THE RESURRECTION

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 106, 21 May 1937, Page 5

THE RESURRECTION

Was It Fact or Fancy? HASTINGS ADDRESS ' ' The Resurrection — -Fact or Faney ? ' ? xvas the subject of an address delivered to a large audience in the Baptist Church last night by Mr. E. M. Blaiklock, M.A., senior lecturer in Greek and Latin at Auckland University College, Mr. Blaiklock dealt first with the documents of the New Testanxent. All attempts to interpret them-otjxer than as cQntemporary records had failed, he said, and internally they bare the obvious stamp of accounts of eye-wit* nesses. Several passages were eritically analysed to illustrate this point. Dif - fieulties in the foixn and expression of the narrators were also turned to evidential aecount as proof that four men wrote facts as they saw them and that collusion and adjustment had no pluee. Circumstantial evidence was then dealt with from the Catacombs oi Bome, where four mxllion Christian dead from the first three centuries filled 567 miles of galleries', to the recentlyclxscovered rescript of Claudius found in Nazareth, which proved that by 41 B.C. the Emperor of Bome had heard the hostile version of the empty tomb. The lecturer used several lines of evidence to prove the fact of the empty tomb, and then faced and analysed in turn rationalistic explanations of the fact, from ancient txmes to Strauss and Benan. The latter scholar was subjected at length to the tests of historical criticism. to show the woakness of all explanations of the empty tomb other than the obvious Christian supernatural oue. To-night the subject will be "Is Roligion Played Out?", in which Mr. Blaiklock will deal at length with the vindication of the Bible and the Christian message enodern days have seeu.