Humour in the Bible?

You canNOT be Serious!

By: David Legg

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

This serious and reverent book takes a look at a much neglected subject in the Bible: Humour. The reaction of many people to the suggestion that the Bible might talk about heaven, hell, sin and humour is like that of John McEnroe: "You canNOT be Serious!" When the Bible is humorous, it is often at its most serious (as Dale Ralph Davis points out). This book defines biblical humour, explains the humour in all the 66 books except a few. It even looks briefly at the Apocrypha, in order to see how their non-biblical humour is different from that of scripture. Importantly, this book then applies what you should learn from humorous passages in the Bible. If we fail to notice and understand the intentionally humorous passages in scripture, then we will also misapply them. Biblical humour is rarely 'funny-ha-ha', but it is always important. Biblical humour helps us to enjoy our God; it protects us from sinful pride, because when we laugh at ourselves, it helps us to be humble. Biblical humour strengthens and builds our faith in a powerful way. We should never laugh at God, but we should always laugh with him! Find out how, in this unique book. ‘...a nice summary of the Bible’s humour, using a broad definition of humour, which includes irony, sarcasm, scorn, surprise, shock (in all, some 35 categories) Each discussion also includes applications to Christians (and others) today. In brief, humour is laughing with God, often at ourselves. There is a real place for humour in the Christian life, but we need to be careful how we use it. The author, after an introduction, goes through each of the books of the Bible, giving examples.’- Robert C. Newman, Emeritus Professor of New Testament and Christian Evidences, Missio Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Emeritus Director of the Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute, M.Div. (FTS), STM in OT (BTS), see https://www.amazon.com/Robert-C.-Newman/e/B071181B6S ‘… an unusual and thought-provoking book about humour in the Bible. He helpfully highlights the ways in which humour appears in the Bible to give us a better understanding of the Lord and of ourselves. The systematic approach of working through the books of the Bible gives new insights into all sorts of passages.’- Joe Dent, Minister of St Andrew's Church, Plymouth, UK.

Good Book. Chapters in Audiobook need to be fixed

The book was good regarding the author's detection of humor in the Bible.
One strange item was his failure to see a lot of humor/irony in the 4th Gospel. A number of other writers have pointed out the generous use of humor of the 4th gospel. I am surprised that this author did not find the same.

Note:
The "chapters" in the audiobook table of contents are not accurate / not complete and need to be re-worked.