The Case For Christ

the case against Harry Aleman? The answer, according to our next
witness, is yes-and the amount and quality of that evidence may
very well surprise you.
THE THIRD INTERVIEW- EDWIN M. YAMAUCHI, PH.D.
As I entered the imposing brick building that houses the office
of Edwin Yamauchi at Miami University in picturesque Oxford,
Ohio, I walked underneath a stone arch bearing this inscription:
"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free." As
one of the country's leading experts in ancient history,
Yamauchi has been on a quest for historical truth for much of his
life.
Born in Hawaii in 1937, the son of immigrants from Okinawa,
Yamauchi started from humble beginnings. His father died just
before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, leaving his mother to
earn a meager living as a maid for wealthy families. While
lacking formal education herself, she encouraged her son to read
and study, giving him beautifully illustrated books that
instilled in him a lifelong love of learning.
Certainly his academic accomplishments have been impressive.
After earning a bachelor's degree in Hebrew and Hellenistics,
Yamauchi received master's and doctoral degrees in Mediterranean
studies from Brandeis University.
He has been awarded eight fellowships, from the Rutgers
Research Council, National Endowment for the Humanities, the
American Philosophical Society, and others. He has studied
twenty-two languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Egyptian,
Russian, Syriac, Ugaritic, and even Commanche.
He has delivered seventy-one papers before learned societies;
lectured at more than one hundred seminaries, universities, and
colleges, including Yale, Princeton, and Cornell; served as
chairman and then president of the Institute for Biblical
Research and president of the Conference on Faith and History;
and published eighty articles in thirty-seven scholarly journals.
In 1968 he participated in the first excavations of the Herodian
temple in Jerusalem, revealing evidence of the temple's
destruction in A.D. 70. Archaeology has also been the theme of
several of his books, including The Stones and the Scriptures;
The Scriptures and Archaeology; and The World of the First
Christians.
Though born into a Buddhist background, Yamauchi has been