Bart Ehrman vs Dan Wallace - Textual Reliabilty of the Bible 2012

This debate ( video | 1:56.52s ) features Bart Ehrman and Dan Wallace talking about the textual reliability of the NT Bible.

4 Stars. A very solid and cordial debate, one that's surely a testament to Wallace's skill to read a crowd.

This was a great debate. Both Ehrman and Wallace came off as very amiable and presented their sides in fairly approachable manners. Both keep their cases simple, which is something that Ehrman is good about doing I think.

This is probably the most fluid performance of Ehrman's that I have heard. He was succinct and did a good job of deflating the common argument that there are a billion ancient copies of the NT available to scholars. I say this because Wallace does kind of draw that out in his presentation and it doesn't seem as convincing after hearing Ehrman already snuff it out in his opening.

Wallace came off as a super cool guy, too. He further comes off as very liberal about his own position, too. He also presented a piece of evidence that I've never really heard anyone else articulate well enough for it to stick out for me in a debate AND I also didn't hear Ehrman address it, at least not specifically. That is, Wallace talked about early church fathers quoting from the NT that were available to them at the time. Through comparing these quotes to manuscripts of the NT, we can pin point, more accurately, which of the earlier texts are more reliable.

I don't know how this argument can be shown useless or not but it certainly was interesting and new to me, unlike most of the arguments used by apologists in this type of debate.

Technical
 Good audio, hear some feedback at parts though.

*Since listening to a lot more of the debates I have heard in the past and newer ones I have noted that this type of argument has and is brought up now and again. But Wallace makes the most clear use of it and Ehrman still did not address it.

Post Revision Notes
7-7-2013 I corrected some editing mistakes and commented on one of my original statements.
8-6-2013 I lowered the score, I have too many 5 star debates.
9-26-2013 I again, cleaned some stuff up.
8-15-2015 More clean up and cleansed.