Flotsam and jetsam (11/26)

• Justin Taylor has an excellent guest post from Andrew Cowan on What NT Wright really said.

In my judgment, however, the claim that Wright has changed his view on justification is misguided and results from the misreading of Wright that has been rampant in the Reformed world for quite some time.

• John Byron offers a good thought on celebrity-ism and the academy.

What are we doing? Our scholarship has become, in some ways, a celebrity sport. We stand in awe of speakers who are introduced as the author of twenty books, over one hundred articles and three video series. Bart Ehrman and NT Wright appear on the Colbert report, and while I admit I found their performance entertaining, I wonder why it is that these people are held up as the representatives of scholarship in our field?

• Richard Beck reflects on The Thomas Kincade Effect, or the problem of kitsch in Christian art.

it is worth wondering if Christians (or anyone for that matter) might be attracted to artwork that portrays a world “without the Fall,” a sweet, shiny, untroubled and Disneyesque existence.

• And, Bob Cargill’s SBL paper is now available, “Instruction, Research, and the Future of Online Educational Technologies”. HT