Jesus had a weird sense of humor - always using puns for example

("Thou art Peter and upon this rock..") Does this make him unique among great spiritual leaders?

guy's brain.

Did you by chance read the Umberto Eco novel THE NAME OF THE ROSE?

On character, a blind monk, the venerable Jorge, asserts that Christ did not laugh; therefore laughter is a sin.

He is challenged by a fairly enlighted Franciscan, who agrees with your post.

"You are Tiger, and this "tigre" is going to make me a bundle of dough, if he vindicates my confidence in his golfing prowess in the way he normally does."

But Jesus certainly had a sharp sense of humour. Very Jewish. Very ironical, black humour. Remember when Yahweh was leading the Israelites in the desert, they said to Moses, "what's the matter? Weren't the tombs in Egypt good enough for us?" or words to that effect.

Much of his most acerbic humour was expressed to the scribes, Pharisees and lawyers, for example, "I have done many good works before your eyes. For which of these do you wish to kill me?"

moments. He was a pretty poor choice for a foundation!

(You do know that Peter's real name was Simon, right?)

Yes, he sure did crumble and once he went around preaching he made sure women knew their place, unlike Jesus who didn't put women in a submissive position. Peter, Paul, they hated women. Just read what they say about them in the New Testament. Any religion that puts down women is no religion for me.

on that issue.

You have to read between the lines to realise how honoured women were and are in his eyes.

A group of women supported Jesus during his ministry as an indigent preacher; he appeared to them first after his resurrection, although, consistent with the cultural norm of his day, we are baldly informed that he appeared first to some of the men. I must say, to our ears, it sounds a bit of a cheek, to put it mildly. But it is indicative of the fact that we have had to evolve and develop spiritually, and indeed, must still.

The piety of Samuel's mother put the priest, Eli, to shame; the Angel of the Lord insisted on appearing to Samson's mother, and only his father when he was with her. I think that is intended to teach us not to have a too limited and misguided understanding of the nature of strength.

Christianity was and is mean to evolve, it was not essentially revolutionary, though its precepts have inspired revolutions in these days when they should never have been needed. But are you as concerned about injustices of all kinds, most notably, towards the poor? Or are you a high-earner type, or aspiring to be one, who whinges about glass ceilings?

High earner type...glass ceilings....ha, ha....more like a glass bottom boat. Stop drawing conculusions.

High earner type...glass ceilings....ha, ha....more like a glass bottom boat. Stop drawing conculusions.

how you feel about the "rights" of high-earning women to be accorded favours by their male superiors, though they'll snort at having the door held open for them. Gallantry towards them, expressed in mega-dollars, is not simply acceptable, apparently, but a moral duty. I wonder how the majority of those disgruntled, high-flying women feel about trade unions?

One thing I have noticed recently, though, is that it seems to be women, individual women, who seem most prepared to blow the whistle on corruption. Apart from Sible Edmonds, there was a woman at Enron, an accountant, and someone more recently I can't bring to mind.

;-)

"Why not now bake a cake for me? See I wasn't accusing anybody. Big misunderstanding! Seriously if you could get me down off of this thing, now would not be too soon... Hello?"

for having a sense of humor, and I am still in the dark. On the othe hand, I think I've established that jusst about any question about Jesus or Christianity is an invitation for random criticisms. How did St. Paul get on to this thread, anyways?

Muslims have Nasrudin. He doesn't just have a sense of humor, humor is his oeuvre.

He's popular enough that several countries claim him as an historic native son. You can even visit his grave plot in Turkey. Star of his own tales, he's the impish buffoon who knows more than he lets on. If you've heard stories like the drunk who searches for his keys under the streetlamp because the light is better, or the horseback fool racing around town looking for his horse, you've heard Nasrudin-style jokes. Wikipedia provides a decent overview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasreddin

My favorite.

He used to joke about starting a religion.

Or Latin? Just how many languages did Jesus know?

Hebrew and Aramaic.

There's an argument that 'carpenter' wasn't a lowly job, but a trade between modern day carpenter and cabinetmaker: "Carpenters" did almost anything, from frames for houses to making inlaid jewelry boxes. The argument continues that given where he was, an a large Roman community nearby, that he would have known some Latin.

If this argument is true, he probably also knew more than a bit of Greek--in any event, Greek wasn't uncommon in the area, and it would be damned handy for dealing with non-Jews--it was the lingua franca for the Eastern Mediterranian.

Monolingualism is mostly a modern thing, even if the nature of bilingualism over the ages is a bit overstated.

an odd-job man. That sounds more plausible to me.

If he'd coveted any kind of status, other than that of an honest hard-working man, the sky would have been the limit. The Epistles of Peter suggest to me that Jesus was more working-class in his outlook than Peter, who, unlike John, was a plain fisherman.

given the other meaning of didymos (testicle) whether one of the Apostles wasn't being nicknamed the equivalent of Ballsy Tom.

If I were more clever, I'd make a joke about him shrinking when it was cold, or something. But I'm not.

given that it's didymos, not didymoi,is that Tom was singular in more ways than his doubts. Maybe it should be Tommy One Ball.

a semantic connection.

A person needs only to have an introductory level understanding of the symbolic language used by the people of his culture to understand why he said that.

or instead it was the writers who came decades later.

to make Jesus more respectable. The fact that the puns survive sugggest that he used them a lot.