HUMOR IN THE BIBLE

 used to have a book in my library entitled Humor in the Bible, which I enjoyed reading enough that I decided to teach a Sunday school class on the subject. I must admit that it was the worst disaster I have ever experienced teaching, so bad that I threw away the book. Have you ever told a joke to a group and no one laughed? That was the problem I had. In fact, one woman in the class spoke up and said, “But none of that is really funny.”

Since I can't believe that my material was that bad or that I just suffer from poor delivery, I will have to blame my audience. One factor that I think is partially the cause is that when people enter the church property, they sometimes think that they have to put on their sober and pious faces. I am glad that the pastor at our current church has a great sense of humor and demonstrates it time and time again in his sermons. Another factor may have to do with regional differences. I was raised on the “left coast” where our usual form of humor often took the form of rather sarcastic put-downs and physical slapstick. By contrast, “church folk” especially in the mid-west tend to look down on that sort of humor. And many women would probably agree with my wife that engaging in that sort of thing is cruel and constitutes “typical male humor.”

I would have to agree with some of the above criticisms except for the inescapable fact that many of the people that God chose to be his chosen representatives engaged in all sorts of “male humor.” As I said, I don't have my book on humor anymore, but below are some examples off the top of my head that demonstrate everything from mildly amusing stories to downright slapstick found in the Bible. I don't care if you refuse to laugh or even smile at any of these, I happen to think they are funny anyway.

Back-and-forth Middle Eastern banter is practiced there even today, especially when negotiations are taking place. They actually enjoy the process as much as the final conclusion, as I found out from a Palestinian friend of mine. By contrast, we Americans tend to just state our bottom line and say, “Take it or leave it.” It is in that light that we should understand stories such as the conversation between Jesus and the Gentile woman in Mark 7:24-30 where she asks him to cast out an unclean spirit from her daughter.

As I explained in my post “Acting Out the Bible,” you should really imagine each party speaking with a little smile on their face, otherwise Jesus will come across as being unbelievably harsh on the woman since he at first refuses her request and even calls her a “dog” (the Greek word probably refers more to a puppy). When he says that it is not fitting that food intended for children should be given to dogs instead, her quick and self-deprecating reply is “Even the dogs under the table eat of the crumbs that fall to the ground.” Matthew's version of this story ends with Jesus saying that it is her faith that makes him give in to her request, but I prefer Mark's earlier account in which Jesus grants her wish “because of that saying.” In other words, Jesus enjoyed her witty come-back. By the way, I don't think that there was any doubt how the matter would turn out in the end, but I think they just enjoyed the process.

Another serious negotiation takes place at the gates of Hebron between Abraham and Ephron (Genesis 23). The conversation between the two parties may sound a little confusing to us today unless we try to put ourselves in their ancient setting. I will briefly paraphrase the negotiations as follows:

    The Hittites: Take any of our tombs and use it to bury your people in.

    Abraham: You are being too kind, but if you really want to help me out, just convince Ephron to sell me at full price, no discount, the cave of Machpelah which is at the end of his field.

    (The Hittites talk to Ephron)

    Ephron to Abraham (with the Hittites listening in): To show all of you what a generous man I am, I will give you that cave, free and clear.

    Abraham: I don't think you are listening to you. I want to purchase the cave fair and square.

    Ephron: Well OK, but don't say later that I wasn't generous. If you really insist on buying it, you can have it for only... (and he names an outrageously high price).

In that manner, Ephron has both maintained his honor with his countrymen and forced Abraham to pay a huge amount of money or suffer loss of face with the Hittites. Not exactly a joke that causes you to guffaw, but still an amusing dialogue.

