I never said all the humour in the Bible was gentle or polite. We have come to expect harsh even toilet humour from the prophets, but in this reading Leviticus outdoes Ezekiel sharpening his toilet humour and even making it shorter and more pointed.
In this podcast I’ll compare Ezek 6:3-6 with Lev 26:30, and even throw in some Hebrew and a reference to Cuneiform, just to show how serious Leviticus’ humour really is 🙂
[…] It’s times like this when you see the true value of an intimate knowledge of the original language. Tim mentions pun, scatological humor, alliteration and other examples of wordplay. Listen to the podcast here: Humour in the Bible: Book 3 Leviticus […]
I didn’t think you could do it! But I was wrong. Fantastic podcast. I plugged the post and asked an additional question here: http://lingamish.com/2011/04/poopy-puns-in-the-bible/
Loved it thanks Tim. Love the puns. Wish I’d studied more Hebrew now!
It’s never too late to learn (more) Hebrew! My dad was learning Portugese at 80 something.
Thanks David 🙂 I was pretty surprised and chuffed myself to get Leviticus done 😉 and I have a secret weapon for Lamentations (what IS it with these L books?) a friend who is doing her PhD on the book 🙂
I mentioned a link on my blog to an article called Humor in the Bible. It’s a pretty good catalog of different forms of humor throughout the Bible. You might check it out if you get stuck.
Oh don’t worry, Google is my friend, I’ll continue cheating all the way through the series 😉
[…] is humour in every book of the (Hebrew) Bible, and I am stuck on Chronicles. I managed to uncover humour in Leviticus without your help, but I really need you […]
[…] (with the help of my friends, especially Tyler) successfully found humour in such unlikely spots as Leviticus and Chronicles the next book on the list is […]
[…] n.b. Tim seems to have skipped Leviticus. I wonder why? Update: Tim comments below, and lets us know that he’s done Humour in Leviticus. […]