WHAT? This is the best you guys can do? Acts 20:9. A young man was sitting on a window sill and sunk into a deep sleep as Paul was preaching. He fell OUT the window from the 3rd floor and was thought to be dead! I'm sure they talked about that one for some time!
Are there any funny stories in the bible?
by ballistic 22 Replies latest jw friends
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Tea4Two
Well, Ballistic, the punch line is: Bowing down to a craved God made of wood and asking it to Save the one who carved it. That to me is funny!
"And the rest of it s/he makes into a god, his idol; and falls down to it and worships it; s/he prays to it and says, 'Save me, for you are my God!'
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Narkissos
Humour is cultural (as is "good taste"). We miss most of Bible humour because we are not in the original culture and we cannot bring ourselves to the writers' or the first readers/hearers' perspective. On top of that, the serious religious context to which we relate the Bible, making it "the Word of God" and a matter of "truth" and "everlasting destiny" doesn't help.
But I suspect much of it was quite funny. The Yahwist stories in Genesis (Eden, Babel), some of the Patriarch accounts (Isaac = Laughter, Jacob), Balaam, many stories about the Philistines (1 Samuel 4, Samson), Jonah of course.
In the NT there is a lot of anti-Jewish humour which we may not find funny, but probably was to the circles in which it was written. Jesus' replies to the Pharisees (e.g. on the denarius), the plot against Paul in Acts, etc.
Even the main Gospel plot, especially in its (original?) Gnostic understanding (where the Son of God fools the ruling powers by granting them apparent victory) can be read as a tragi-comedy.