Audio from our ETS Session on Apologetics and Textual Criticism

Credit to Matt Solomon for the action shot

The audio from my and Elijah Hixson’s special session at ETS a week or so ago is now online. The session was titled “Growing Up in the Ehrman Era: Retrospect and Prospect on Our Text-Critical Apologetic.” The first part of the session was given to several presentations drawn from chapters that will be in a book we are editing; the second part was a panel discussion featuring Dan Wallace, Timothy Paul Jones, Michael Kruger, Charles Hill, Peter Head, and Pete Williams. For more details on the session (and the book), see the original announcement here.

From our perspective as conveners, the session was a real success. The room was packed—we did try to get a bigger room—and there was helpful feedback both from our panelists and from the audience which included not only many apologists but also several unexpected special guests all the way from Münster. My thanks to all our presenters and especially our “mature” panelists.

For those who couldn’t make it, the audio files are $4.00/each. I haven’t listened to them yet myself so I don’t know how the quality is.

1. Common Problems in Evangelical Defenses of the New Testament Text - Elijah Hixson and Peter Gurry
2. Dating Myths: Why Later Manuscripts Can Be Better Manuscripts - Greg Lanier
3. Math Myths: Why More Manuscripts Isn’t Necessarily Better - Jacob Peterson
4. Panel Discussion - Dan Wallace, Timothy Paul Jones, Michael Kruger, Charles Hill, Peter Head, and Pete Williams

Second Annual ETC Lunch at ETS

Last year we started a new tradition with an ETC lunch at ETS (Evangelical Theological Society). It was good fun so I thought we should do it again. This is especially for those who can’t attend SBL and our famed annual dinner. It’s a good time to eat cheap American fast food and discuss textual criticism—what could be better?

This year we will plan to meet on Friday, November 17th at 11:15 am in the lobby of the Rhode Island Convention Center. From there we will head over to the Providence Place food court. Sadly, there is no Whataburger there. But, as a slight consolation, Pete Head should be joining us this time around. After lunch you can make your way over to Omni Providence room I for our special session on TC and Evangelical apologetics and hear from three of the five ETC Petes. All are welcome!

Foodcourt at Providence Place

Do leave a comment if you plan to come so that you won’t get left behind (and I don’t mean in the dispensationalist sense).

Special ETS Session: Growing Up in the Ehrman Era

It’s just over ten years since Bart Ehrman published his bestselling Misquoting Jesus (reviewed here) and almost ten years since Christanity Today called textual criticism one of “the hottest issues in evangelical theology.” In that time, textual criticism, particularly of New Testament, has become a staple of Evangelical apologetics, with articles on the subject in study Bibles, popular apologetics, and books on the reliability of the Bible. Unfortunately, the apologetic output too often suffers from ignorance of what we all know to be a highly technical field. At times, the results can be quite embarrassing (for example). And the problem does not seem to be improving despite the increasing number of well-trained, Evangelical text-critics.

So, about a year ago, Elijah Hixson and I began planning a way to address this problem. The result is a book project that we are excited to say has recently been accepted by IVP Academic. (More on that later.) Today, as part of that larger project, we would like to announce a special session at this year’s Evangelical Theological Society meeting in Rhode Island. Rather than offering one more response to Ehrman and co., however, the idea is to hold an in-house discussion, one which takes stock of our apologetic efforts over the last decade.

The session is two-part. The first part offers selections from the forthcoming book and the second part is a panel of top Evangelical scholars who have written on the apologetic topic at hand. Elijah and I are especially excited that everyone we asked to join the panel has agreed. We actually adjusted our original schedule to give our panelists extra time. Readers will notice several fellow ETC bloggers on the panel and at least one who will be participating in ETS for the first time. Don’t miss it!

Time & Location

1:00–4:10 PM in the Omni – Providence I

Here are the details: