Don’t you think that Colbert’s defense was satirical? Or did you see that and are just pulling our chains?

I can’t get excited about Colbert’s “defense”. It was funny, but I, too, think he was being satirical. It seemed to me, as I watched, that Mr. Ehrman was playing straight-man to Colbert. I get the idea that Mr. Ehrman is a respected biblical scholar…his CV is pretty impressive though I haven’t read any of his works (Bill has and I think James mentioned having read one of his books). Try http://www.bartdehrman.com to see his CV. I guess I should step back and take a more broad look at his works before declaring his work ridiculous or without legitimacy.

It depends. Colbert’s show (even if it was serious and not comedy) is entirely secular. In that framework it isn’t fair to claim that Ehrman’s work is ‘ridiculous’. You have to first accept the divine inspiration of scriptures and their innerancy and infallibility, in order to come to that conclusion. Most of the responses Colbert made to Ehrman were pulled from the toolkit that a lot of conservative Christians use when confronting uncomfortable ideas, responses that are meant to cut the conversation short; “End of Story” kinds of statements. I think Colbert was using them to point out how ridiculous these responses are, especially in a reasonable debate.