[WillowTheWhisp]

Originally Posted by katex

Hilarious .. come home Gillian where you belong. How anybody can threaten people with jail for naming a stuffed toy after a 'non-existent god' such as Mohammed is beyond my belief. There again, I am an atheist, and always find these type of issues very, very sad and misguided.

Mmmm . have a little stuffed toy somewhere in the house .. think I will christen him Jesus !! Can I expect the Christian mafia at my door in the morning ..

I bet she wishes she could come home. Nothing mildly amusing about the possibility of facing 40 lashes.

BTW Mohammed wasn't a God (real or nimaginary) he was a human being who declared himself to be a prophet of God. He wasn't the only person ever to have had that name so to make the assumption that a teddy bear called Mohammed is being named after the prophet is a dangerous assumption. To the children who chose the name it would probably jsut be another name by which some of their playmates are called (even if the parents did name them in honour of the prophet. It's OK to give the name to people but not toys or animals.)

Originally Posted by Bonnyboy

Something that has always baffled me, is that lots of us go through life having our names shortened or altered i.e. Phillip to Phil, William to Bill, Margaret to Marge etc. No offence is taken. Similar with our nationalities, the Welsh are Taffs, the Scottish are Scots, English are Limeys… I don’t see major offence ever being taken at such terminology until it comes to the Pakki’s, what the hell is their problem????

Not completely on topic I know, forgive me for that

I think it's because it has been used with the intention of being racially derogatory like the 'n' word or the 'w' word which are banned here on this forum because they are seen as racially offensive. The amusing thing is that the 'p' word is often used by Pakistani people themselves. A couple of years ago someone was banned from this forum for using it even though it wasn't meant in a derogatory way. It's just a PC minefield.

Originally Posted by steeljack

sorry for the thread wander , but do you, or anyone else happen to know the names of the two other guys who were crucified alongside Jesus, are their names mentioned anywhere in the Bible or any other Bible , e.g. Orthodox , Coptic etc. something I have allways wondered about , thanks

They are not actually named in the Bible but then again the Bible is only a selection of writings which were chosen and collated together. There are other gospel centred books which were at one time included and then excluded. There are some which are classed as "The Apocrypha" and appear in some Bibles but not in others, and just to complicate it even further not all Apocrypha contain the same books - that's before we get onto the books which never even made it into an apocrypha but are often referred to as apocryphal, and then there are yet other which have been discovered later and are disputed by some scholars.

Thus we have 'traditional names' which may or may not be the actual names - bit like Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar for the 3 wise men (or kings according to some traditions) who brought gifts to the Christ Child (who wasn't born on December 25th)

So it depends where you look for information. According to one apocryphal book the good thief was called Titus and he first shows up when Mary and Joseph are fleeing into Egypt with the baby Jesus to escape Herod's 'slaughter of the innocents'. He supposedly stopped other thieves from robbing the holy family. That story refers to the other thief as Dumachus.

But then again even in the canonical Gospels we get one person being referred to by different names (Dorcas being a classic example) depending on who is writing about them.

The names according to the Russian Orthodox church are Dismas for the good guy and Gestas for the bad guy. Interestingly the French name Dumas (as in Alexandre Dumas who actually called Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie ) is supposedly derived from Dismas.