Book review: “The Bible and the Comic Vison” by J. William Whedbee

The Bible is so reverenced in Western civilization that it’s easy to miss all the layers of comedy at work. Indeed, Charles Baudelaire complained, “Holy Books never laugh, to whatever nations they belong.”

Yet, in The Bible and the Comic Vision, biblical scholar J. William Whedbee argues:

The Holy Book we call the Bible revels in profoundly ambivalent laughter, a divine and human laughter that by turns is both mocking and joyous, subversive and celebrative, and finally a laughter that results in an exuberant and transformative comic vision.

His book focuses on the Hebrew Bible, called the Old Testament by Christianity, a collection of works that, he writes, are filled in a variety of ways with humor. Indeed, one important figure in these books is Isaac whose name means “he laughs.”

Which itself is something of an in-joke inasmuch as it’s Isaac who is tricked by his son Jacob into giving that younger twin the birthright that belongs to the older twin Esau. Jacob gets the last laugh…in this case, at least.

Until his son Joseph tricks Jacob and his eleven other sons in an elaborate almost-slapstick story of trickery and getting even.

 

A happy ending

Comedy, Whedbee notes, involves a U-shaped plot during which bad things happen until the situation is resolved in a happy ending. It’s the opposite of tragedy. The Hebrew Bible certainly has tragic elements, but the overall message is that, despite the seemingly continuous failures of humanity, God holds strong to his covenant.

The comic is also expressed through farce’s usual cast of characters, such as “buffoons, clowns, fools, simpletons, rogues and tricksters.”  The serpent in the Garden is a trickster, writes Whedbee, while “Jacob and Rebekah appear as consummate tricksters in a family of tricksters whereas Isaac and Esau appear as befuddled simpletons.”

In other words, you can read the story of Jacob tricking Isaac with the solemnity that is often attached to scripture. Yet, you can also read it and enjoy the cleverness of Jacob and his mother over the foolishness of his brother and father.

The comic element can also be found in the wordplay of puns, parody, exaggeration, incongruity and irony.

To be sure, mocking, sardonic laughter is more dominant in biblical literature…This side emerges when the comedy takes the form of parody and satire, serving to deflate pretentious, pompous figures.

 

Powerful buffoons

Whedbee describes the books of Exodus and Esther as “comedies of deliverance,” and both feature a ruler — the Pharoah and King Ahasuerus — who is foolish, fickle and self-defeating, who is, in other words, a powerful buffoon.  For instance, at every turn, the Pharoah is outmaneuvered by God and his messengers, such as when he calls on his magic men to confront Moses and Aaron.

So Moses directs Aaron to do the trick of turning the staff into a snake. Not to be outdone the Egyptian magicians duplicate the feat — but the narrator then adds the “punchline” in this battle of wonders: “Aaron’s staff swallowed up theirs.”

In some cases, Whedbee writes, satire and other comic techniques are used to undercut opponents of the status quo. But, in others, its purpose is subversive and even revolutionary, such as in Exodus and Esther.

It takes dead aim at a tyrannical and oppressive society and attempts to subvert it in order to institute a new society built upon traditions that foster liberation and life.

 

A talking mule

Some biblical stories, such as the one about Balaam’s ass, are broad comedy:

God is mad at Balaam, his would-be prophet, and sends an angel to stop him on his journey.

Three times, the angel stands in his way, and, three times, the ass Balaam is riding sees the angel and stops. But his rider can’t see the divine messenger and strikes the ass each time with his staff. At which point,

“The Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, ‘What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?’ ” (Numbers 22:28 King James Version)

And, if a talking mule weren’t funny enough — remember in 1960s sitcom Mister Ed, Balaam is shown to be so dense that he gets into an argument with the ass until God opens his eyes.

 

A jokey joke

Whedbee only mentions Balaam in passing, and also another incident — Abraham’s negotiations with the God on behalf of the “righteous” in Sodom and Gomorrah — which is as jokey a joke as was ever told on the Borst Circuit.

Abraham is walking with God who tells him that he’s going to destroy the two wicked cities. And, as recorded in Genesis 18:16-33 (New American Bible Revised Edition), Abraham asks God:

“Will you really sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there were fifty righteous people in the city; would you really sweep away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people within it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike! Far be it from you! Should not the judge of all the world do what is just?”

