Jesus's popularity as a speaker during his life was due to the fact that he was extremely entertaining, and he was entertaining because he was funny. Jesus got people laughing. Then he got them thinking. His humor was broad, ranging from the intellectual to the childish. This seems odd today because Jesus gets translated so seriously, when, in fact, he was completely willing to make a fool of himself, or, more accurately, a child of himself, "the child of the man," as he liked to say.

This site didn't begin with any idea of discussing Jesus's humor, but after over a decade of studying the Greek, that humor is clearly the main aspect of Jesus's teaching that is lost in translation. Accurate translation is often impossible without highlighting Jesus's use of humor in his message. He calls it the "good news" because it made people happy.  In this article we explain some of this humor, but a warning, jokes are not as funny when they are explained as when they are heard.

The entire Sermon on the Mount, in the original Greek, reads like a stand-up comedy routine. This has been translated out of the version you read in the Bible, but Jesus’s original words have all the hallmarks of humor, including:

• Setups followed by punch lines that surprise listeners
• Repeated catch phrases,
• Extreme exaggerations,
• Alliteration and rhyming,
• Story-telling with surprise endings,

The list goes on and on.

How Humor is Translated Out

You cannot see most of this humor in translation because it is edited out. The Gospel writers do this to make Jesus's "message" clearer, because all the humorous techniques cited above "muddy" the meaning from the theological point of view. A good example of this is the clearly humorous ending to both Jesus's Parable of the Sower, (Matthew 13:23)  an ending that is repeated, for the sake of humor, it its later explanation. The ending of literally reads:

"This one of all people bears fruit and produces: this one, indeed, a hundred. This one, however, sixty. This one, however, thirty."

Notice how the ending is drawn how with praise and adding of doubt with the "however" as the numbers decline. This is funny, especially as I imagine it being delivered to a live audience (see the Spoken Version at bottom of the article on Matthew 13:23). But look at how this get translated in the NIV:

This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”

What happened to the ending? All the humor is gone and explanation is added. Not only it is drier and more boring, but it treats the reader as if they are too flow to get the context.

The Nature of Humor

We miss the humor not only because of the way the Bible is translated but also because of the way we read it. We are not looking for humor. We are looking for truth or inspiration or intellectual arguments. All of these things can be found in humor, especially when the humor is about things that are not easily expressed in "earthly" terms. However, in reading the Gospels this way, we miss some of the most entertaining speeches and interchanges ever recorded in history.

How can we read the Bible looking for humor? Humor has a structure that relies on surprise endings. Henny Youngman’s, “Take my wife…please!” becomes a cry for help if translated to “Please take my wife.” Set-ups are cleverly structured to create expectations. They must be followed by punchlines that turn those expectations on their head. This structure occurs in verse after verse of Jesus's words in the Greek, but it is lost in translation because Jesus’s word order is completely changed.

Jesus's words are usually not translated to be witty, at least not in the various English versions I analyze. We can even see some of this "cleaning up" in the translation from Greek to the Latin Vulgate, for example in the parable of the Two Sons, the responses of the sons were switched, ruining the punchline (see Matthew 21:30 for an explanation) and confusing the message.  Even Luke's version of Jesus's sayings was simplified to eliminate certain repetitious elements that were primarily humorous that we see in Matthew. For example, Luke eliminates a lot of the "amens" meaning "truly" or "honestly" that is often associated with the "I tell you" line because its value was primarily humorous. Notice how in John, who wrote his Gospel to capture things left out of the earlier ones, those "amens" are not only common, but usually doubled.

The Official Approved Version

It is no wonder we don't laugh when we read these words today. They have been "sanctified" of all their original humor when put into their current written form. However, originally they were not written at all. They were spoken. (Read this article on the differences between spoken language and written.)

The fact that Jesus's words were spoken makes the Gospel Greek different from the rest of the New Testament, which was written as letters. All those who wrote letters, however, clearly spoken  in Greek (see this article). This is not the common academic view, which teaches that Christ taught in Aramaic, but that opinion is not based on evidence as much as historical politics. Those that make the claim for Aramaic simply cannot explain the Greek words we see today nor many aspects of their humor, specifically the Greek plays on words that don't work in other languages (a verse-by-verse description of wordplay here). The oldest Greek versions of the words themselves make it impossible to imagine an earlier Aramaic version that could possibly give rise to the Greek we see today as a translation. (NOTE: I would love to debate this issue with someone who is honest and knowledgeable about language translation because every article I read on this topic ignores all the key evidence we see in the Greek words themselves.)

The Actual Words as Recorded

These words were not spoken like formal, grammatically correct, written language, cleaned up by editors.  We see them that way. They are often presented in the Gospels that way. They were much more likely performed; that is, many statements were structured in order to entertain as well as educate. To understand the difference between written humor and spoken humor, think about Shakespeare. If you read Shakespeare's comedies, you may not find them particularly funny. However, if you see any of them performed, you will laugh from beginning to end. This humor is not stand-up with simple jokes. It is a performance, creating humorous scenes and situations.

