Again, the assumption here is that God ought to give all people all of his words, without allowing any copyist to change one jot or tittle, or any fallible scholars to teach people what he wants them to know. Why did God not give, to all people without exception, the complete Bible by a perpetual miracle, without making use of ordinary human agents? There should have been no need for scribes, scholars, translators, and indeed no need for scripture writers, because in order for inspiration to do anyone any good, everyone in the world must receive every word of God immediately and individually. Presumably Ehrman would think that it is inconsistent with the whole idea of inspiration that Adam, for instance, did not have the opportunity to read Paul’s epistles. If Adam did not have such an opportunity, the epistles must not have been inspired, because it would serve no purpose. And so forth. He does not take under consideration the replies that any theologian might give to these remarks, and so his argument is not developed above the level of these rather silly objections. [...] There is an element of truth in Ehrman’s account which must be admitted. I mean in the account he gives of how he, as a newcomer to these studies, was disturbed by the sight of all the variants, and saw them as a threat to any faith in the existence of an inspired and reliable text. This is a common reaction among earnest young students who are first coming to the subject, especially those who have not yet acquired proficiency in the language. But the attitude here described is not at all typical of those who have gained an adequate knowledge of Greek, have familiarized themselves with the manuscripts, and have studied much of the literature of text-critical scholarship. Those who are educated in these matters do not typically end up wringing their hands and despairing over the data. They can see for themselves how trivial nearly all the variants are, and how to evaluate the ones that make a difference. Most of the men who have risen to prominence in this field, men of real learning and ability, have been firm believers in the inspiration of the Bible. In the nineteenth century no one could claim to know the subject better than Tischendorf, Tregelles, and Westcott. But these men were believers. They did not share Ehrman’s view. Bruce Metzger, to whom Ehrman dedicates this book, was one of the more conservative scholars at Princeton while Ehrman was a student there, and he did not share Ehrman’s views. And we have good reason to think that Ehrman himself does not believe that the original text is unknowable, because he is surely one of the most opinionated scholars now living. He rarely expresses any uncertainty about the original reading of any text that he brings under discussion. He evidently believes that he knows what the original text said, with few exceptions, even where other scholars strongly disagree with him. The real problem is, he does not accept the truth of the words that he knows to be authentic. His failure to believe them has really nothing to do with any uncertainty about the original words.
Michael Marlowe, from his review of Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus
