Stephen Colbert has a little fun with liberal scholar Bart Ehrman. Of course, many of Ehrman's claims are flat-out wrong, and nothing he posits in the interview constitutes any new thoughts in liberal scholarship (so why another book?). But watch the clip. Even though it's humor, Colbert makes seem decent points at times.
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New Testament scholar Ben Witherington deals with the claims on his blog:
Actually Bart is dead wrong about early Christology, and I think he even knows it. Its pretty hard to miss Phil. 2.5-11, written before any Gospel probably. There it is said not only that Christ is "in very nature God" even before he takes on human form, but then on top of that Paul quotes and applies Isaiah to Christ after the ascension saying he has the name above all names, which very clearly in Isaiah is the name of God. The transfer of the LXX name for God 'kyrios' to Christ is clearly enough a statement about his divinity. In addition to which in Romans 9.5 Christ is called "God above all blessed forever".
Furthermore, the Synoptic Gospels most certainly do view Christ as divine. This is why he is portrayed as Immanuel for example in Matthew's Gospel, or as the human and also divine Son of Man of Daniel 7 fame who came from heaven to judge the world and will rule in a kingdom for ever (see Mk. 14.62).
Ehrman's retro arguments about such things don't even convince most liberal scholars these days, they just say that Paul was divinizing Jesus because they know he had an exalted view of Christ.
As for Colbert, he is a devout Catholic who teaches Sunday school, and is not much interested in making fun of any orthodox Christians.
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