< One of my RCIA students (I teach a class for adults entering the Catholic Church) gave me a book for Christmas called "Dethroning Jesus," which delighted me with several good clear chapters untangling and debunking Bart Ehrman's Biblical skepticism.
The authors, Darrell Bock and Daniel Wallace, say that Ehrman does have actual scholarship to his credit, but he exaggerates, distorts, and rhetorically twists things to do maximum damage. In short, Ehrman has scholarly cred, but his is far from a scholarly perspective.
Just as an example (one out of many) Ehrman makes huge dramatic claims about Biblical "inaccuracies" (actually, textual variants.) He says there are literally tens of thousands of them (and it's true.) What he doesn't tell you, is that the vast majority of them make no difference whatsoever. No difference in meaning. No difference in emphasis. Zip.
This is because (among other things) some texts were written when there was no standard spelling. It's like reading Canturbury Tales and getting bent out of shape because Chaucer spells the color green, and greene," and "grene." Also many textual variants just transpose words with no change in meaning ("sheep and oxen" vs "oxen and sheep.")
Same deal with historic details: Erhman kicks up huge dust storms about tiny distinctions which actually make no difference; or markets suppositions as if they were facts.
Bock and Wallace's "Dethroning Jesus": antidote to Ehrman. I recommend it.
Very interesting. Thank you.