"The Banishment of Vashti" by Paolo Veronese, via Wikimedia Commons
I have argued before that Esther is full of sexual and/or gendered humour, but that was before I took the topic of humour in the Bible (documents from very different cultural contexts from ours) seriously. Now however I have nine criteria to measure whether it is likely that authors intended the humour we find. These are all present in Esther chapter 1:
- incongruity
- lighthearted mood
- surprise
- ingenuity (cleverness is often a mark of humour think of puns)
- hyperbole
- inferiority
- disguise or something or someone pretending to be something else
- “inelasticity” (following Bergson)
- human pretension revealed in all its lack of glory!
So, enjoy 🙂
So, here’s the link to the audio: Humour in the Bible: book 17: Esther
