Introduction
Eyewitness testimony is one of the primary sources for reconstructing historical events. Yet the impossibility of cross-examining such witnesses in the modern era raises questions about the reliability of their testimony especially when it is used as evidence in academic and legal studies.
This critical study surveys the essential differences between the criteria for evaluating testimony in historical research and the standards of cross-examination in modern courts, emphasizing the importance of employing rigorous scholarly methods when analyzing historical documents. It also discusses how academic precision can be united with methodological fairness in assessing the credibility of historical testimonies, highlighting the role of temporal and cultural contexts in such evaluation.
A fundamental question often arises when studying ancient historical and religious texts especially those that document pivotal events: How can we trust a testimony whose author can no longer be cross-examined? And does such a testimony remain probative if it cannot be subjected to direct judicial scrutiny?
This question presents a significant problem, particularly when evaluating ancient historical and religious documents. Its importance lies in clarifying the basic difference between legal standards of proof used in courts and the methods of evaluation employed in historical studies and biblical narratives.
The problem is heightened because this line of argument is sometimes used whether deliberately or inadvertently as a tool to discredit the Gospel narratives, on the pretext that the original witnesses cannot now be subjected to direct, in-person cross-examination. Yet despite its apparent harmony with judicial principles, this claim rests on weak methodological foundations when compared with the concepts accepted in historical research especially because the courtroom model of examination is ill-suited to the evaluation of such testimonies in this context.
Cross-examination is indeed a cornerstone of modern legal systems, safeguarding a defendant’s right to test the credibility of witnesses and scrutinize the accuracy of their statements in court. There is no doubt that this principle is a chief legal guarantee protecting the rights of the accused. However, when this standard is lifted from its strictly judicial context and applied outside its legal domain particularly in the study of historical documents it generates deep methodological problems. These grow even more severe when the standard is applied literally to religious and literary narratives such as the Gospels, inevitably producing a forced reading that lacks objectivity and sound method.
Vincent Bugliosi’s Objection
In his 2011 book Divinity of Doubt: The God Question, famed American prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi leveled a set of objections to both religious and atheistic positions. Among them was his skepticism toward the admissibility of the Gospels’ eyewitness testimonies as reliable evidence, on the ground that their authors cannot today be subjected to direct judicial cross-examination as required by modern legal systems. In his view, the Gospels do not meet criminal-court evidentiary standards, especially the in-person cross-examination requirement, which he treats as essential for admitting testimony leading him to challenge the Gospels’ credibility from a legal perspective.
Bugliosi further argues that, as a general rule in modern legal systems (with rare and tightly constrained exceptions), a witness must personally appear in court to testify so the defendant can exercise his right of cross-examination. This legal procedure aims to probe potential bias or discrepancies and is a key safeguard for defendants and the integrity of proceedings.
Drawing on this legal framework requiring the witness’s presence to allow cross-examination Bugliosi concludes that the inability to summon and examine the Evangelists today strips their accounts of the status of admissible legal testimony. Consequently, he argues, these narratives cannot legitimately be used to establish Christian claims about first-century events. On this reasoning, their testimony lacks the minimum level of reliability recognized in any contemporary judicial setting.
Why This Legal Transplant Fails
Having surveyed Bugliosi’s ideas and assumptions, we must note that they involve an inaccurate transfer of a legal principle to a very different context. The methodological confusion between evidentiary requirements in criminal cases and the criteria of verification used in historical research leads to non-objective conclusions.
There is a fundamental difference between the procedural rules courts employ to protect the accused, and the methods historians use to evaluate historical and literary narratives.
In criminal law, highly stringent standards govern the admission of testimony, including the requirement prominent among them that living eyewitnesses be available for cross-examination. These standards exist chiefly to protect the defendant, often applying the principle that doubt is resolved in favor of the accused, even at the expense of achieving full penal justice, so as to avoid convicting the innocent. This strict protection is the judiciary’s way of preventing injustice even if that comes at the cost of arriving at the whole truth.
But this legal framework while justified and appropriate within its domain is unsuitable as a general metric for evaluating historical writings. Historical and religious texts with a literary character are assessed by methods different from those used in courts. The Gospels, by their very nature as literary-historical works, are not courtroom affidavits, and therefore should not be forced under courtroom rules. Applying those rules verbatim would lead to absurd results, effectively excluding most of the historical sources on which our knowledge of the past depends.
Enforcing criminal-court standards on historical and religious documents (including the Gospels) would eliminate a vast swath of evidence and cripple our ability to reconstruct historical narratives. Judicial standards are, by design, far stricter than what critical historical research requires.
This exposes the error of overextending a precise legal tool to a field with a different nature, purpose, and method. The legal standard is a procedural instrument for protecting defendants from wrongful conviction; it was never designed to serve as a means of understanding history or interpreting religious texts.
If this strict modern standard were imposed on historical records, we would reach the nonsensical conclusion that no historical account could be trusted unless we could cross-examine living witnesses in court. Insisting on a “living, cross-examinable witness” as the criterion for admitting testimony would, in practice, uproot historical knowledge at its base, excluding the overwhelming majority of records that form our primary sources for the past.
The consequences become plain with concrete examples: would we reject Herodotus or Thucydides on the ancient wars, or doubt Ptolemy or Julius Caesar, merely because they cannot appear in court today to be examined or to clarify and defend their writings? Applied absolutely, this courtroom standard would even cast doubt on modern history, including the recorded testimony of trustworthy figures such as Corrie ten Boom, leaving the reliability of all historical sources under suspicion.
Worse still, applying this standard beyond its legal context would not only undermine academic history; it would also erode human memory itself. Much of what we know about our families and recent past comes through the accounts of witnesses who are no longer alive and cannot be subjected to any form of judicial cross-examination. If such testimonies were excluded merely because their authors are absent, we would lose not only the past but the means of accessing it.
