Funny Things Can Happen on Your Way through the Bible, Volume 2

Humor and Wit in the Catholic and Orthodox Canons

Barrett

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781498275286
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In these meditations upon Scripture, the author quickly, lightly opens up the sacred text to us in a way that--to my knowledge--has never been attempted in the entire history of the Christian faith. Through irony, pun, parody, spoof, and joke he reads Scripture with tongue in cheek, a rhyme in his pen, and a smile on his face. If you ever wondered what the Bible would sound like if it were written by Ogden Nash (and who hasn't?), here it is, Charlie Barrett's religious rhymes.--William H. Willimon, acclaimed author and Dean of the Chapel emeritus, Duke University

Part One

The Book of the Original Covenant

The Yeast

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love upon you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples.

Deuteronomy 7:7

Does it not seem funny to you

that the Creator

uses the small

to bless all?

Yet it seems a virtual law

that the One-beyond-flaw

is not as taken with hosts who number most

as with the fewest and least.

It appears that the plan of Heaven

is to raise the loaf through the leaven,

providing by means of the least

the all-pervading yeast

to make the Bread for the kingdom feast.

1—Torah

Genesis

January 1

Setting the Stage

(Genesis 1:1—2:7)

Clearly the Bible’s opening creation story was not intended to make us laugh. Just as clearly the creation it describes sets the stage and establishes the conditions for laughter. Later chapters in the biblical epic provide ample proof that the seeds of creaturely possibility planted in the creation include the seeds of humor, wit, and their happy child, laughter. The following crhyme or “cheesemaker rhyme,” a genre of insult to Erato inspired by a Monty Python line,1 looks back on the creation story from the vantage point of the larger biblical narrative, which is full of intentionally and inadvertently funny incidents.

On the first Day of Creation the Word causes to be form-enabling light and creative energy.

On Creation’s second Day the Word fashions a medium pliably permanent, using, say the Notes, a water-restraining firmament.

On Creation’s third Day the Word sculpts a plant-bearing orb composed largely of water and clay.

On the fourth Day of Creation the Word hangs lights in the light sublime—sun, moon, and stars to define time.

On Creation’s Day five the Word supplies sea and sky with fish to inhabit the waters and birds the heights to fly.

On Creation’s sixth Day the Word speaks into birth animals of all sorts to roam the earth.

On the sixth Day too the Word, in its inscrutable way,adds to this zoo the creation’s feat of clay.

On the seventh Day of Creation, convening for first Sabbat the celestial staff,the Word must surely anticipate future occasions to laugh,sensing that the sixth-day wonder, source of much grief,will become a source as well of comic relief,casting humor’s telling light on matters great and slight.

January 2

Adam’s Nickname

(Genesis 2:7—3:19; Romans 1:22–23)

A clear scriptural hint that God has a sense of humor shows up in Adam’s nickname. In a play on words, the author of Genesis 2 connects adam, Hebrew for “humankind” (i.e., all of us), with adam...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One: The Book of the Original Covenant
• Part Two: The Book of the New Covenant
• Notes