JOKES IN THE BIBLE.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 119, 3 October 1941, Page 4

JOKES IN THE BIBLE.

Sir,-The letter from K.S. about " Jokes in the Bible" reminds me of what was said on the same subject by Dr. John Witherspoon, an 18th century Scottish clergyman who later went to America and was one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. Witherspoon wrote a very pungent satire upon the dominant party in the Church of Scotland, and when charged before the Synod of Glasgow with having written "ironically" on sacred subjects, part of his defence was that "There ‘are many instances of irony in the sacred writings. In Gen. iii. 22 we have an expression put into the mouth of God himself, which many, perhaps most interpreters, suppose to be an irony . . .:‘ And the Lord God said, Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.’ The conduct of Elijah, and his treatment of the prophets of Baal, I Kings XVIII. 27 is another example of the same kind: ‘And it came to pass at noon that Elijah mocked them, and said, "Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is on a

journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked?"’ There are a good many’ instances of it in the prophets, which I omit, as the thing is undeniable, and only further mention an expression of our Saviour Himself, who though a man of sorrows and in a state of humiliation, yet in some places uses a language plainly ironical, as in John X. 31: ‘Many good works have I showed you from my Father, for which of these works do ye stone me?’" On the general subject of the compatibility of religion with humour, at least with irony, Witherspoon says, " There is, for ordinary, a pride and self-sufficiency in wicked man, which makes them deaf to advice, and impugnable to sober and serious reasoning; nor is there any getting at them, till their pride is levelled a little with this dismaying weapon. Many of the ancient fathers of the Christian church, both used this manner of writing, and. asserted its necessity." He goes on to substantiate this statement by quotations from Tertullian and Augustine, and, turning to a period.nearer his own, from " Monsieur Pascal, in his Provincial etters, which are written almost entirely in the way of ridicule,’ though "all history testifies" that he was "as pious and unbiased to the world as anv of his time."

ARTHUR N.

PRIOR

(Dunedin).