Nathanael then became one of the apostles. In other words, here’s someone I can trust. "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit," Jesus said. Jesus says nothing of the sort! Nathanael's humor seems to delight him. This is an obvious joke about how backwards the town was Nazareth was seen as a backwater with only a few hundred people.Īnd what did Jesus say in response? Does he castigate Nathanael for mocking his hometown? Nathanael responds, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" In the beginning of the Gospel of John comes the remarkable story of Nathanael, who has been told by his friends that the Messiah is from Nazareth. Jesus also embraces others with a sense of humor. When the disciples argue among themselves, Jesus brings wit into the discussion." "But I see Jesus as a witty fellow, someone who is serious without being grim. "There were probably things that were compressed and shortened, and some of the humor may have been leached out," Clifford said. Clifford, SJ, a biblical scholar at Boston College, "are criticized for living it up!"Īfter his time on Earth, some of this playfulness may have been downplayed by the Gospel writers, who, scholars say, may have felt pressured by the standards of their day to present a more serious Jesus. "The Son of Man came eating and drinking," Jesus said, "and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard.’ ” In other words, the Gospels record criticism of Jesus for being too high-spirited.
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is castigated for not being as serious as John the Baptist. There are other indications in the Gospels that Jesus of Nazareth had a lively sense of humor.
His son recognized the humor that someone else, who might have heard the story dozens of times, might miss. In his book "The Humor of Christ," Trueblood recounts the tale of his 4-year-old son hearing the Gospel story of seeing the speck of dust in your neighbor's eye and ignoring the log in your own and laughing uproariously. "The words seem to us like old coins," wrote Elton Trueblood, a 20th-century Quaker scholar, "in which the edges have been worn smooth and the engravings have become almost indistinguishable." Too many Gospel stories have become stale, like overly repeated jokes. Or maybe we just know the stories too well. I suspect that the early readers found these stories hilarious, whereas we in a very different social setting miss the point entirely." "The Gospels have a lot of controversy stories and honor-shame situations. "Humor is very culture bound," he told me. Harrington, SJ, professor of New Testament at Boston College, agrees. People in Jesus’ day would probably have laughed at many of his intentionally funny illustrations: for example, the idea that someone would have lit a lamp and put it under a basket, or that a person would have built a house on sand or that a father would give a child stones instead of bread.īut contemporary Christians may be missing the humor that Jesus intended and that his audience understood.įather Daniel J. “The idea that a mustard seed would have sprouted into a big bush that birds would build their nests in would be humorous." "The parables were amusing in their exaggeration or hyperbole," Amy-Jill Levine, a New Testament scholar at Vanderbilt University, said in an interview. Well, one difficulty with finding humor in the New Testament is that what was seen as funny to those living in Jesus' time may not seem funny to us.įor someone in first-century Palestine, the premise (or “setup” as a comic would say) was probably more amusing than the punch line. Did Jesus really have no sense of humor didn't he ever laugh?
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Here’s a serious question about levity: The Bible clearly paints a picture of Jesus of Nazareth as a clever guy, but he never seems to laugh, much less crack a smile. Editor’s note: James Martin, SJ, is a Jesuit priest, culture editor of America magazine and author of "Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life," from which this article is adapted.
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