Many of you know that Bart Ehrman has made something of a small fortune on arguing that early scribes corrupted the transmission of the Greek New Testament by making orthodox corrections [read: changes that reflected orthodox predilections about Jesus] during the process. Since Ehrman seems unable to avoid a television camera, his views have made their way into the popular culture, with the result that non-specialists assume all his claims are right and that his arguments cannot be overturned. Neither is the case. Ive posted some critiques of Ehrman before (here and over on PaleoBabble), so news of this new book, edited by New Testament textual critic Dan Wallace, is germane for those interested: Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament. The link leads to the ETC blog, which has a link to purchase it. All that said, the essays are technical, and so those new to NT textual criticism might be better off beginning with an introduction to the discipline, such as one of these:
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- The Naked Bible » Bart Ehrman vs. the Son of God in Mark 1:1 – A Response - [...] posted on Bart Ehrman and his work several times before on this blog (e.g., here and here). My contention…
Thanks for the link, Im getting this one. I do have the Fourth (or third ?) Annual Greer-Heard conference debate on MP3, so it will be a nice follow-up. After hearing Bart debate Daniel Wallace, Michael Holmes and others (Dale?), I have much more respect for Bart, altough we all don’t agree with his conclusions. He makes some (I do say “some”) good points that Daniel and Michael weren’t able to address, since it’s the spectrum of the unknown; and it is this spectrum of the unknown (middle 1st century/ Later 1st century and early 2nd century) that Ehrman using to cast the most doubt. Since he is no longer a believer for over a decade now, he simply wants to grab and question every little corner of the unknown to cast doubt. Fair enough in one way, but not fair in another.
I saw a debate between Barth Ehrman and William Lane Craig once. It seemed to me that a lot of times Ehrman was beating around the bush and he never really answered Craig’s arguments.
By the way, William Lane Craig says regarding the manuscript evidence that the original wording of the NT has been established to 99% accuracy. That is, from the approx. 138 000 words of the NT there only about 1400 words are uncertain. Is this true?