Corpus-Paul

["David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>]

Eric Zuesse says:

>>The difference between the two accounts is not greater than the difference
that a court of law routinely expects to encounter between the accounts from
two different witnesses to the same event. However, Paul was a witness to
this event, and Luke knew of it only by hearsay. A court would question and
cross-examine Paul's account, but would admit Luke's hearsay account only
under special conditions, and even then only to provide confirmation for a
hypothesis that is, itself, derived entirely from such direct witness
testimony and from other non-hearsay evidence. Consequently, whereas a
legal/forensic explanation can employ Gal. 2 for hypothesis-formulation and
not only for hypothesis-confirmation, it can employ Acts 15 only for
hypothesis-confirmation, and cannot formulate any explanatory hypothesis on
the basis of that account of the council meeting.<<

This is intreresting! For some while I have thought about employing legal
methodology to this kind of evidence. Can you provide a short bibliography
of reference material (particularly in English) that summarizes the "rules
of evidence" used in lawcourts?

Evidence        type                    hyp. form.      hyp. conf.      other?

Gal 2           personal letter Y               Y               ?
Acts 15 hist. account   N               Y               ?

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA