Did Jesus Use a Pun Only Found in Greek?

What the historical Jesus did or did not say is a matter of some controversy and a great deal of curiosity, exploration, and scholarship.

Trent Horn of Catholic Answers brings forward a brilliant observation that would strongly indicate that an Aramaic speaker, and therefore likely Jesus himself, said the teaching about straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

In the Gospel of John Chapter 3, however, Jesus uses a pun in Greek to answer the skepticism of the fictional Pharisee, Nicodemus, and it was a pun I learned about earlier in 2024 from Dr. John Kloppenborg. Dr. Kloppenborg explained how the same word “anothen” had two different meanings, and that “the rhetorical weight” of the response rested on this Greek pun.

“You’ve got the wrong ‘anothen’,” is what pun states in Chapter 3 of the Gospel of John. It’s like saying, “It’s lead not lead”, something that wouldn’t make sense except in English with a knowledge of this spelling, pronunciation, and definition.

Just like there would not have been a “Pharisee” who didn’t believe in the resurrection, neither did Jesus respond to that fictional Pharisee using a pun that existed only in Greek to drive home his point.