You're listening to Tim Bulkeley's 5 minute Bible
How do we know something's funny?
Oh, not in our own language and culture but when we're across in a different
language and culture that can be quite difficult
as David pointed out in one of the posts that stimulated the series
cross-cultural humour
is a minefield
as anyone who's worked across cultures knows
so
how can we be sure across the cultural gulf that separates us from the authors
of scripture
that something
we think is funny tickled ancient hebrew funny bones
There has been a whole load of research on humour
over the last generation
it's become quite an academic field
and a number of biblical scholars have taken up some of that research
an adapted it
Most of the ideas I'm presenting here are based on those of F. Scott Spencer in his:
Those Riotous Yet Righteous Foremothers of Jesus: Exploring Matthew's Comic Genealogy.
Spencer lists some of the attempts to approach these questions
one with an ancient pedigree
the idea of stock characters
ovid talking about whether the comedy of Menander the Greek playwright
would survive says: "As long as tricky slave hard father, treacherous bawd and wheedling harlot
shall be found
his comedy will survive
it's those stock characters
that let us know something is funny
and that makes it funny
the trouble is that
characters like that are sometimes but not always funny
Jephthah the heart father who slaughters his daughter to fulfill a vow is hardly
funny
Francis Landy drew attention to stock situations
and especially our anxieties around sex and death
And again these things aren't always funny, sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't
Greenstein
In the Anchor Bible Dictionary
lists uh... a number of characteristics which together
suggest something is funny
incongruity, lighthearted mood, and surprise, are all hallmarks of humour he
says
Spencer makes a lot longer list and I'm going to more or less use his:
incongruity, festivity,
what he calls 'spontaneity' (though I prefer Greenspan's 'surprise')
and then adding to Greenspan: ingenuity
(cleverness is often a mark of humor
think of puns)
inferiority
(humour very often
pokes fun at those who superior)
disguise
(or something or someone pretending to be something else)
(which is often part of humor)
and what Spencer calls 'inelasticity'
he's following Bergson who says:
"Just when we would expect
to find the wide-awake adaptability and living pliableness of a human being
what we get is inelasticity."
For an example think of Esther's Ahasuerus and the laws will Medes and Persians
that cannot be changed
it's a text book case
And I'll add one to Spencer's list, above all at least in Scripture
some human pretension gets revealed in all its lack of glory
Spencer adds one that
I won't
imperceptability or hiddenness
I hink surprise covers that
and I prefer Greenspan's way of putting the two together
So, the list we've got is: incongruity
something is out of place doesn't fit
festivity - there should be a lighthearted mood
to the context
no matter how serious the topic being talked about
there should be something light about the tone
think of the sort of context where puns are used
in everyday life
even when talking about serious matters
the very use of the pun begins to generate a certain light-hearted tone
surprise
ingenuity
inferiority
disguise
inelasticity
and, last but not least,
human pretensions
where
a number of those things cluster together we've got a pretty good clue
that the speech around these things is intended to be humorous in some way