Another type of humor in the Bible would probably be labeled “black humor” or “gallows humor.” One such story is found in Judges 3:12-30 in which Moab has been harassing Israel, and so God sends Ehud to revenge the Jews. He talks his way into the Moabite citadel and approaches the very corpulent king Eglon with a supposed secret. Eglon leads him into the royal privy and shuts the door. Then Ehud buries a sword into his fat midriff, and the contents of Eglon's bowels gush out. Ehud manages to escape and locks the door behind him. The guards note the smell coming out of the privy and don't unlock the door since they think that the king is just relieving himself. By the time that they do open the door, Ehud has had time to escape from the city. Is that funny? Most of us would probably say"no" and wonder why in the world all that gory detail was put into the Bible. But no doubt to a Jewish reader of those times it would have been a hilarious story because it made fun of the Moabites with their obese and gullible king.

The prophets were even more obvious in their put-downs of those who transgressed God's laws, whether they were Gentiles or Jews. Those criticisms often took the form of sarcasm, especially in their “taunt songs.” A good example from one of the earliest prophets, Elijah, is when he held the contest on Mt. Carmel with the priests of Baal concerning who could bring down fire down from heaven. After the pagan priests have been trying with all their might to convince their god to do it, Elijah says to them, “Pray louder! He is a god. Maybe he is day-dreaming or relieving himself, or perhaps he's gone off on a trip. Or maybe he's sleeping and you've got to wake him up!” (I Kings 18:27 TEV) Of course, the image of a real god doing any of those things is totally ludicrous.

Sometimes the prophetic criticisms are subtle enough they they have been interpreted in entirely the wrong way by readers who feel that every word in the Bible must be taken as the literal truth. A prime example is the taunt song delivered by Ezekiel (Chapter 28) concerning the king of Tyre. His greatness is extolled in highly exaggerated terms such as his existence in Eden walking among precious jewels. My paraphrase of v. 15 is “You were perfectly sinless – until you weren't.” It is not surprising that some fundamentalist commentators say that Ezekiel was obviously talking about Satan himself (although i must admit that the king of Tyre may be considered as a type of Satan). Read the rest of the chapter for yourself and see if a literal interpretation makes any sense at all if it refers to Satan.

God delivers a similar taunt song to Job in chs. 38-41 exposing his lack of knowledge of even physical realities, let alone spiritual ones. None of it would be considered humorous by any stretch of the imagination, other than perhaps the fact that it conjures up the ridiculous image of a totally ignorant human questioning an omnipotent and omniscient God regarding the propriety of His actions. But 38:21 is a good example of sarcastic humor when God says to Job, “You obviously know all these secrets of creation since you are so old. You must have been present when I made the universe.” This is quite similar to Ezekiel telling the King of Tyre that he was present in the Garden of Eden.

The wisdom books provide another good source for traditional Jewish humor whether it is the picture of a jewel in a pig's snout (Proverbs 11:22) or the wry saying in Ecclesiastes 11:8: “No matter how long you live, you will be dead a whole lot longer.” I once gave a fellow chemist a small paperback with Ecclesiastes in the TEV version. He read it and told me that verse was both the funniest and truest thing he had ever heard.

Some of Jesus' sayings and parables are just as humorous as those in the Wisdom Literature. Who can forget the image of someone with a log in their eye trying to take a splinter out of someone else's eye (Matthew 19:24), the picture of a Pharisee carefully straining his drink so that he doesn't accidentally eat a gnat while then gobbling down a whole camel (Matthew 23:24), or a camel trying to squeeze through a needle's eye (Matthew 19:24). And by the way, anyone who still tries to hold on to the old outdated explanation that there was a gate in Jerusalem called the Camel's Gate obviously does not understand the concept of hyperbole in the least.

