Humor in the Bible
Gramps49
Shipmate
in Kerygmania
If you have ever seen Godspell, you know that many of Jesus' parables can be taken as jokes. I dare say, if you read through the Bible with a sense of humor, you will find a number of jokes. Maybe we should not take the Bible so seriously. Easter falls on April 1. Jesus is Risen! And that's no joke!
Comments
Go and see a piece of ground. Bought 5 yoke of oxen, must try them out. Married a wife. I wonder why HE counln't come. Or then again perhaps he did, enjoyably many times.
The interpretation I've run into most often is that there was a "Needle" gate into Jerusalem that was so narrow that a laden camel couldn't get through, and the rider had to get down and walk it through. (Details may be slightly fuzzy.)
You got there just before me. My Hebrew professor was never tired of chortling over Jonah. Her favourite bit was the very last few words "....and also much cattle." She said this showed God being pragmatic and business like. Why slaughter so many valuable beasts just because the humans had messed up?
kamelon = rope
Apparently that is a reference to Deut.23v1. All a bit brutal!
I’ve always thought Peter’s line at Pentecost about how they couldn’t possibly be drunk because it’s still early - with the implication that if it had been later in the day his detractors might have had a point- quite amusing.
But then you have the really great part: After he (Ehud) had gone, the servants came. When they saw that the doors of the roof-chamber were locked, they thought, ‘He must be relieving himself in the cool chamber.’ So they waited until they were embarrassed. When he still did not open the doors of the roof-chamber, they took the key and opened them. There was their lord lying dead on the floor.
I love the image of the servants standing around, getting more and more embarrassed, thinking "just how long should we wait for our King to take a dump?" And I can easily imagine people roaring with laughter at this point, when the story was being told around the fire.
I cite the above NT verse to illustrate the fact that either the author is being very tongue in cheek or he has completely missed the joke through total lack of a sense of humour.
He seems to be unaware of the inescapable dichotomy and paradox set up by the assertion that a Cretian himself said that "All Cretians are liars". If this is indeed true as stated then logically there must have been at least one Cretian who told the truth, i.e. that "ALL Cretians are liars", but of course if indeed that were the truth then that would make him truthful, but that then logically means that not ALL Cretians can be liars after all, because HE told the truth. Which then makes the statement that ALL Cretians are liars, a lie or untruthful.
One of our lesson readers once had to read this passage from Titus and unfortunately misread the word 'Cretians' i.e inhabitants of Crete. He said "All cretins are liars. Which I think was probably a gross exaggeration and very unfair to cretins.
The book of Jonah is indeed a remarkable book in many ways, not least because it runs a coach and horses through arrogant Jewish nationalism and one-up-man-ship over the Gentiles with their notion that they were God's 'favorites'.
Sections of the chapters where Jonah is thrown into the sea and survives in the great fish are deliberately constructed as a series of mirror image picture sentences, just like nested subroutines in a computer program. Clearly the author intended the reader to get far more out of the narrative than would be implied by merely giving an historical account. The whole thing seems to be a carefully constructed critique of Jewish Nationalism. The Ninivites being their primary enemy at the time, yet God spared them, and their cattle, much to Jonah's disgust.
A very discerning non-generalisation I'm sure.
Which unfortunately falls flat in Titus due to the fact that he apparently seems to actually believe it, rather than understand the contradiction.
I just love pointing this out to those inerrantists who insist that "There are no contradictions in The Bible". If this is not a contradiction and a joke, then it can only be a downright generalist, racist lie.
Fig sap is very caustic causing burns, boils and other nasty things beginning with b when it gets on the skin and is exposed to sunlight; fig leaves are full of sap. That Adam and Eve chose fig leaves to cover their most sensitive parts has to be a joke, hasn't it?
My understanding has been that "cretin" comes from "Cretan", as yet another insult to Cretans.
What did those folks do to piss everyone off, anyway??? Or were they simply a target for bullies? Or both?
I love "Godspell"! However, my impression is that they were joking around with the stories, as opposed to the stories being jokes. Fine line, and doesn't matter much in the scheme of things. Just FWIW.
In my mind I hear Paul crying 'what a load of shite!' and 'let the fuckers chop their own cocks off!'
Prov 21 v9
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Belated thanks for this.
.I'm pretty sure the connection was asserted at my childhood church. I'm guessing people have been mistakenly making that connection for a long time. Given the insults to Cretans, it just seemed like more of the same.
FWIW.
22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib[h] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”
There is actually a word that the man said that is untranslatable and not in any English Bible. Some say it is the equivalent of "Hubba, Hubba" or, simply "Wow!"
Put it another way, none of it's raised even a smile yet.
Probably, but it might also be illustrative of Adam and Eve's stupidity, (ironic since the fruit was supposed to make them 'wise'), and indicative of God's loving concern for their welfare and future pleasure, by providing them with fur clothing at something elses expense.
Interesting the first actual death in the story was whatever owned the fur fanny covering that Eve and Adam got from God. Or was the fur coat a metaphor for pubic hair? Now that might be a joke, I think.
Genesis 2:25 “The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.”
Genesis 3:1 “Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals that the LORD God had made”.
The word “cunning,” in Hebrew ‘arum, echoes and puns on ‘arumim, “naked,”. The root sense of ‘erum, “naked,” is “smooth”: someone who is naked is hairless, clothesless, smooth of skin. But as the pun suggests, someone who is clever is also smooth, a facile thinker and talker whose surface speech is beguiling and flawless, hiding well his rough ulteriour purposes.
Take, for example, the case of Balaam and his prophesizing for Balak. Balak takes him to a high place where he can see all the Israelites, builds 7 altars, points him in the direction of the Israelites and waits for Balaam to pronounce a curse. Balaam blesses them. Balak then takes him to another spot--where he can only see a portion of the Israelites--builds another 7 altars, asks for the cursing, Another blessing. Balak moves Balaam to where he can be behind a wall and just look out through a hole...and the whole process is repeated.
To me, that is clearly meant to be funny: it is as if Balak is thinking that Balaam has stage fright. First see all the people. No good? Come here where you can only see a portion of them. No good? Here hide behind this wall and look through a hole... Now that might not raise a smile on a modern-day reader, but when you consider that it is an Israelite story about an enemy, it is meant to be mocking in nature and refusing to see the humor misses (at least in part) the point of story.