Gifted, serious, hard-researching amateurs are out there in growing number writing better and better books. One of them is 57 year old Houston lawyer Pamela Binnings Ewen. Her book is FAITH ON TRIAL: AN ATTORNEY ANALYZES THE EVIDENCE FOR THE DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS. (Nashville, Broadman & Holman Publishers, xiii. 210 pp., paper, $12.99). In the best sense of the word Mrs Ewen is an amateur (non specialized, not academically or professionally credentialed for the task at hand). Her work is derivative and popularizing but  largely persuasive.

I am all for amateurs! Being an amateur book reviewer, I like to write three separate reviews of books which I think deserve the effort. An “amateur” (etymologically) is a Latin “amator,” a lover. One review is for my neighbors in Western NC. The other two go to www.amazon.com and to www.barnesandnoble.com. Each review stands alone. Each is different. That is this amateur’s way to do passable justice in few words to good books.

St Augustine was a self-taught amateur in philosophy, Scripture and theology. That he had not studied in Athens did not, however, stop him from thinking out a series of rational approaches to the problems before him. They might have included the nature of reality or the relations between emperor and subjects. But Augustine buckled down to his topics and spent as long as it took to write his CONFESSIONS, CITY OR GOD or THE TRINITY.

Augustine ought to be the patron saint of amateur intellectuals. His spirit lives on in FAITH ON TRIAL. That book’s author  is not the original genius that Augustine was. But how many of us are? Her genius consists, rather, in applying lucidly in today’s idiom others’ originality to important current preoccupations.

Mrs Ewen is also a Christian “apologist.” She believes that there is enough evidence to hold up in any United States Court under Federal Rules of Evidence that 
 

• (1) A man named Jesus lived in Palestine 2000 years ago. 
• (2) He was executed by crucifixion and died. 
• (3) On the third day He returned to human life.

That the historical evidence supports those theses was argued in the 19th Century by Harvard Law Professor Simon Greenleaf. Greenleaf’s 1874 book was reissued in 1995 in Grand Rapids by Kregel as THE TESTIMONY OF THE EVANGELISTS. Ewen updates Greenleaf’s methods and arguments. 

The second basis for Ewen’s theses is that at least three of the gospels were written before 70 A.D. and that John, Matthew and Mark were eyewitnesses to the life and death of Jesus. For this she relies heavily on views of the German scholar Carsten Peter Thiede. Thiede and Matthew D’Ancona co-authored EYEWITNESS TO JESUS (Doubleday, 1996). To Thiede papyrus fragments from Matthew 26 seem linked to Qumran writing styles. Indeed Qumran document 7Q5 is said to be a fragment from Mark’s gospel. And all the Qumran caves were abandoned after 68 A.D. Three gospels are therefore earlier than until recently thought.

The earlier the gospels, the better the case for making the resurrection of Jesus overwhelmingly  probable. Those writings also assert that many eyewitnesses were still alive when gospels were written. If the gospels were lying, there were plenty of contemporaries around to call attention to the lies. The willingness of the earliest Christian martyrs to die for their belief in the resurrection also makes the case for Jesus compelling.

Pamela Binnings Ewen argues that the growing body of new archeological finds in Palestine regularly shows the evangelists knowing precisely what they were talking about regarding places like Nazareth, the Temple in Jerusalem before its destruction and on and on.

The sources cited deserve further reading and they point  “amateur” readers where to probe.

-OOO-

for Independent Torch