I just got back from Ehrman's talk. It was standing room only, lots of people there, and Ehrman talked about textual criticism along the lines of Misquoting Jesus. He is a good speaker and gave lots of humorous anecdotes. There was a big hush in the room when he slowly and clearly demonstrated that the Nicodemus story in John 3 was composed in Greek, and what Jesus says critically turns on a double entendre in Greek and not in Aramaic, the language Jesus would have actually used. Pictures:
I went up to the microphone in the Q&A and had to wait for a guy in front ask him if he's read the Urantia book. I asked him to say a word about Marcion and the state of the text of Paul's epistles (with a nod to Narkissos' question), and I also asked him if 1 Clement could be regarded as a witness to the first-century text of 1 Corinthians. His immediate response kind of cracked me up; he said, "You sound just like my thesis defense!" Mind you, this was after the Urantia book question and he was also fielding questions inspired by the Da Vinci Code and what not. Unfortunately, his comment about Marcion was geared for the general audience and merely talked about who Marcion was. He did give a response to my second question, namely, that while 1 Clement covers may of the themes of 1 Corinthians, it doesn't help in matters of wording (I'm not so sure, perhaps to a limited degree it might). Then after the presentation was over, I went up to him with quite a few others to have my book signed. While he has signing it, I asked him if I could ask about a minor point of Greek and mentioned the matter of prénés genomenos "became headlong" in Acts 1:18 (discussed in my "Evolution of Judas Iscariot" thread) and whether the Greek really made sense in the context. His reaction was priceless: "Who are you?!" LOL!! I gave a really hasty rushed introduction (as there were so many people around vying for attention), and after he gave the usual "falling" interpretation (which depends in part on harmonization with Matthew), I mentioned Papias who has préstheis instead and mentioned how both Papias and Acts 1 utilize the same OT intertext, Psalm 69, to which he concurred, although perhaps he was just trying to get me out of his hair....who is this asking me all these technical questions?? Kinda like a Trekkie at a Star Trek convention asking James Doohan about technical specs of the antimatter reactor in the Enterprise engine core.
(Sorry for the off-topic post, I wanted to give an update and share my amusing experience tonight)
