first one: Ogden Nash?

I had to think about that one. I remember Christopher Hitchens talking about these quotes in an interview a couple of years ago.

I think #2 is Leo somebody. I can't remember his last name, I think his last name starts with "R".

The third one is a response to the first snide comment.

I was thinking Ogden Nash for the first one also. The other two...no clue.

I think it was Leo Rosen. The third one, who knows, but they've got their theology all screwed up, since in essence, God *chose* Abraham through his son Isaac. Everyone else just gets in on their parents' names.

First one; Hillaire Belloc

Second: Leo Rosen

Don't know the third. Heard it, don't know who worte it.

I have no idea. Here I sit, broken-hearted.

Actually, Abraham "chose" God by responding. God opened with an offer and Abraham accepted, which meant leaving everything he knew and taking his family into the wilderness.

There's no word on how many folks declined the offer.

I remember a somewhat different riposte to Dorothy Parker's couplet

How odd to choose
a jewish god
but not the jews

Ugh, it should have been

How odd
to choose
a jewish god
but not the jews

Or as seen on the Hasidic Rebel's blog, from Herman Wouk's "This Is My God" (recommended by the way):

"Though not as odd as those who choose
A Jewish God and spurn the Jews"

The correct answer to the first two questions can be found by clicking here. None of you got the first one right. Bryan wins on the second question by mentioning Rosen. ;-)

As for "the Jews chose God," Jewish oral tradition--which was alive and well at the time of Christ, by the way, and indeed many OT books are simply transcriptions from that same oral tradition--holds that Abraham was not the first God made his offer to. He was merely the one to accept God's offer of a covenant, whereas many other people had rejected it.

By the way, it makes perfect sense to suggest that Abraham could have said no. Otherwise, it would not have been a "covenant." It would have been a command, or a promise. By calling it a covenant, you suggest that it was an agreement between God and Abraham, not merely something that God came out of nowhere and declared to be so.

Most modern Christians are completely unaware of any Jewish scholarship or tradition outside of Christian reinterpretations. This is too bad; they miss so much subtlety as a result, by thinking they can just take the naked Old Testament books--most of which came out of Jewish oral tradition--and read them cold, throwing out anything the Jews themselves ever had to say about them. Thus the Talmud is ignored, the oral tradition is ignored, etc.

It's understandable of course, since the tensions between the two faiths made that more or less inevitable. It's just kind of funny for an outsider like me to watch it happen.

Dean,

Has the oral tradition been written down?

Yours,
Wince

Gosh, Dean. What are you, then, a Zen Buddhist? There are not really many outsiders to the friction between the Jews and Christians. Take one book, translate twice, rewrite, and add two thousand years. Stir in the Muslims, and you have the great journey of the so-called monotheist faiths.

There are no outsiders. Just as the Nazis killed unobservant Jews, there are many Muslims who are ready, willing, and able to Jihad your ass, whether you consider yourself an outsider or not!