The Lord replied: “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”

Abraham spoke up again: “See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am only dust and ashes! What if there are five less than fifty righteous people? Will you destroy the whole city because of those five?”

“I will not destroy it,” he answered, “if I find forty-five there.”

But Abraham persisted, saying, “What if only forty are found there?”

He replied: “I will refrain from doing it for the sake of the forty.”

Then he said, “Do not let my Lord be angry if I go on. What if only thirty are found there?”

He replied: “I will refrain from doing it if I can find thirty there.”

Abraham went on, “Since I have thus presumed to speak to my Lord, what if there are no more than twenty?”

“I will not destroy it,” he answered, “for the sake of the twenty.”

But he persisted: “Please, do not let my Lord be angry if I speak up this last time. What if ten are found there?”

“For the sake of the ten, he replied, I will not destroy it.”

Read those verses out loud, alone or, even better, before a congregation, and you can’t help but fall into the rhythms of comedy.

Baudelaire obviously never found this comic corner of the Bible.

 

He laughed…

Neither, apparently, was he familiar with the scene that happened right before this Sodom-and-Gomorrah haggling.

When Abram was ninety-nine, God gave him the new name of Abraham and made a covenant with him, promising that he will become “the father of a multitude of nations.” And he gave his wife Sarai a new name as well, Sarah, and said he would give her a son by Abraham.

And, according to Genesis 17:17 and 19, Abraham fell face down and laughed as he said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah give birth at ninety?”…God replied: “Even so, your wife Sarah is to bear you a son, and you shall call him Isaac.”  Whedbee writes:

God does not allow the sound of laughter to die in Abraham’s throat, but instead seizes upon the Hebrew verb yisaq (“he laughs”) and declares that it will be the name of the coming heir.

 

…she laughed

And the laughter doesn’t end there.

God, in the form of three traveling men, shows up at Abraham’s tent, and, inside the tent, Sarah prepares at full, rich meal for them. And, in Genesis 18: 10-12, God says:

“I will return to you about this time next year, and Sarah will then have a son.”

Sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent, just behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years, and Sarah had stopped having her menstrual periods.

So Sarah laughed to herself and said, “Now that I am worn out and my husband is old, am I still to have sexual pleasure?”

God says to Abraham that Sarah laughed. But Sarah is afraid and says, “I did not laugh.”  And God says the punchline: “Yes, you did.”

Again, you can read these verses very solemnly. Or you can tap into the humor — into even God’s humor — that they reflect.

 

God a bungler?

One last example, and, in this case, it’s God who’s being parodied.

The Bible starts with the Book of Genesis which starts with two creation stories.  In the first, written by the author called the Priestly writer, God is an omnipotent creator. It begins:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

The second, written by the Yahwist, is the story of Adam and Eve, and Whedbee argues that it’s a parody of the Priestly version. In the Garden story, God has second thoughts. He tries this and then tries that. He operates by trial and error

Put even more bluntly, Yahweh appears as a kind of “bungler” at getting creation right, whose motto might read, “If at first you don’t succeed then try, try again.”

 

Trial and error

He creates Adam and then decides that Adam shouldn’t be alone. So he creates all the animals, but they’re not enough to provide Adam with companionship.

Then, he creates Eve…and she’s the one curious and courageous enough to first eat the fruit of the forbidden tree.

The contrast is striking and even provocative, not overly favoring one image over the other, but dramatizing difference by juxtaposing a precise, measured report side-by-side with a colorful, lively, humorous tale.

Over against the majestic, transcendent deity whose speech automatically and effortlessly materializes itself in a clearly demarcated, orderly creation we see a God who “gets his hands dirty” and who makes mistakes.

 

The humor of Jonah and even Job

There is much more in Whedbee’s book, such as the domestic comedies of Israel’s fathers and mothers in Genesis, the book of Jonah as an extended joke, and the laughter to be found in the Song of Songs and, even, the Book of Job.

The Bible and the Comic Vision is a scholarly but accessible work. Whedbee isn’t aiming to spark laughs from his readers, but, instead, a recognition that there are a lot of laughs to be found in the Bible if the reader knows how to look for them.

And, really, laughing is such a human trait. Of course, it’s woven all through scripture.

 

Patrick T. Reardon

1.20.26