Most of all humor is in the performance and the interaction with the audience. We must imagine the performance and interactions today because they were not recorded. Shakespeare was written first, then performed later. In the case of Jesus, however, his words were performed first, then written. However, like Shakespeare, many of the words don't quite make sense unless you imagine them performed by someone with great wit, warmth and lots of shtick. However, with Jesus, we also have to imagine the audience's interactions because the complete script was not recorded, just his part of it. 

The Common Forms of the Humor

This article discusses some of the most common forms and elements of humor that Christ uses. Of course, jokes aren't particularly funny when they are explained, so don't expect to laugh out loud reading this article. The goal is only to give those reading his words a different way of understanding them. This article also helps people understand how to read the "Spoken Version" versions of his verses on this site, which are written to emphasize Christ's humor and imagine the type of shtick that the recorded words suggest. Some of this business is clearly childish, but this is consistent with Christ's title for himself as "the son of a man," which has the sense of a "child of a man."

Let us start, not with Christ's words, but his silences.

The Pause between the Set Up and Punch Line

The famous humorist Mark Twain observed, "No word was ever as effective as a rightly timed---pause." In translating Christ's words into a spoken performance (see these verses here), it is easy to see where these pauses go. Many of them follow what is translated as the "and's" and "but's" that, in written translation, create so many run-on sentences. However, many of these pauses occur before final keywords. Keywords at the end of a Greek sentence or phrase is uncommon since Greek word order normally puts the most important words first, not last (again see this article).

The pause works in humor because it "sets up" the laugh. A surprising number of Christ's verses can be broken down into classical comedy form called the "set up," "punch line," and "tagline." The set up creates expectations. The punch line confuses those expectations and generates a laugh. The tagline is a second punchline to keep the laughter going.

Again, Jesus's "body of work" was spoken, not written. Punctuation, even spaces between words, didn't exist in written Greek at the time. The translations here try to capture how the words would be spoken today, which includes the pause. Of course, this is not entirely possible because Greek is constructed differently than English. The verbs are not usually in the middle of the phrase but at the end. This is important because the word order is what makes the pause work. At least one example below shows why that is sometimes necessary for the joke to work. Of course, there are too many examples of Jesus's use of the pause to capture even a good sample. In some "sermons" practically every other verse leans on that pause.

In the Greek, these places for the pause are easy to spot. Whenever an unexpected or surprising word appears following a "set up," it is easy to imagine a pause before it. Of course, these surprises themselves are hard to hear today because we think we are familiar with what Christ said. To quote Christ, we hear but we do not listen. The truth is that many, many of the phrases with which we think we are familiar often do not even come close to what Jesus actually said. They are changed, almost always in word order and too often to simplify meaning. The meaning that the translators think is important is emphasized. This usually isn't the funny one. Of course, wordplay based on word sounds is lost entirely. Still, let us start with some easy examples, starting with the basic pause.

A Roller Coaster of Shifting Meaning

Word order is crucial to humor. Jesus often organizes words to take his listeners on a surprising journey, with the biggest surprise at the end, after a pause. For example, at the beginning of the Parable of the Lost Sheep, Matthew 18:12, .the second clause has only six words in Greek, ἐὰν γένηταί τινι ἀνθρώπῳ ἑκατὸν πρόβατα. As those six words are spoken, however, the listener must constantly change his or her assumptions about what is being said. For the listener, Jesus words offer a series of surprises, a roller coaster of shifting meanings.

It seems to start, "When it becomes" (ἐὰν γένηταί), but that "becomes" is followed by an indirect object "to some man" (τινι ἀνθρώπῳ). This changes the meaning of the verb "becomes" to "produced by some man" or "belongs to some man" depending on the subject, which the listeners must wait for. Then comes the number "hundred," (ἑκατὸν) which doesn't seem to indicate a subject, because the subject is singular and a hundred is plural. 

Then, finally, the subject noun appears, assumably, assumably after a pause, "sheep" (πρόβατα), which, though plural matches the singular verb. Greek plural neuter nouns  (that is, things) like "sheep" are treated as a single conglomeration for ownership. So, as the final word is spoken, the meaning of the second word, the verb (γένηταί), is finally revealed. It must mean "belongs" because sheep are owned, not produced, by some man.  Everything works out as perfectly grammatical Greek, but what a wild ride for the listener.

And it is all lost in translation, but only because the translators don't care about the humor, which in this translator's arrogant opinion, is one of its chief characteristics. For me, this stuff is totally fun to translate, The ending of this verse is also great,  at first saying the exact opposite of what it means. See this article about it to learn more about this great verse.

The First Beatitude

This pattern of "set up"/pause/"punch line"/pause/"tagline"/pause, starts very early in the New Testament with the "Beatitudes." This method is used there almost to the point of zaniness. Of course, this is lost in translation because these verses have been "sanctified" to a shocking degree. They are changed to the point that not only is the humor lost, but Christ's point (pause) and its sharpness (pause), is often blunted as well.

