Illuminating Humor of the Bible

A Review

Steven C. Walker casts a very wide net over the Biblical corpus and draws up different shades and shapes of humor. No matter what your definition of humor is, no matter the theory of humor you subscribe to you will find your pick in his Illuminating Humor of the Bible. No one has to subscribe to a Christological account of the Bible to find humor in it. To those who read the Bible as literature, for instance, Walker, tongue in cheek, gives Top Ten Biblical Ways to Snag a Husband. Number two, four and nine on his list are:

2] Have God create a husband from scratch so you have some chance of getting one that’s “good,” as Eve did

[4] Bathe nude within full view of your intended, like Bathsheba

[9] Beat your little sister into the honeymoon tent. In the dark, keep your identity secret until it’s too late for objections, like Leah.

And to those who read it as works written by men moved by God, Walker insists that the meaning God intends cannot be apprehended without first recognizing the humor that contains it.

With the speed of a sprinter who wishes to cover as much ground as possible in the briefest of time, Walker says much with few sentences. The comic situations in Genesis, he says, are 

too persistent to be incidental, too numerous to be unintended. 

"Acts," he says, 

is a funnier book than Genesis. 

Humor, according to him is too widespread in the Bible to deny that the writers did not intend humor. With the patience and pace of a long-distance runner, he provides broad and in-depth analyses of specific examples of Biblical humor. 

Reading Steven C. Walker's Illuminating Humor of the Bible, readers get to experience many responses biblical humor can trigger. Through the reasons Walkers provides, readers also get to see why they have read many passages of the Bible without attributing humor where humor is intended.