Agnostic Dr. Bar D. Ehrman writes, “It is inspired completely and in its very words—“verbal, plenary inspiration.” All the courses I took presupposed and taught this perspective; any other was taken to be misguided or even heretical. Some, I suppose, would call this brainwashing. So rather than actually having the inspired words of the autographs (i.e., the originals) of the Bible, what we have are the error-ridden copies of the autographs. What good is it to say that the autographs (i.e., the originals) were inspired? We don’t have the originals! We have only error-ridden copies, and the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals and different from them, evidently, in thousands of ways."—Misquoting Jesus (pp. 4-5, 7)

“Scholars differ significantly in their estimates—some say there are 200,000 variants known, some say 300,000, some say 400,000 or more!” Bart D. Ehrman has some favorite, unprofessional ways of describing the problems, which he stresses without qualification, in every interview he has for a lay audience or seminary students. For example, “There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.” Another, “We don’t even have copies of the copies of the originals, or copies of the copies of the copies of the originals.” Ehrman is impressively smooth, efficient, and works effortlessly in his misleading, misrepresenting, and misinforming.