Getting back to the Old Testament, one incident that always brings a smile to my face is when David pretends that he is crazy in order to escape without harm from the city of Gath where he had hoped to find refuge from Saul. King Achish of Gath says to his servants, “This man is obviously mad but you have given him an audience with me. Don't I already have enough madmen in my kingdom that you have to bring me another one?” (I Samuel 21:12-15)

The story of Balaam and his donkey is another amusing one in which an angel of God tries to stop the prophet in his tracks by standing in the middle of the road. Even the dumb beast is smart enough to see the angel and try to avoid it while Balaam remains totally oblivious. Even more ridiculously, Balaam starts arguing with the donkey and doesn't even note that the animal is talking back to him. Balaam is a prime example of an anti-prophet, in the same way that Abimelech is an anti-judge and Judas is an anti-apostle. (Numbers 22:22-35)

I happen to agree with those commentators who feel that although the overall story of Jonah converting the city of Nineveh is historically true, the manner in which the tale is told has to be taken as a broad satire of all self-satisfied Jews who wouldn't have minded if the rest of humanity was wiped out. Every bit in the narrative is so over-the-top that it was obviously constructed to make fun of those sort of people in humorous terms. These details describe a prophet who:

    hops a boat in order to get beyond the range of God's sphere of influence,

    suggests to the pagan sailors that they throw him overboard so that they will bear the guilt for his death rather than himself,

    is so unpalatable to the sea beast that it vomits him up on the beach,

    manages to get even the cows of Nineveh to repentance,

    sits on a hill and pouts when he realizes that God isn't going to destroy them after all,

    and loves the vine that shelters him much more than all the people of Nineveh.

It has been pointed out that everyone and everything in the story including the wind and the worm that eats the vine obey God perfectly, except Jonah himself.

The gospel accounts contain a number of examples of ironic statements that may not be exactly called humor but should at least provoke a knowing smile. One is found in John 11:49-52 when Caiaphas tries to justify the act of framing an innocent man, Jesus, by saying that “it is better to have one man die for the people than have the whole nation destroyed.” John points out that even though Caiaphas intended his words in an entirely different way, he was really prophesying the importance of Christ's atoning death for all.

In the same way, Jesus is taunted while on the cross with the words: “He saved others but he can't save himself. Let him come down from the cross and we will believe him.” (Matthew 27:42)  Of course, the irony exists in the fact that if he had come down from the cross he wouldn't have been able to save others.

Paul was not beyond engaging in humor on occasion even though it was usually rather biting sarcasm. When the Judaizers are insisting that even Gentile Christians need to be circumcised, Paul replies that if they are that knife-happy, they shouldn't just stop there but go ahead and castrate themselves. (Galatians 5:12) Then, in Acts 23:1-5, when he is brought before the Sanhedrin, the high priest Ananias orders others to strike him on the mouth. Paul replies by calling Ananias a “whitewashed wall,” and the horrified onlookers inform Paul that he has just insulted the high priest, of all people. Paul innocently replies, “Oh, I didn't realize that he was the high priest. If I had known, of course I wouldn't have talked in that way.” The humor comes from the fact that there was no way that Paul would not have known who was giving the orders. Paul is in fact saying, “From the way he has been treating me, I didn't for the world figure that a real high priest would act in that manner.” But he manages to express his view of the whole proceedings without getting himself into any further trouble.

For those of you who have been valiantly reading this far still looking for a glimpse of humor where you don't see any, all I can offer now are my two favorite examples.

For a prime example of slapstick worthy of the Three Stooges, there is the scene in Acts 19:13-16 where some itinerant Jewish exorcists start parroting Paul's words as a sort of magic spell to cast out demons. One such evil spirit replies: “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?” and promptly strips them of their clothes and beats them up. It is a very funny story if you like crude male humor like I do.

Finally, there is the hilarious scene described in Acts 12:12-16 in which Peter has just escaped at night from prison and he pounds on the door of the house where the rest of the Apostles are praying for Peter's release from certain death. The servant Rhoda asks who it is and recognized Peter by his reply. She is so flustered that she forgets to open the door but instead rushes back to interrupt the prayer meeting to spread the good news. Even though they have been fervently praying for this very event, they are totally unbelieving when their prayers are actually answered. All of them argue back and forth while poor Peter is left out in the cold hoping that the prison guards won't find him and bring him back to prison. It is a piece of absurdist humor that could have easily formed the basis of a Monty Python sketch.