Bart Ehrman is retiring!

Interestingly, it is next month, in the middle of an academic year, and not next spring. Why?

Anyway, his blog site is promoting a final lecture Dec. 7.

He claims it will be about "The Greatest Discovery in the History of Biblical Studies."

Now, if he's talking both Christian testaments plus the "intertestamental" period, it has to be the Dead Sea Scrolls, right? 

If it's New Testament only, and he goes that way, I'd say that, contra him and Jeff Kloha, no, it's Nag Hammadi.

In either case, Bart, if you're retiring, use the additional time to write better books than your last three or four. (I fear he won't, and shudder at the possibility of something even worse in the future.) 

Worst and most recent? His Armageddon book, when he went Marcionite on the Old Testament, then ignored some of the apocalyptic stuff he would have read at Wheaton, then ignored OT apocalyptic material that would have been in those Chick tracts, above all, "Gog and Magog." 

Just about as bad? His second most recent, his "JW" book as I call it, and yes, THOSE JWs, for claiming the New Testament does not talk about hellfire and eternal damnation. 

Third most recent and third worst? His history, theology, and comparative religions uninformed book on the causes for the rise of Christianity.