Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Likwise the koren for muslims, the bagvadgita for the hindus.. And so on and so forth...

Actually, when you consider that the Talmud is quite possibly the world's first hypertext document, it makes some sense...

Heh. I like the example of Jesus the best - the idea of blog as personal incarnation is a nice conceit.

The Talmud also works exceptionally well, but in a very different way. It's a great example of a layered, massively hyperlinked, commented, trackbacked body of content. I remember a Wired magazine article about this, citing Ted Nelson, a bunch of years ago. And there's a book by Jonathan Rosen on the topic (http://tinyurl.com/9go57).

Good thought food.

On the Internet, no one knows you're a god.

Jonathan Rosen wrote a lovely little book comparing the Talmud with the internet, and made the argument therein that Talmud, being fundamentally multivoiced and full of internal references, was quite hypertextual.

And Britt, your comment made me laugh. I want that on a t-shirt.

Blog, shmog. The Talmud is USENET.

Some folks at Bar-Ilan University are using a new technique to teach Talmud to their students: separate the text into layers based on when they were composed, and then read it chronologically. I.e., first study the commentary by the rabbis who were contemporaries of Rabbi Judah the Prince, then go back and read the arguments those rabbis' students had over what their teachers meant, and then go back and read through the comments from the next generation, etc.

The next step, obviously, is to put it all online and access it through a threaded news reader.

Nah, Jesus is God's avatar. Everything you see is just an implementation of WoW. And after we offed his character, God quit playing.

Adina Levin has been eloquently making the hypertext point about the Talmud for a long time, too. (I was a little disappointed in Rosen's book, by the way. Definitely worth reading, though.)

If we can compare the bible to a blog, Jesus was certainly a hot topic of conversation, but since he never actually wrote anything himself and was not therefore a direct contributor, I don't think we can call him God's blog. He never knew the joy and comfort of putting forward ones philosophy from the comfort of ones armchair. No, he had to walk barefoot through deserts speaking himself hoarse to the rabble that followed him, never giving him a moment's peace, pestering him incessantly for miracles. I mean, really. By all accounts, the poor man didn't even have a donkey. I tell you, God was cheap back then. If Jesus were born today, he'd have at least a limo, an entourage of bodyguards to hold off any wild polytheistic Italian crucifiers who happened nearby and the hottest wireless technology on the market (that's hot as in new and exciting, not hot as in fell off the back of a lorry).

Think of the exposure he'd have today. He'd clean up - guest appearances on Jay Leno and Oprah, cameo parts in popular sitcoms not to mention Celebrity Big Brother and Jesus Christ the movie(s), conventions at Caesar's Palace, book signings all over the globe plus the wrestling tournaments: "Jesus Christ vs. Son of Lucifer. Will the Red Guy drag the Holy Guy down to the Devil's Level or will the Holy Guy give the Red Guy hell? Watch it LIVE! TONIGHT ONLY. Loser gets metaphorically crucified."

In a way, I'm sorry for Jesus. He was a good guy who picked the wrong millenia to make his appearance. Or perhaps God is just a tad more sadistic than we like to imagine?

Merry Christmas!

Are you talking about the work, expression, manifestation, or item?

;-)

The world is God's blog. Jesus is the Word. It works. The breath of God, Ruah, is the code (HTML etc), no?

Jay, when you refer to "the work, expression, manifestation, or item", are you referring to Jesus, the bible or God? I speak as one ham-fistedly educated by the Jesuits. ; )

Tripp, it's an attractive idea, but then so is Santa Claus. ; )

david, you come up with some devine analogies.

Okay, I have a confession to make. I lied when I said I was "ham-fistedly educated by the Jesuits." It's not true. The people who ham-fistedly educated me were in fact the Christain Brothers. I'm sure why I thought they were Jesuits. It must have been something to do with their ham-fistedness. I apologize. "Hail Mary full of grace ..."

Noel: Perhaps you should have had a more kosher education. Sad, really. ;-)

Now, if God's blog is Kris Kringle, we may have greater problems than we realized. The traffic would be low as God would only publish for a brief time out of the year. It may be more likely that K.Kringle is God's search engine, listing and checking and, guided by the FCC, seeing who is naughty.

In the beginning was the Word. Perhaps the Word is binary, the prophets punch cards, Jesus a mainframe, and the Church a BUS?

Tripp, it's kind of you to wish pathetic sympathy on me. The education the Christain Brothers gave was actually pretty good, if a bit ham-fisted and of course, heavily biased in favor of our rewards being in the hereafter because they certainly weren't showing up in the classroom!

Santa Claus is based on a real person - a well-to-do Turkish priest who saved a girl from a life of prostitution by tossing a bag of gold into her washed stockings on Christmas Eve, thus giving her a dowry. Of all the Saints, Saint Nicholas is one of the most worthy of being celebrated since he was, at least, an unselfish and generous man.

However, I believe the topic is Jesus and his very unkind and sadistic father, God. I don't know about you, but if any of my children picked the wrong friends, I would not stand by and watch while my son or daughter got crucified so that their friends might be saved. Just one of the many examples of backwards logic that permeates the bible and makes it such a fun book to read. Far better than Days of our lives or General Hospital or even Dallas, the bible combines a soap opera with sci-fi fantasy. People turned into pillars of salt. People living for unreasonable lengths of time. Incest. Plagues. Murder. Revenge. Adultery. Politics. Is there a topic not covered by the bible?

Jesus, of course, largely dominates the second testament making it a less fun book to read, but still entertaining. Water into wine. Handy negotiations with local fishermen and bakers magically filling empty baskets with loaves of bread and fish. He even knew CPR. Look at Lazarus. Definitely Jesus was ahead of his time.

Believe what you will. As far as I'm cpncerned, Jesus does not qualify as God's blog though the bible does qualify as a sort of long-winded, long-running, improbable historical sort of a spiel/blog or schplog. But that's just my opinion. ;-)

Noel,

Interesting. Thanks for your kind illuminations.

I have heard of St Nicholas. Kris Kringle, however, has more of a Rankin Bass/Christmas Town feel to him than the bishop of Smyrna ever did.

As far as I am aware, the Bishop is not checking a list, and thus would make for a poor internet search engine, but perhaps a good virus scan for your home PC.

The Bible is open source. This explains all. Wikiscripture makes sence to me!

"Duck."

Um, nice pun? Bird flu/flew. Duck. Right.

Open source...interpretation and translations are constantly updated. People fiddle with it. It is revamped and recolored every three days. And, for a good long while, it was treated as Midrash.

Ah, the halcyon days of yore...

Duck!

Midrash ... they're still making it up as they go along. ;-)

The Talmud is G-d's blog. Jesus is just his Friendster profile.

Forget about Jesus. That guy was a big disappointment. Send him down to earth to do a job and he gets himself crucified. 2,000 years later and I've decided to go high-tech. Joho will henceforth be my intermediary. Ready for some new commandments? Watch this space ...

P.S. Down on your knees and worship me or I'll zap you with bird flu!

Symptoms of the BIRD FLU... (and yes, do duck)

The Center for Disease Control & Prevention has released a list of symptoms of bird flu. If you experience any of the following, please seek medical treatment immediately:

1. High fever
2. Congestion
3. Nausea
4. Fatigue
5. Aching in the joints
6. An irresistible urge to shit on someone's windshield.