CSNTM Press Release: SMU DEBATE
The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) is proud to announce the SMU Debate between two noted New Testament scholars, Dr. Bart D. Ehrman and Dr. Daniel B. Wallace. The debate will be held on Saturday, October 1, 2011 at 7 PM in the McFarlin Memorial Auditorium at Southern Methodist University. This debate will feature a dialogue on the reliability of the text of the New Testament. Though Ehrman and Wallace have held public debates in the past, this one will focus on providing a general audience with insider information regarding one of the most significant pieces of literature ever written. Dr. Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, is a New York Times bestselling author who has published over 20 books. His book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, questioned the reliability of the New Testament text, arguing that Christian scribes have corrupted it beyond repair. Dr. Wallace, director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts and New Testament Professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, has spent his life studying and digitizing ancient copies of the New Testament. He has authored and edited numerous books; most recently he has edited and contributed to Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic, and Apocryphal Evidence. He asserts that we have good reason to believe that the New Testament text is reliable. If you are interested in the New Testament and its reliability, this is sure to be an event you will not want to miss. For more information on the debate and to purchase tickets, please visit www.smudebate.com.
9 replies to "The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) is proud to announce the SMU Debate between two noted New Testament scholars, Dr. Bart D. Ehrman and Dr. Daniel B. Wallace"
People need to stop treating Ehrman as a legitimate scholar….he isn’t. He has a nasty habit of exaggerations so extreme that they are effectively lies.
Must…get… ticket!
Just heard an Ehrman v. Bock debate on the UK radio show “Unbelievable”. Looking forward to hearing about this one as well.
is this going to be live-streamed @ all?
[…] Stevens spent a week with Douglas Moo. Mason, Koinonia and Credo House mentioned a debate between Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace. Alan Bandy reflected on Christian faith […]
I want to think Ehrman is just a guy who in real life believes the Bible and is orthodox in his his views, and he is just trying to demonstrate how ridiculous people who take his supposed positions (such as all the views he endorses in his books) are.
Because nobody could be so stupid as he purports to be!
He loses every debate and just looks dumber and dumber.
It has to be a ruse.
People put to much stake into this type of debate. It does not matter if the Bible is 100% accurate and coherent with the original writers – the issue really is whether it is correspondent to reality. Even so Wallace allowed at least a 1% meaningful corruption. How does this jive with the doctrine of Preservation? Why would God allow such corruption of any sort or kind? Furthermore, none of this shows any kind of truth to the doctrine of Inspiration.
I am not sure why Christians use this as a source of confindence in their beliefs about such doctrines?
I find it humorous when people say Ehrman loses every debate. He beat James White. As usual White overestimated his performance. Wallace didn’t do much better in the debate. Both argued against Ehrman while assuming the truth of the inherent atheism of modern textual criticism. As long as Christians who debate Ehrman continue to so this, they will lose to Ehrman with whom they agree with in the majority of his positions. Joel McDurmond’s analysis of White’s debate is just as pertinent here. Christians need to go back to the arguments of Francis Turretin and John Owen.
What I find disturbing about Ehrman is his arrogance and/or acceptance of the claim that he is “a leading authority on…the life of Jesus” (from the back cover of Misquoting Jesus). Ehrman is NOT an authority on the historical Jesus. Far from it. He has written not a single significant book on Jesus. The leading scholars (i.e., scholars who actually write extensively on the historical Jesus [e.g., John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew {five-volume series}; James D. G. Dunn {Jesus Remembered}; Albert Schweitzer; John D. Crossan, N.T. Wright; E. P. Sanders; Raymond Brown, etc.
One look at Meier’s massive undertaking on the historical Jesus and one sees how useless Ehrman’s work is: it doesn’t feature (Meier only cites Ehrman’s “Orthodox Corruption of Scripture” once, from what I recall…). James Dunn never cites Ehrman in his Jesus Remembered. Likewise, German scholars like Udo Schnelle basically, for the most part, ignore Ehrman or, most likely, don’t know about him. Why? Because he is NOT a “leading authority” on the historical figure of Jesus (to use Sander’s title).