Bill, after more than 40 years in the classroom, including 37 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dr. Bart Erman is retiring from UNC.

While he'll still be speaking and giving interviews and so on, Bart delivered his final public lecture at UNC

on December 7, 2025.

And he spoke on the most significant discovery

in the history of biblical studies.

Now, one can tell from listening to this final lecture what's important to him,

what he really wants to communicate. I have some key excerpts from that address, but first,

in your opinion, Bill, how significant is the scholarly career of Bart Ehrman? What are some of his

contributions? His contributions to establishing the

Greek text of the New Testament are very important, but I think he's relatively insignificant as a

historical Jesus scholar. He's a popularizer of historical Jesus studies, the best-selling

religious author with Oxford University Press. And so it's his popular-level books that have made

him famous. Let's go to the first clip. What is the most significant discovery in the history of biblical studies?

Clip number one.

What do I consider to be the most significant discovery ever made in its history, the history of the discipline?

Our flawed manuscripts.

Whoever wrote the books of the New Testament, the various books, wrote them at some time, mainly in the first century. And you just take an example, like whoever wrote the Gospel of Matthew,

sat down at one point and wrote it out, maybe around the year 80 or 85, he wrote, he wrote

his gospel, he had the other sources, but he wrote something down on papyrus. And that was

some time in the first century. And you can call that the original thing, the thing he wrote something down on papyrus, and that was sometime in the first century.

And you can call that the original thing, the thing he wrote, and that he started passing around for people to look at them.

And then, after a while, somebody wanted a copy of it, right?

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