Barack Atah Adonai: Obama and his haloI bet Radar’s “Jesus or Obama” quiz is quickly going to become the most-linked piece on their site. Why did no one think of this before?

You can take it here. Personally, I got totally pwned – 3/10 points – but I think that’s because I don’t know anything about Jesus.

Jesus is Everywhere

The Political Teachings of Jesus, by Tod Lindberg, gets the Wall Street Journal's thumbs up, though for my money, this graph tells you all you need to know about the Saviour's moral philosophy:

To be sure, the Golden Rule was not without precedent. Similar formulations can be found, among other places, in the Mahabharata, the ancient Indian epic, and Confucius's Analects. The rule in each of these texts, though, is stated negatively: In essence, do not do unto others what one would not like done to oneself. Jesus' positive wording, Mr. Lindberg says, allows for a greater "range of possibility for mutually beneficial interaction." Jesus does not merely forbid injustice; he proposes a principle applicable to our every act and constrained only by the limits of our imagination.

And of course evolutionary psychology explains that conscience is a relatively recent invention, which is why approximately 4% of humanity lacks it can thus be classified as sociopathic. (Not-so-free association moment: I'm currently reading Martha Stout's chilling but fascinating The Sociopath Next Door.)

Anyway, the guy who got Jesus' number best, I think, was Kingsley Amis. Here's his poem "New Approach Needed":

Should you revisit us,

Stay a little longer,

And get to know the place.

Experience hunger,

Madness, disease and war.

You heard about them, true,

The last time you came here;

It's different having them.

And what about a go

At love, marriage, children?

All good, but bringing some

Risk of remorse and pain

And fear of an odd sort:

A sort one should, again,

Feel, not just hear about,

To be qualified as

A human-race expert.

On local life, we trust

The resident witness,

Not the royal tourist.

 

People have suffered worse

And more durable wrongs

Than you did on that cross

(I know—you won't get me

Up on one of those things),

Without sure prospect of

Ascending good as new

On the third day, without

"I die, but man shall live"

As a nice cheering thought.

 

So, next time, come off it,

And get some service in,

Jack, long before you start

Laying down the old law:

If you still want to then.

Tell your dad that from me.

My dissertation advisor -- we'll call him Dr. S from Purdue University -- just arrived this afternoon in Boca Raton for the Jewish American literature symposium. And so, of course, after the last session of presentations, I decided to join him and a group of scholars for cocktails.

If you've never had cocktails with a group of academics, you're either in for a real treat or you're going to be bored out of your mind. Fortunately, my experience today was the former. After the first round of cocktails, Dr. S and a scholar from Penn State decided to have a "joke-off," where each would tell a joke until one of them had nothing left. And, though I had planned to blog about something completely different for this post, I couldn't resist hijacking one of Dr. S's jokes for Jewcy. So here it is (or the way I remember it), compliments of Dr. S, who, as a matter of fact, won the joke-off.

Jesus Christ is just kind of wandering around heaven. He sees St. Peter, standing at the gate. St. Peter needs to run a few errands, and so he asks JC to hang out at the gate for a little while, just until he returns. JC, of course, is like, no problem -- I can hold down the fort until you finish all your errands. So St. Peter takes off and leaves JC at the gate.

After a little while, JC sees this little old man wandering around aimlessly, looking a bit lost. The little old man approaches JC, who asks him if he needs help. The little old man says, "Well, I'm an old carpenter, and I've been looking for my son for quite some time." JC's eyes light up. "Father?" he says, questioningly. The old man's eyes light up as well: "Pinocchio?" he says.He Once Was Lost: But now he's found.

Funny, huh? Gotta love academics.

lama?The Independent posed the question, "What would the Virgin Mary encounter if she and Joseph headed towards Bethlehem today?" In his blog, Laurence Simon responds to this question in a modern day context. Here's a brief intro to whet your appetite:

Now, if they [Mary and Joseph] were far-left anti-Zionist self-loathing Jews like Adam Shapiro, well, they'd be in Bethlehem protesting the Separation Barrier. Probably facing down soldiers and border police in protests every day, throwing rocks and providing a front line from which Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PFLP, and Fateh snipers could attack. Maybe Mary, despite her gravid condition, would attempt to attack a riot policeman, end up miscarrying the Baby Jesus. Nice going, Joseph, letting the women pregnant with your baby and the so-called Messiah miscarry and kill the Baby Jesus.

Right-wing Catholic nutters are trying to pass legislation that would make Jesus "king" of Poland:

If the bill becomes law, Jesus will follow the path of the Virgin Mary, who was declared honorary queen of Poland by King John Casimir 350 years ago.

The motion has been backed by MPs from the far right League of Polish families (LPR), the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party and the Peasants' Party (PSL).

Now if Mary is queen and Jesus is king, doesn't that make their mother-son court more appropriate to Vienna than Warsaw?