Hat tip to one of the pastors at The Meeting House (Joel Percy), who showed the following mash-up video in connection with his talk on common Christian notions of sin. I laughed till I cried, despite the fact that most others were slightly less amused or perhaps less aware of what was being critiqued via the presentation of Jesus:

Question:

Identify and discuss the significance of the four “common denominators” (or central concerns) of second-temple Judaism.

(Answer should be things like: monotheism, temple, election / land, covenant / torah.)

Part of the answer on one test:

“Second temple Judeans also believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Interesting. I did not know that. (I like the use of “Judeans” there, though).

Overheard between Phil (me) and Nathaniel (my five year old son) after watching an episode of Friends about Hannukah:

Nathaniel: “Can we celebrate Hannukah this year?”

Phil: “Sure!”

Nathaniel, after a pause: “Are we Jewish?”

Phil: “No.”

Nathaniel: “Oh, I don’t want to do it then.”

Phil (desperately): “Well, I can at least tell you about it, can’t I?”

“I didn’t do it!”, says Jesus. Likely story. Yes, we’ve heard it all before. Tony points to a rather humorous cartoon depiction on You Tube of the story in The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, chapter 9: The Gospel of Thomas: The Adventures of Little Jesus (by Martin McDonald). The suggestion that the child Jesus encouraged Zenon to try to fly is an editorial edition to the original story in that gospel. (The Mel-Gibson-like foreign language and subtitles are something else).

Here’s a translation of that story (from Greek recension A):

9 1 Now after certain days Jesus was playing in the upper story of a certain house, and one of the young children that played with him fell down from the house and died. And the other children when they saw it fled, and Jesus remained alone. 2 And the parents of him that was dead came and accused him that he had cast him down. And Jesus said: I did not cast him down. But they reviled him still. 3 Then Jesus leaped down from the roof and stood by the body of the child and cried with a loud voice and said: Zeno (for so was his name called) arise and tell me, did I cast you down? And straightway he arose and said: No, Lord, you did not cast me down, but did raise me up. And when they saw it they were amazed: and the parents of the child glorified God for the sign which had come to pass, and worshipped Jesus (translation by M.R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament: Translation and Notes [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924] with modifications).

Earlier I have commented on related matters in The Cursing Infant Jesus: Ancient vs. modern sensibilities (NT Apocrypha 1.2).

Quite some time ago I began a series on ancient jokes (here and here), but I totally forgot about the whole thing.  As end-of-term marking and editing a volume presses upon me, I thought I’d at least post a few jokes from the Philolegos, the Laughter-lover.

A little who’s-your-real-father humour:

“An egghead on meeting a friend was congratulated by him on the birth of a son.  ‘Yes, thanks to all my friends!’, he replied” (Philogelos 98).

On just how stupid airheads can be:

“There were these two cowardly eggheads.  One hid in a well, the other in a bed of rushes.  When the soldiers who were after them let down a helmet to get some water, the one in the well thought a soldier had come down to get him, started to beg for mercy and so was detected.  The soldiers said that they would leave him alone if he would only shut up.  Hearing this, the other egghead hidden in the rushes called out, ‘Hey, leave me alone as well; I’m not saying anything!’” (96).

On what you shouldn’t do with your text-books:

“A witty young egghead sold his books when short of money.  He then wrote to his father, ‘Congratulate me, father.  I am already making money from my studies” (55).

(Again, all translations are from Baldwin, Philogelos, as cited in no. 1 of this ancient jokes series).

(Used in accordance with the guidelines of www.reverendfun.com)

This also reminds me of T-Bone Burnett’s recent lyric:

If we were to pass an eleventh commandment
In twenty years, people would be shocked to learn
That there had once been only ten
And wouldn’t care if there had been

(T-Bone Burnett, “Everytime I feel the shift,” Columbia/DMZ, 2006)

(Copyright Gospel Communications International, Inc - www.reverendfun.com)

Origen of Alexandria would approve.

(Copyright Gospel Communications International, Inc - www.reverendfun.com; used in accordance with that website’s permissions).

Greco-Roman culture was marked by a competitive atmosphere in which individuals, groups, and communities sought to gain honour and reputation, sometimes at the expense of someone else’s shame. Cities, too, were often among the competitors for honour and, as Dio Chrysostom’s speeches to Greek cities in Asia Minor and elsewhere show (late first century CE), rivalries between particular cities could get quite heated, ranging from ongoing name-calling to violent clashes and war. Thus, for instance, Dio addressed the citizens of Nicomedia about their discord and strife with Nicaea, which involved each city claiming it was the greatest over against the other, and there were some concrete negative interchanges as a result (Oration 38). Dio, like Paul writing to the Christian group at Corinth (1 Corinthians), sought to alleviate the competitive atmosphere and tried to promote the values of concord and unity.

