So, Mrs. solost is binging ‘The Mindy Project’ and I am watching an episode with her. In one scene the Mindy character, just having had a baby, picks up a children’s version of the Bible to read to him. After flipping through it she makes a dumb joke about not wanting to read it because there are no jokes in it.
Which got me wondering, is there any humor at all in the Bible? I’ve read the entire Bible, King James and New American versions (for my cultural literacy, not because I’m particularly religious) and it’s been awhile, but I can’t recall any. But the Bible has just about everything else: action, adventure, violence, supernatural events, monsters, origin stories, heroes, villains, love affairs, even bad erotica. What about humor?
No jokes that I can think of. It does have a lame riddle about a beehive in a lion carcass but you probably wouldn’t be telling that one at a bar. It also has a few humorous situations, depending on your style of humor: Elisha having some bears maul a bunch of teenagers for calling him bald could either strike you as over-the-top amusing or horrifying, depending on who you are. Or God responding to some bitching people complaining about not having any meat by sending them quail until it “comes out of your nostrils”.
One of my personal favorite stories is the Jesus at the wedding. Basically everyone knows of it as Jesus turning water into wine but the run-up to that moment tickles me. Mary and Jesus are at the wedding, wine runs out, Mary mentions this to Jesus (who hasn’t publicly revealed himself yet) and Jesus says “What are you telling me for? It’s not yet my time”. Mary just ignores him and tells the servants to follow his instructions and then expects Jesus to listen to his damn mother and get to work… which he promptly does. Forget the idea of not yet revealing himself as the son of God, apparently being the son of a Jewish mother carries more weight
Again, not a joke but I feel like there was a sense of humor involved in writing it.
God sends a couple of bear sows to maul a group of children mocking Elisha for his baldness. [2 Kings 2:24]. Similar for the story of Job, and Lot’s poor wife. Depending on your point of view He’s either a humorless bastard or has a really dark sense of levity with implicit misogyny.
I’d say Jesus has a couple: “first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” counts to me.
The whole idea of someone walking around with an entire plank in their eye is inherently humorous even if it’s also a hyperbolic metaphor to make a serious point about hypocrisy.
Though, ‘Go up, you baldhead! Go up!’ doesn’t seem like much mockery. If they’d said, ‘Hey, Cueball! I’ll shine your head for a shekel!’ that might have warranted killing 42 kids.
He was just being a good host, offering his virgin daughters to the crowd to gang-rape so they’d leave his very important visitors in peace. Riotous humor, for sure.
Then there was the one where the Christians suggested a God-off with some heathens. Yahweh brought the rain, the heathen God did not. Christians win! Yay!
Oh, and the fun aftermath: After the Christians won they put all the heathens to the sword. That’ll teach 'em.
My wife and I once taught a Sunday school class (long story), and the lesson plan included this story. The children were supposed to divide into two groups, the heathens and the Christians, and play-act the story including one half pretending to murder the other. What fun!
That was the last Sunday school teaching for me. And we scrapped the lesson plan and just let them color in their Jesus books for the rest of the period.
The one that doesn’t often get talked about is with The Battle of the Gods on Mt. Carmel. For the heavyweight champion god of that part of the world. Elijah versus the prophets of Baal, scheduled for one fall, no time limit. 1 Kings 18. A show with everything except Yul Brenner.
Prophets win the toss and elect to go first.
Praying and dancing around the altar ensues.
Nothing.
“Well Don, the prophets started out strong but they can’t seem to get any offense going. They promised fire from heaven but this is shaping up to rival the Great Disappointment, which won’t happen for another 3000 years.”
They break for lunch.
Elijah talks smack in verse 27. “Shout louder! . . . Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.”
The joke in the translation that I think is funny isn’t in the KJV or NIV but it is in a few others like the Living Bible:
“You’ll have to shout louder than that,” he scoffed, “to catch the attention of your god! Perhaps he is talking to someone, or is out sitting on the toilet, or maybe he is away on a trip, or is asleep and needs to be wakened!”
When the Philistines raided Jerusalem and stole the Ark of the Covenant, the Deity punished them with a plague of mice, and a plague of . . . . something.
Most translations say “tumors”. But some scholars think the word can also mean “hemorrhoids.”
Balaam, a pagan prophet, was on traveling on his donkey, to do bad things. The Deity sent an angel (invisible to Balaam, visible to the donkey) to block his path. The donkey refused to cross the angel. Balaam beat the donkey. The Deity gave the donkey power of speech, and the donkey complained about being mistreated.
And the ass said unto Balaam, Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day?
Some scholars think that the way “ridden” was phrased in the original Hebrew implied that Balaam had been having sex with the donkey.
Balaam son of Beor is one of the few people for whom there is evidence of his existence outside the Bible. Numbers, chapter 22, may be the world’s earliest known political hatchet-job.
