Not only do I get the language wrong, I can’t even spell Aramaic correctly. :smack: Okay, so did Jesus make a pun in Latin, or a pun in Aramaic which got translated into Latin, or did the editors of the King James Bible make the whole thing up just for giggles? I’m going to have to hunt up my copy of Asmiov’s Guide.
And even if it doesn’t have a lot of good jokes, at least it has plenty of sex and violence.
**Jesus on the cross: ** Peter…Peter… Peter: Yes, Lord? What is it? JOTC: I can see your house from here, Peter…
That’s a great question, and I don’t know the answer. I guess the pun works in the Latin Vulgate, but searched for the Aramaic version and found this page:
I’m not sure how reliable this site is, and whether or not this is a back-translation…
I contend that the book of Acts, if filmed right, could make a great comedy: there are enough funny incidents, or incidents that could be made funny.
Like the time where Paul’s preaching runs on too long and one of his listeners, who was sitting in a window, nods off and falls out. (Acts 20:9-12)
Or this incident, recounted in Acts 19:13-16:
Maybe there’d be a way to work in Paul’s remark, from Galatians 5:12, that he wished the troublemakers who were insisting that everybody had to be circumcized would go all the way and cut their whole you-know-whats off, not just the foreskin.
Okay, I found my Asimov’s Guide. For what it’s worth, he says that it was Jesus making the pun. His argument in a nutshell is that, in a culture that did not use surnames, it was very common for people to be given nicknames, implying that Simon was known as “Rock” before he met Jesus. He goes on:
Just how true all this may be, I don’t know. It sounds very reasonable and logical, but, OTOH, we are talking about the Bible here.
One of my favorite stories is in Judges. The story of Ehud and the king of Moab, Judges 3:15-31. The king is a really fat man and Ehud is left-handed. So Ehud straps a short sword on his right leg and goes for an audience with the king, to give the king a present from the people of Israel. Ehud goes for his sword, which doesn’t look threatening because he’s a lefty, stabs the king and pushes the sword in so far that the rolls of fat cover the hilt. The king’s bowels release and Ehud calmly walks out. The servants don’t discover the king until it’s too late.
Jesus makes a bit of a joke in the Gospel of John when he is introduced to Nathaniel by Philip. Nathaniel. Jesus says “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit.”
Nathaniel says “How do you know me?”
Jesus says, “I saw you sitting under a fig tree before Philip called you.”
Nathaniel says, “You are the Son of God, the King of Israel.”
Jesus says, “You believe these things because I saw you sitting under a fig tree?”
Wow that Bible is just chock full of side-splitting laughs.
Orual - I never knew that old comedy sketch about getting a stake driven through your head and having it then driven into the ground was from the Bible. It brings laughs even to this day.
This Biblical knee-slapper is from the Book of John (no wait, I think it may be the Book of Ringo).
Jesus (being a carpenter) is hammering a nail when he accidentally hits his thumb.
Jesus yells out “ME !!!”
That was Eutychus (whence our own Eutychus got his name) and he not only fell out, he died! Paul had to stop preaching long enough to run downstairs and resurrect him.
There’s a scene in the book of Kings where the prophet Elijah challenges the prophets of Ba’al. The idea is that both Elijah and the Ba’al worshipers prepare a sacrifice and then pray to their respective gods to create a fire to consume the sacrifices. So the prophets of Ba’al start praying, and nothing happens, so Elijah says something like, “Pray louder! Ba’al obviously is on the toilet, or eating, or stepped out, and must not be paying attention.”
The Revelation of St. John is frackin’ hilarious! That is, if you read it in the right frame of mind, and under the suitable chemical influences. (How do you think it was written?)
My bad. In my defence, there is a Latin petra, from which we get petrificare, thus petrify. Similarly, petroleum’s from the Latin. But the Greek petros does seem to be the source of the Latin word petra (and the -oleum in petroleum appears to ultimately come from the Greek as well).
Guess that means the joke worked in both Greek and Latin.