As in modern regional rivalries or region-centric thinking (in Canada it was once common to hear jokes about people from Newfoundland), sometimes negativity towards another area or people could take the form of ethnic stereotypes, including jokes. The ancient joke-book which I discussed in the previous post, The Laughter-Lover, contains a number of jokes of this kind, with the primary targets being inhabitants from Sidon (in Syria), Abdera (in Thrace), and Kyme (in Asia Minor). No doubt, some such jokes and caricatures originally emerged within the context of local civic rivalries. Here are a few that poke fun at — or stereotype as less than brilliant — people from Kyme (Cyme):

“A man from Kyme who was looking for a friend was in front of his house calling his name. ‘Shout louder, so that he’ll hear you,’ advised a passer-by. So he started calling, ‘Louder!‘” (no.160).

“A man from Kyme was riding by a garden on a donkey. Catching sight of an overhanging branch full of ripe figs, he made a grab for it. But the donkey bolted and left him hanging. Up came the gardener and demanded to know what he thought he was doing hanging there. ‘I had an asinine accident’” (no. 166).

“A man from Kyme was so ill that his doctor despaired of him. However, he recovered. But he kept avoiding the doctor. Finally, the [doctor] managed to corner him and ask why. ‘Well, I’m embarrassed to be seen alive after you said I was going to die’” (no. 174).

“[There was a] doctor from Kyme who switched to a blunt scalpel because the patient on whom he was operating was screaming so much from the pain” (no. 177).

(Again, all translations are from Baldwin, Philogelos, as cited in no. 1 of this ancient jokes series).

History Carnival no. 22 is now up at Frog in a Well, the Korea History Group Blog. One of the links there is to a number of graffiti from Pompeii which, however offensive they may seem to some of us now, were clearly intended to be humorous (as well as offensive) then. Among the less offensive: “Satura was here on September 3rd.”

There is no doubt that humour is a cultural thing. What is funny in the ancient world will not necessarily be funny now, and may even be considered nonsensical or offensive from the modern perspective. Likewise, what makes one group of people laugh in a particular period will certainly not be funny to another contemporary cultural group. Still, there are times when jokes from the Greco-Roman period make me laugh, perhaps partly because I spend a good part of my life “living” (theoretically) in the ancient world, but also because of western civilization’s cultural connections with the ancient Mediterranean. I have already mentioned some episodes in early Christian literature that seem intended to make the ancient audience laugh, such as the story of the apostle John and the bed bugs.

I thought it might be fun to start up an ongoing series on jokes from antiquity, jokes that may make some of us moderns laugh and/or provide us with glimpses into a very different cultural world than our own. There are plenty of references to humour and funny situations in many ancient sources (and ancient theatrical comedy was of course aimed, in part, at bringing laughter). Yet there is only one surviving example of an actual anthology of 265 ancient jokes, The Philogelos or Laughter-Lover (manuscript dating to the 10th century but reflecting jokes from the first centuries of our era, one of which can be dated to 248 CE).

The Laughter-Lover collects together jokes thematically, dealing with the stereotypical “intellectual”, “scholar”, or “professor” (scholastikos; there are over 100 of these), with physicians, with civic rivalry, and with people with bad breath, among others. Quite a few jokes have direct relevance to issues of gender and views of women in antiquity, as translated and discussed online here at Diotima.

Here’s my first installment relating to scholar-types (some of which also happen to reflect the realities of ancient slavery):

“An intellectual who had had an operation on his uvula was ordered by his doctor not to talk for a while. So he instructed his slave to greet all his callers on his behalf. Then he proceeded to say to each caller, ‘Please don’t be offended that my slave greeted you instead of me; I’m under doctor’s orders not to talk’” (Laughter-Lover, no. 7).

“After a dinner party two intellectuals kept taking it in turns to escort the other home in accordance with the rules of etiquette. The result: neither of them ever got to bed” (no. 20).

“An intellectual was on a sea voyage when a big storm blew up, causing his slaves to weep in terror. ‘Don’t cry,’ he consoled them, ‘I have freed you all in my will’” (no. 25).

Translations in this series of posts come from Barry Baldwin, The Philogelos or Laughter-Lover Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben, 1983, with adaptations. For a general discussion of humour through history, see Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, eds., A Cultural History of Humour from Antiquity to the Present Day (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997).