The legal standard, as a procedural tool meant to protect the accused, cannot serve as the yardstick for religious and historical studies. If we adopted “a living, cross-examinable witness” as a general rule for establishing past facts, we would be left with no trustworthy history at all. This way of thinking would usher in a state of comprehensive methodological skepticism in which most of the humanities could not perform their epistemic role since these disciplines necessarily analyze narratives and texts from witnesses whose presence is no longer possible.
The Manson Trial Irony
A striking irony emerges here: Vincent Bugliosi himself was a principal figure in one of the most prominent legal cases in modern American history the 1970 Charles Manson murder trial. Bugliosi led the prosecution that secured Manson’s conviction. The state’s case relied heavily on the eyewitness testimony of Linda Kasabian, a member of the cult who did not directly participate in the killings; her testimony was crucial to conviction.
But suppose a hundred years had passed since the trial would it be reasonable to reject Kasabian’s testimony simply because we could no longer cross-examine her? Should we cast doubt on the court records by alleging possible tampering or neglect? How would we then verify that cross-examination followed proper procedures, or that no essential details were omitted?
By that time none of the original witnesses or parties would be alive to clarify anything; yet we would still not doubt the authenticity of the court transcripts or the truthfulness of the testimonies so long as the legal system documented and certified them according to the standards of their day.
This exposes a key methodological flaw in the assumption that testimony loses credibility merely because its author is absent. Even in law, official written records are trusted if they were collected under recognized legal safeguards within their historical context. If Bugliosi applied to his own trial records the very standard he wants to impose on the Gospels, he would thereby undermine the legitimacy of his own courtroom achievements. This illustrates the danger of transplanting a precise legal norm built for courtrooms into non-legal domains such as historical studies or religious texts.
Sound Method for Historical Testimony
Methodical engagement with historical and religious narratives does not mean ignoring critical evaluation; it requires using tools appropriate to the field, including:
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The date of composition;
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Proximity to the events;
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Multiple attestation and agreement;
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Coherence of detail;
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Internal consistency;
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The absence of indicators of forgery or deliberate distortion among other criteria scholars use to assess credibility.
If, by such means, it is shown that the Evangelists were eyewitnesses or drew on direct eyewitnesses and that they recorded events faithfully, accurately, and with care, then we have every rational warrant to trust their testimony, even though they cannot now appear before modern courts.
Final Analysis: Between Methodological Critique and General Conclusion
Many contemporary studies agree that the courtroom cross-examination standard cannot be applied verbatim to the evaluation of historical narratives especially ancient religious texts.
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J. Warner Wallace (in his article “Can a Witness Be Trusted If He Can’t Be Cross-Examined?”) explains the essential difference between courtroom standards and the methodological criteria of historical research, urging us not to burden historical texts with modern courtroom requirements.
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Simon Greenleaf (in The Testimony of the Evangelists) argues that assessing credibility must consider the historical and legal circumstances and the documentation practices of the time, rather than restricting ourselves to the direct cross-examination models used in modern courts. He treats the Evangelists’ testimony from a legal perspective appropriate to their era, not ours.
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Richard Bauckham (in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses) underscores the importance of applying historical-critical tools to the Gospels, regarding them as reliable eyewitness testimony and advancing a robust thesis that these narratives rest on direct witness and thus merit serious historical consideration.
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Craig Blomberg (in The Historical Reliability of the Gospels) stresses the need to apply historical criteria such as temporal proximity and multiple sources, rather than importing modern legal standards and procedures.
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Gary Habermas and Michael Licona (in The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus) present an in-depth analysis based on the “minimal facts” approach a method grounded in rigorous historical research rather than strict courtroom models, drawing on data widely acknowledged across scholarly lines.
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N. T. Wright (in The Resurrection of the Son of God) develops a philosophical-linguistic case that highlights the deep difference between courtroom proof requirements and historical understanding. Using the resurrection as a case study, he distinguishes what is needed to prove a legal case from what counts as a rational, historically acceptable explanation, insisting on fitting the method to the context.
Conclusion
The sound methodological position is not to adopt the strict procedures of criminal courts as the standard for evaluating historical and religious documents especially Gospel narratives. Excluding ancient testimonies merely because the original witnesses cannot appear before modern courts is a methodological distortion that blocks objective access to historical truth and logically would dismantle the entire human record, including the very foundations on which critics themselves build their understanding of personal and collective history. Reliable eyewitness testimony remains one of the historian’s most important sources for reconstructing events and interpreting their religious and human meaning.
Rigorous scholarship requires subjecting historical testimonies including religious ones to critical scrutiny by historical standards: proximity to events, multiple independent attestation, coherence, internal consistency, and the absence of signs of fabrication or systematic manipulation. On this basis, the Gospel accounts of the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus stand and deserve to be regarded as high-credibility historical documents in serious academic study especially given that their authors were eyewitnesses or relied on direct eyewitnesses within a community that carefully preserved oral tradition and subjected it to communal verification.
Therefore, excluding these testimonies merely because their authors cannot appear before a modern court is a departure from rigorous historical evaluation and lacks methodological fairness.
References
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Wallace, J. W. “Can a Witness Be Trusted If He Can’t Be Cross-Examined?” Cold-Case Christianity.
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Bauckham, R. (2006). Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Eerdmans.
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Blomberg, C. (1987). The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. InterVarsity Press.
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Greenleaf, S. (1846). The Testimony of the Evangelists to the Truth of the Gospel History. Baker Book House.
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Habermas, G., & Licona, M. (2004). The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. Kregel Publications.
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Wright, N. T. (2003). The Resurrection of the Son of God. Fortress Press.
