Posted on 10 November 2010, 6:08

Jesus Christ joins ThyFace.
Jesus Christ and Virgin Mary are now friends.
Jesus Christ rejected a friend request from Jesus H Christ.

So beginneth this new book, Jesus on Thyface, published last month, in which Jesus and his mum, joined by the regular cast of the New Testament (including well known Bible character Derek the Leper) get into social media. Satan’s ThyFace wall is also included, and it’s heartening to see the update…

Satan and Philip Pullman are now friends.

There are a number of ways this book could have gone. An earnest Campus Crusade author could have written the WWJD Teen Guide to Facebook – come to think of it, that’s probably already in print, complete with a free chastity ring with every copy. Or there could have been a badly produced gift book with leaden humour and available at every Tesco checkout.

Instead, Jesus on ThyFace is a slim and handsome hardback, printed in full colour, with every right hand page in familiar Facebook format. The writing is laugh-out-loud funny, surprisingly accurate in its retelling of the four Gospels, and highly inventive in mining the comic potential of sacred story meets social networking. It’s not a book you’d want to give for Christmas to your evangelical aunt, unless you wanted to trigger an early meeting between her and the Lord, but for tweeting Christians of a liberal bent who aren’t offended by jokes about Jesus, this is close to perfection.

For more info check out the Jesus on ThyFace Facebook page, where the latest joyous news is that the book has just made it into the Book Depository 1000 top sellers, at number 666. And who says God has no sense of humour?

I’ve just done an email interview with the authors, which I’ll post here tomorrow.

Thanks for this Simon! Definite x-mas reading material.

Love to read this.
Keep em coming Simon.

There was a Facebook page a while back in a similar vein. I can’t find it by searching for God on Facebook, but it was pretty funny. It’s not the humour I object to, I’m afraid it really is the sloppy usage – I’m that sad.

(I guess it’s the English teacher in me coming out.)

Incidentally, I grew up in Yorkshire with relatives who used thee, thou and thy – and ‘thysen’ for ‘yourself’ – so theeing and thouing isn’t completely unfamiliar territory for me!

Sounds an absolute hoot, and Pam, it may not be correct to just add -eth on the end of words but as someone who grew up with the KJV it does get the idea across! But of course I also grew up in a small Lancashire town where thee and thou were dialect words leading to the acrimonious diatribe, ‘Don’t thou thee me thou!’

Sorry to be incredibly picky – I’m sure you never would be Simon – but it really bugs me when people think you can reproduce KJ English by adding ‘-eth’ to everything.

It should be ‘Log thou in, sign thou up.’

Just sayin’

: D