus.

Now to Greenleaf's case. He says that the gospels are to be accepted as authentic (implicitly, by their traditional authors) because we find them where we would expect to find them if they were authentic, which is the definition of proper custody. Here, Greenleaf at least seems to be internally consistent, this matches the criterion set out in chapter 7 of his treatise.

However, in Richard Parkham's critique of legal apologetics, he says that proper custody means chain of custody, which we do not have. This meshes with what I've gathered from following court cases in the news.

The possibilities are that 1) Greenleaf was wrong 2) Parkham is wrong 3) The rules of evidence have changed over time, making each right for his respective time period. Which of these three possiblities is the case?

Please note that I want to focus on the legal validity of the argument. Clearly, the "they are where we would expect to find them" argument has little historical force.