Wallace, along with DTS colleague Darrell L. Bock, has been an outspoken critic of the alleged "popular culture" quest to discredit conservative evangelical views of Jesus—including the writings of Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman.

"[4] Wallace and Ehrman dialogued at the Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum in April 2008, at Southern Methodist University in October 2011, and again at UNC Chapel Hill in February 2012.

[7] In 2012 Wallace claimed that a recently identified papyrus fragment of the Gospel of Mark had been definitively dated by papyrologist, Dirk Obbink, to the late first century, and would shortly be published by E.J.

This claim resulted in widespread speculation on social media and in the press as to the fragment's content, provenance, and date, exacerbated by Wallace's inability to give any further details due to a non-disclosure agreement.

[8] The fragment, designated Papyrus 137 and subsequently dated by its editors to the later 2nd or earlier 3rd century, was eventually published in 2018, in the series of Oxyrhynchus Papyri LXXXIII.