What Freakazoid is saying reflects my experience as well (in regards to Ehrman.) “Look down their noses” may be overstating it as a generalization [though some certainly do take that attitude] but Ehrman is definitely not mainstream academy in his position—and I’m not talking about just fundamentalist or evangelical scholars not being impressed with various of his contrarian claims. [That doesn’t mean that I haven’t greatly enjoyed some of Ehrman’s SBL lectures and especially his debates against “Jesus never existed” mythicists. He also does a good job of destroying the more humorous fringe-scholars (e.g., Bob Price, Richard Carrier) who’ve made a good living appealing to Internet bloggers and anti-theists. On a more personal level, I rather like Ehrman. I just don’t agree with his contrarian positions which I consider insufficiently supported.]
Agreed. And recycled and uninteresting material just doesn’t come up on the radar for most academics, theologians included.
That said, some of Ehrman’s writings are quite interesting and they get discussed in academic circles, even if only to refute those ideas. But nobody should expect his fringe material to get a lot of attention from the peer-review scholarly community. And the more people like Carrier, Price, and Ehrman [and I hesitate to include them in the same group because they are actually very different people and agendas in other regards] who have a strong Internet presence and play to enthusiastic non-academic fans, the less likely the mainstream academics are going to be impressed. [Many Young Earth Creationists claim that Ken Ham has trumped mainstream science and think that that explains why most scientists ignore him. No. That silly claim doesn’t help Ham’s credibility. It will be the same if people make bombastic claims about Ehrman.]
I got to know Craig Evans many years ago and have watched his academic career blossom as you have described. I’ve not been surprised at his steady rise.
@Freakazoid, I’m delighted to read your contributions and am happy to welcome you to this community. (Some of my reasons are probably quite selfish because you are already explaining many important points so very well and save me feeling a need to step in. Of course, you are also far better read on people like Evans because I’ve not adequately kept up since my retirement and I no longer attend the major ETS and AAR/SBL academic conferences of Biblical scholars.)
My opinion in itself doesn’t count for a lot—but I can say that my opinion on this topic is a very common one among academics.