The 3d Annual Greer-Heard Forum: The Textual Reliability of the New Testament: A Dialogue Featuring Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace

A good while back I introduced to you Bart Ehrman (see my EBCAlumni.net blog on Dec 19, 2005). He had published a poplur level book called Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. It was based off an earlier book of his called The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament. In these books (and others) he talks about textual criticism. Textual criticism is the art and science of trying to recover the original wording of the autographs of Scripture. With the number of copies and textual variation among the copies we have a lot of data that needs to be sifted in order to figure out the original wording because the original autographs are no longer extant. That's the field of textual criticism. However, Ehrman's contribution through these books is his thesis that orthodox scribes "corrupted" the manuscripts thus altering the text to promote particular viewpoints. This was the result of "proto-orthodox" church conflict with gnosticism during the early church period.

Bart Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a former Moody Bible Institute student and undergraduate of Wheaton College, did his PhD dissertation (Didymus the Blind and the Text of the Gospels [SBLNTGF, 1. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986] [magna cum laude]; Cf. his very fine "New Testament Textual Criticism: Quest for Methodology" [M.Div. thesis, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1981]) at Princeton Theological Seminary under the late Bruce M. Metzger. Metzger, himself, was a highly acclaimed textual critic. Ehrman was one of his last students along side Michael W. Holmes, also a very good text critic. In fact, Ehrman updated Metzger's classic textbook (Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 3d Enlarged ed. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992]) on textual criticism recently as well (Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed. [Oxford: University Press, 2000]).

Ehrman's popular level work Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why actually was a best seller for a short time as a result of the March 14, 2006 episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,

the June 20, 2006 episode of The Colbert Report,

radio interviews (e.g., The Diane Rehm Show on NPR [Dec 8, 2005] be sure to scroll down a tad to see the interview link; Fresh Air with Terry Gross on NPR [Dec 14, 2005]), newspaper articles (cf. "The Book of Bart" by Neely Tucker in the Washington Post, March 5, 2006), and a subsequent speaking tour by Ehrman (e.g., the Stanford Lecture 1/10 and others on Youtube; see a whole lecture here on Google video).


Finally, Ehrman's textual criticism has resulted in a debate: The third annual Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum in Faith and Culture on April 4-5 2008 against Dallas Theological Seminary's Professor of New Testament Studies Daniel B. Wallace... DUN DUN DUN!... The debate was titled, "The Textual Reliability of the New Testament: A Dialogue Featuring Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallce."

Prior to the Greer-Heard debate, Wallace had previously written a book review of Ehrman's work titled, "The Gospel According to Bart: A Review Article of Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman" (Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 49, [2006], 327-349). There is a longer and shorter online version of the same article (Cf. also the interesting blog called "The Historical Metzger" by Wallace; here Wallace critiques Ehrman's view of historical Jesus methods by an analogy from Metzger's life).

Now that we have set the background for the Greer-Heard debate, let us move on toward the point of this blog, the debate itself. During the academic school year from 2006-2007 I did an internship with Dr. Wallace (got to call him "Dan" by his own request). It was during that time that Wallace received an invitation to attend the Greer-Heard Forum and debate Ehrman (approximately a year or more before the date of the debate). Wallace accepted and waited for Ehrman's response to the organizers. Wallace, who has not done many debates, was admittedly concerned. Ehrman was very good at this sort of thing and had been on debate teams and previous lecture tours.

The debates were fairly organized and the keynote debaters, Wallace and Ehrman, both brought two other debaters with them. Ehrman asked Dale B. Martin and David Parker to assist/support him. Wallace asked Michael W. Holmes and William F. Warren (cf. Greer-Heard Guest Speakers).

Tim Ricchiti, a Greer-Heard Forum attendee kindly blogged The Greer-Heard: Rules of the Game for us. He wrote, "Ehrman and Wallace will trade 40-minute presentations laying out their position, with Ehrman going first. A short intermission will follow the initial presentations. When the dialogue begins again, Ehrman and Wallace will have 10 minutes to respond to each other (with Ehrman going first), followed by two more 5-minute responses. Finally, the session will end with a question and answer session from the audience."

The schedule for the Greer-Heard went thus (with blog reviews from eyewitnesses for each lecture since I was not in attendance) despite the internet schedule:

Friday April 4, 2008
Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum 7:00pm - 9:30pm
Friday Night Lights: Day One of the 2008 Greer-Heard Forum by Ed Komoszewski

The Greer-Heard: Ehrman's Presentation by Tim Ricchuiti
Word has it that Ehrman's Lecture at Stanford is pretty much the same material that was presented at the Forum (see the Youtube and Google video links above). I've already alluded to Ehrman's thesis above, namely, that "proto-orthodox" scribes "currupted" the text for more

The Greer-Heard: Wallace's Presentation by Tim Ricchuiti
From what I understand, Wallace does deal with specific text critical problems, and even agrees with Ehrman's analysis on some of them. But Wallace's main point is that no cardinal doctrine is affected by the textual variants found in the manuscripts. The essential teaching of the NT manuscripts is reliable.

The Greer-Heard: Ehrman's [1st] Response by Tim Ricchuiti

The Greer-Heard: Wallace's [1st] Response by Tim Ricchuiti

The Greer-Heard: Ehrman's 2nd Response by Tim Ricchuiti

The Greer-Heard: Wallace's 2nd Response by Tim Ricchuiti

The Greer-Heard: Final Friday Thoughts by Tim Ricchuiti

Saturday April 5 2008
Louisiana Saturday Night: Day Two of the 2008 Greer-Heard Forum by Ed Komoszewski

Michael Holmes (with conversation and Q&A with Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace)
The Greer-Heard: Michael Holmes ["Text and Transmission in the Second Century"] Session by Tim Ricchuiti

The Greer-Heard: Thoughts on Michael Holmes Session by Tim Ricchuiti

Dale Martin (with conversation and Q&A with Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace)
The Greer-Heard: Dale Martin ["The Necessity of a Theology of Scripture"] Session by Tim Ricchuiti

The Greer-Heard: Thoughts on Dale Martin Session by Tim Ricchuiti

David Parker (with conversation and Q&A with Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace)
The Greer-Heard: David Parker ["What is the Text of the New Testament"] Session by Tim Ricchuiti

The Greer-Heard: Thoughts on David Parker Session by Tim Ricchuiti

WIlliam F. Warren (with conversation Q&A with Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace)
The Greer-Heard: Bill Warren ["Who Changed the Text and Why?"] Session by Tim Ricchuiti

Concluding Comments from Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace
The Greer-Heard: Concluding Statements by Tim Ricchuiti

The Greer-Heard Forum: A Few Observations by Dan Wallace

The Greer-Heard: Final Thoughts by Tim Ricchuiti

The Greer-Heard: 2008 - The Textual Reliability of the New Testament Full Conference MP3 FILES DOWNLOAD for $10 is now available. I plan to purchase the debate MP3s and look forward to listening to them. Eventually, as with the previous two Greer-Heard Forums, the conference papers and respnses will be turned into a book.

From the bloggers, at least those who agree with Wallace for the most part, the debate was not as good as it could have been for Ehrman. He did not meet expectations and come with his "A" game. Not only did Ehrman concede Wallace's main thesis, that no cardinal NT doctrine is affected by the variants, but it was also the debater's and audience's impression that Ehrman's own partners in the debate disagreed with Ehrman! That is not a good place to be... alone.