The truth according to Bart D. Ehrman

[Chas]

Chas has informed me Ehrman has discovered a vast quantity of facts regarding early Christian text alteration ...

Some background information. I'm not that familiar with Ehrman's work. He's a Biblical Scholar, one that's lost his Christian faith, and he seems to specialize in textual criticism. So it should come as no surprise that he aims to locate the textual variants and work out which is the correct reading.

Ehrman doesn't mind sensationalizing his work, and it seems also doesn't mind making claims that are well beyond the scope of his are of expertise (textual criticism).

Ehrman basically has no problem claiming that the book of Acts and some of the Epistles are deliberate forgeries. This goes way beyond the scope of textual criticism, and these claims need to be backed up by evidence or dismissed as uninformed gibberish. It is also well outside of general scholarly thought and theory on these matters. Don't get worked up, that on it's own doesn't mean it's wrong - but just like the "flying spaghetti monster" you can not prove a negative, and this is no different. To substantiate huge sweeping claims of forgeries, there should be some clear evidence.

Ehrman seems to cite a lack of self-identified authors for the four Gospels as his "evidence" that they are forgeries and attributed to disciples. This claim rests on the assertion that authorship attribution came at a later date, however every manuscript we have, which contains the beginning of the book (ie the first leaf), of the Gospels contains the titles. The Greek titles look something like this:

• EUAGGELION
  TO KATA MATQAION
  
  EUAGGELION
  TO KATA MARKON
  
  EUAGGELION
  TO KATA LOUKAN
  
  EUAGGELION
  TO KATA IWANNHN

If they were added later we would expect to find copies that did not contain these titles. Especially if, as Ehrman seems to claim, if they were added late in the 2nd century. As yet not a single manuscript that is devoid of the titles has surfaced. So his claim that they were added late in the 2nd century doesn't have any tangible evidence for it. Remember a lack of evidence isn't evidence.

Now if Chas or others want to inform me on more of "Ehrman's facts" I'll be more than happy to discuss them.

Ehrman's scholarship goes beyond textual criricism.

The titles don't prove anything.