大象传媒

Good morning!聽The book of Ecclesiastes states there is 鈥渁 time to weep and a time to laugh鈥� (3:4)聽Of course, the Bible does not consist of books of jokes but their lack of textual indicators to inform the reader of a joke, as well as no punctuation means that humour is often missed.聽I recently wrote a book on Jesus and was not surprised to notice that Jesus used humour in his teaching. Jewish comics were famous from ancient times to the modern day 鈥� from the matriarch Sarah who laughed when told she would have a son (and named Isaac for that laughter) to Woody Allen who said that 鈥渋f you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans鈥�.聽Ordinary life in the first century CE was difficult and the timing was right for comic relief. Comedy, especially Jewish comedy, is often about coping in difficult conditions and laughter keeps everyone going. Some psychologists have deconstructed Jewish humour in terms of managing external hostility through self-mockery, as Freud wrote, 鈥淚 do not know whether there are many other instances of a people making fun to such a degree of its own character.鈥� A Yiddish proverb illustrates what he meant: 鈥渨ant to alleviate your big-time worries? Put on a tighter shoe鈥�.聽Humour was a means to reach a wide audience, breaking down barriers between ordinary people and making them more receptive to the message.聽Moral instruction was intrinsic to his humour and in a warning about judging others, Jesus said, 鈥淗ow dare you say to your brother, 鈥楶lease, let me take that speck out of your eye,鈥� when you have a log in your own eye?鈥� (Matthew 7:4). Rather than expounding the meaning of hypocrisy, his listeners would just have laughed at, and reflected on, an absurd scene.聽聽Blessed are you, o Lord, who teaches us to laugh with one another and鈥�at ourselves聽Amen