Soccer Dad

What Jewish text is most like a blog?

Jack Englehard made a fascinating observation in his essay "Destruction Day":

The Talmud -- again by the way -- was the first blog. Those sages were bloggers. Sparkling wisdom throughout, but sometimes random riffs and asides (like today's Internet blogs), yet it all falls into place, distills, and somehow reaches marvelous coherence and finds the Source from which everything begins and ends. Shlomo was right. There is nothing new under the sun.

I have thought this too. In addition to the (seemingly) "...random riffs and asides" the Talmud is remarkably interlinked. At the side of the Talmud there are references to other sections of the Talmud that quote the same or similar law or the biblical source of a passage that it cited. Those are precursors to hyper links!
In the spirit of Talmudic inquiry I just have one question for Jack: Why focus on an English date instead of the Hebrew one? (The problem is that the Hebrew one is 14 Tammuz. I am unaware of any events that happened then.)
There is however, a dissent, at me-ander. Baile-Rochel's back and this is what she writes:

It’s all going to work out. I’ve been studying T’hilim (Psalms) and Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), and King David was also persecuted. He kept this “blog” diary, in which he wrote his thoughts, fears and prayers. Afterwards, a hundred and fifty of them were found and collected, and today that’s what we call T’hilim. In chapter 7, 16 King David wrote that the evil one will fall into his own trap, and in the end of Chapter 34, he reassures us that if we go with G-d, G-d will save us and punish the wicked.

Yes, King David wrote an ancient blog, and so did his son, Shlomo. Shlomo was actually quite a blogger, Kohelet, Mishlei and Shir Hashirim. I guess that he had the state of the art laptop of his day. I wonder how many hits a week he got; a lot more than my blogs get for sure.

It's true, I do "hit" Psalms a lot more frequently than I "hit" me-ander as I've been finishing Tehillim (Psalms) more or less monthly for several years now. I'm not nearly as familiar with Shlomo's "blogs." But I hadn't really felt the same "bloggy" feeling to Psalms that I feel with the Talmud.
Surely I find Psalms to speak to a remarkable number of current events, especially in Israel. (From 69:5 "...that which I have not stolen I must return"; From 120 "I am for peace; but when I speak, they are for war.") or events in my own life. But I don't feel that Psalms are quite as "bloggy" as the Talmud is.
What's your feeling? The original blogs: Psalms, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes? Or the Talmud?

Posted by SoccerDad at March 27, 2005 7:13 AM