by Normalfulla 31 Replies latest social humour
Jonah was swallowed by a big fish.... now there's a laugh
There's an old post on here by Leolaia about how the story of Jonah is really a satire on stories of prophets in ancient Israel. Not exactly "ha-ha" humor, but it is really absurd in a humoresque sort of way.
Eglon in his chamber doing his thing...I found that amusing in my young days....and how about zipporah and her zipzap job?? And then there is cruel humor...poor old nebbie crawling around turning into a wild wooly lycanthrope? And visualizing the dead bones coming to life and then the fulfillment notion in the rev book....you gotta admit that is drole
Here is a Bible verse filled with stinging irony and which proves that the Bible could not have been inspired by any wise god with the ability to foresee the future:
1 Timothy 6:1: "Let those who are under the yoke of slavery keep on considering their owners worthy of full honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may never be spoken of injuriously."
Ha ha ha! The writer thought that disobedient, disrespectful slaves would bring reproach on the religion but he was too short sighted and too primitive in his morality, to realize that his condoning of slavery would heaps mountains more reproach on the religion in the future. So his very exhortation meant to avoid bringing reproach on the religion - that very exhortation ends up heaping mountains of reproach on it! Ha ha ha!
There should be humour as it was largely written by Jews and they have a terrific sense of humour.
@ sir82...
Actually, I wouldn't have put it past the writer of "Jonah".
A lot of people don't realize that Machiavelli wrote "The Prince" as satire, after all.
How about Samson catching 300 foxes and" to take torches and turn tail to tail and put one torch between two tails right in the middle 5 with that he set fire to the torches and sent them out into the fields of standing grain of the philistines..Thus he set on fire everything from the sheaf to standing grain and the vineyards and the olive groves".
Have Jw`s ever considered the logistics of acheiving this feat ?
But then of course is the magical "Jehovah " he can do anything !
He obviously had plenty to do and say in the first 4000 years of human history ,if you believe the JW`s when humans were more closer to Adamic perfection but alas when we humans are far more removed from the Adamic perfection for these past 2000 years he has been inactive and completely silent.
You would think that the furtherest we are from the Adamic pefection he would be giving us more reasons to have faith and believe in him with the likes of what he did in pre-christian times.?
"In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth". Genesis 1:1. What a side splitter!
"Let two bulls be given to us ... And you call upon the name of your god, and I will call upon the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, he is God." (1 Kings 18:23-24, English Standard Version)
C.G. PfannschmidtSo, basically, both teams have to build an altar and offer a sacrifice, then wait for their respective deities to light 'em up -- fairly standard my-god-can-beat-up-your-god stuff. Naturally, Baal fails to show up to the party, and his prophets start getting exasperated, so they proceed to do whatever they can think of to elicit a response: they limp around, they cut themselves open with spears, but Baal does nothing.
And then Elijah gets bored and unleashes the sarcasm:
"And at noon Elijah mocked them, saying, 'Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.'" (1 Kings 18:27, English Standard Version)
Some versions interpret the "relieving himself" part as simply "he's busy" -- but no, it's "I bet your god hasn't shown up because he's taking a dump." The original Hebrew word is sig, which can mean "expulsion," defecation," or "bowel movement." Yep, Elijah is being about 900 percent more offensive toward those dudes' deity than Monty Python was of Jesus in Life of Brian.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, Elijah then proceeds to build his own altar and drench it in 12 buckets of water, and then God lights it up in an instant.
The Book of Judges is one you don't hear recited at weddings and baptisms a lot, mainly because the whole thing is a grisly, ugly mess, with some of the most twisted, violent murders and sex acts this side of HBO. And that's too bad, because dropped in toward the beginning is a story that seriously sounds like what would happen if the Farrelly brothers co-wrote a movie with Quentin Tarantino.
The story opens with Israel under the thumb of the Moabites, an ancient people who enjoyed conquering and enslaving other ancient peoples. God sends a hero named Ehud to save Israel, which he accomplishes by getting the king of Moab alone in a room and then stabbing the crap out of him:
"Ehud came to him while he was sitting alone in his cool roof chamber. And Ehud said, 'I have a message from God for you.' ... Ehud ... took the sword from his right thigh and thrust it into his belly ... and the refuse came out." (Judges 3:20-22, New American Standard Bible)
"Refuse," as in "poop." Yes, Ehud literally stabbed the crap out of him. OK, but how do you escape a palace full of guards after you've just killed their king? Easy -- lock the doors, go out the window, and convince them he's pooping:
"When he had gone out, his servants came and looked, and behold, the doors of the roof chamber were locked; and they said, 'He is only relieving himself in the cool room.' They waited until they became anxious; but behold, he did not open the doors of the roof chamber. Therefore they took the key and opened them, and behold, their master had fallen to the floor dead." (Judges 3:24-25, New American Standard Bible)
There is some sarcastic humor in Paul's letter to the Galatians, only perceptible if one keeps in mind the letter's context: hard line Jewish-Christians who wanted gentile converts to keep the Law of Moses, especially circumcision. Near the end (5:12) Paul says that he wished they "would proceed from circumcision to self-mutilation" (Wade's translation), or "let the knife slip" (Henry Wansbrough, Introducing the NT, 206-207; the Jerusalem Bible). The REB reads: "Those agitators had better go the whole way and make eunuchs of themselves!"
