Cloudcuckoolander/Oral Tradition

Jesus. When a group of Smug Snakes brought an adulteress to Him, telling Him that she should be stoned for committing the sin of adultery, He answered by writing something in the sand. And don't even get started on the parables. Justified, however, in that He wasn't actually weird or insane, he was just a Cloud Cuckoo Lander in that He had a "non-standard perspective on life", as the "Playing With" page for this trope says. He is believed by many to be God in Human Form, so the things he said and did would seem odd to us humans.
This trope dates back as far as Brother Juniper, a 13th-century friar and one of Saint Francis of Assisi's companions. According to legend, Brother Juniper was once caring for a sick man and learned that the sick man had a craving for pig's feet. So Brother Juniper found a herd of pigs, cut a foot off of one of them, and carried it back to the sick man. When the pigs' owner confronted Brother Juniper about the incident, the friar couldn't understand why anyone would object to such a charitable act. He patiently explained his reason for cutting off the pig's foot, although this only seemed to make the pig owner angrier. Finally, he hugged the pig owner, who had a change of heart and donated all his pigs to the friars. Upon receiving the donation, St. Francis praised Brother Juniper, saying, "Would to God, my brethren, that I had a forest of such Junipers!"
Zen calls for its followers to be this. "What is Buddha?" "Three pounds of flax."