Even scholars within his own field who disagree with his (perceived?) conclusions admit that Bart Ehrman is a legitimate scholar. Keep the “within his own field” qualifier in mind for as we have seen, many legitimate scholars with in their own field tend to go far afield when they become popular and consider themselves experts on virtually any and everything.
For example, just because he is a legitimate scholar within his own field does not mean that his work is immaculate and when, for example, he attempts to traipse into fields such as history, logic, ethics, etc., he is clearly disqualified from interacting therein.
Ehrman published lightly within scholarly journals and heavily within pop-outlets such as non-peer reviewed books.
Bart Ehrman has done much to bring info which is well known to those in academia regarding the text of the Bible to the general public.
Many consider the juicy bits of his pop-research results and proclaim that he has demonstrated that the Bible is not reliable—both as a texts/documents as well as with regard to the validity of that which the texts/documents contain.
Ehrman has repeatedly noted the fact that even if all of the textual problems he claims that the Bible has are granted they still do not effect any Jewish or Christian doctrines whatsoever.
Bruce Metzger is one of the great scholars of modern times, and I dedicated the book to him because he was both my inspiration for going into textual criticism and the person who trained me in the field. I have nothing but respect and admiration for him. And even though we may disagree on important religious questions – he is a firmly committed Christian and I am not – we are in complete agreement on a number of very important historical and textual questions. If he and I were put in a room and asked to hammer out a consensus statement on what we think the original text of the New Testament probably looked like, there would be very few points of disagreement – maybe one or two dozen places out of many thousands. The position I argue for in ‘Misquoting Jesus’ does not actually stand at odds with Prof. Metzger’s position that the essential Christian beliefs are not affected by textual variants in the manuscript tradition of the New Testament.
—Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, p. 252
Skeptics, by any other name, tend to think something along the lines of: 1) If God was then God would ______________ and here they fill in the blank with something to the likes of “would preserve the text down to the least jot and tittle without deviation whatsoever from generation to generation, copy to copy, language to language, etc. 2) The text has not been thusly preserved.
3) Therefore, God is not.
Yet, even if this standard is reasonable or would seem the very best imaginable option it is, after all, merely a subjective assertion based on personal preferences.
As God’s ways and thoughts are as far above our own as the heaven are so is the manner whereby He has chosen to preserve His texts.
Bart Ehrman is doing God’s work in proving that regardless of copying errors, missing details in this or that manuscript or additional details in others, from language to language, from copy to copy, misspellings, changes in place names, etc., etc., etc. no doctrine is effected—none, no doctrine in all of Jewish theology and also in Christian theology.
Ehrman should be employed by apologists, theologians, higher critics, textual critics, etc. as someone who has brought our attention to thinking God’s thoughts after Him within regards to the manner in which He chose to ensure the preservation of His texts.
See may other articles on Bart Ehrman here.
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