Fun with Jesus

Will the real Jesus of Nazareth please stand up? Please stand up.

From miraculous Baby Jesus bathwater to a talking cross, the "other" gospels offer scintillating tales about Jesus of Nazareth. Expunged from the church for their un-orthodoxy, false author, or just because of their weirdness, the Gospels of Peter, Thomas, Mary and others offer us insight into a world we rarely encounter. What did the church look like before the New Testament took shape? What questions were people on the periphery of society asking about this Jesus of Nazareth? How were different faith traditions trying to manipulate Christ's work to fit into their philosophical box? How did the early church fellas choose what was true and what was worthy of the trash heap?

Fun with Jesus is a tour-de-force that flies through the non-Biblical gospels in search of one simple idea: is there any real Jesus here? Can the Messiah of the Protestant and Catholic faiths be found in these forged documents? The Gospel of John ends with the verse, "Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written."

The whole world couldn't contain...

Maybe, just maybe, we can find the diamond in the rough. Maybe we can find just a little bit more of the real Jesus of Nazareth in the exaggerated rubble. But maybe we can find a glimmer of the real Jesus of Nazareth somewhere in that trash pile. And if not, we can have a good laugh while searching for him.

Come for the "Extra" Gospels. Stay for the jokes.