Let's start with the first beatitude. This is normally translated as "Blessed are the poor of spirit blah, blah." Now, this version sounds very religious, especially because it seems to praise the poor, but it isn't what Christ said. Not really. I can't even imagine him saying something like that in the way we hear it today. Too sanctimonious.

What he said in these verses starts with a single word.

"Lucky!"

That word only means "blessed" in the sense that the lucky and fortunate are blessed by good luck. It doesn't mean "blessed" in the sense of "holy" at all. It also means "happy," which works as well with most of the humor in the Beatitudes. "Happy-go-lucky" might even capture the feeling of the word as well.

Of course, we don't know how he said it, but it wasn't followed by a verb. There is no "lucky are" and certainly no "blessed are" here. Just the statement: lucky! Perhaps it was addressed to someone as we might say, "You are lucky!" Or perhaps Christ pointed to someone when he said it. Gestures too have to be imagined when we read Christ. He didn't say these things in an auditorium on a stage, but with a group of people around him, often huge groups.

However, here is where the pause is critical. After Christ says, "Lucky!" the pause gives the crowd time to think, "Who is lucky?"

To which thought, after the pause, Christ responds, "Beggars!"

This is a punch line. No one sees beggars as lucky and no one sees this word coming. So, it is a surprise. Of course, translating "beggars" as "the poor" makes this phrase seem more caring, but it also waters down the joke. We will see why in a moment. The word Christ used means "beggars." Said with the right tone and twinkle, you can see how saying beggars are lucky would get a laugh, though perhaps a few nervous giggles at the very beginning of this "sermon."

At this point, we need to imagine another pause as Christ waits for the giggles to die. Then Christ adds:

"For spirit."

Now, when I read this, the image I get is bums begging for booze. Calling these guys lucky is crazy enough to work. Now in English, this joke works because we call alcohol "spirits." Did it work in Greek koine the same way? It is hard to say but in modern Greek oinospneuma (the words for "wine" and "spirit") refers to alcohol. In ancient Greek, the word meant "wine spirit" (or, more humorously, "wine breath") and referred to the courage fighters got from drinking. Was "begging" associated with drinking as much during Christ's time as it is in modern society? Well, the nature of drunks hasn't changed, so we can guess how they behaved then when they were out of drink and money.

However, the surprise works on other levels as well even if we abandon the one that is obvious in English. The word pneuma means "spirit" but it primarily means "breath." (You can read another whole boring article about that word here.) So Christ is saying someone begging for breath is lucky. Not a joking matter? Ahh, but the word has a double meaning which automatically trips up the expectations of the audience.

Of course, the secondary meaning of pneuma is "spirit" as in "spiritual." Since Christ was a spiritual teacher, this meaning is obvious, though more to us today than his listeners then. We cannot even hear the "breath" meaning, but that was the every day meaning of the word and the idea of "begging for breath" makes more sense than "begging for spirit, then and now. But that meaning "beggar for spirit" is funny too. What does it even mean? All these people have come to hear him talk. Is he calling them "spiritual beggars?"

The end of this verse is so familiar today that it is difficult to hear those words just as those who heard it during that period, specifically the first three words here: "Lucky! Beggars! For spirit!"

Again, we have to imagine the pause during what is likely laughter. As it dies down, the audience wonders, "Okay, why are these beggars lucky?"

Christ says, "Because the kingdom of heaven is made up of them."

The joke here is that heaven is made up of beggars. (Or that it is owned by beggars, which seems less likely.)

Of course, we cannot hear the "kingdom of heaven" in the same way as Christ's audience. It was a new phrase then and nobody knew what it meant really. Christ spends most of his teaching explaining what the idea is. They knew what a kingdom was and they knew the word translated as "heaven," but not how we think of it. The word meant "the sky," "the universe beyond our world," and, more specifically, the home of the "stars," that is, the heroes of history and mythology, both Greek and Jewish. Christ is not only putting beggars among these heros but saying that it is made up of the beggars, not the heroes.

Repetition and catchphrases

Another very common form of humor is the repeated pattern. All humorists use this technique because the audience gets trained by repetition. The audience learns where the laughs are. This makes the timing of the pause all that more effective. It also builds the laughs as more and more people catch onto the pattern. When a bit is used the first time, it is too surprising for many. But through repetition, they learn to anticipate the punch line.

Sometimes simply repeating a long list of words joined by "and" or "or" in a series can be funny. Jesus uses this technique a lot. Or course, we cannot know if he was answering a series of questions or not, but if we simply assume a pause before each conjunction it is easy to see the humor. Matthew 10:10 is a good example of an "or" series. Mark 12:1 is a good example of an "and" series. There are many others.

Of course, the simplest repeated pattern is the "catch phrase." The history of humor is filled with repeated catchphrases, especially the golden age of TV, where, for awhile, every successful comedy had a character catchphrase. "To the moon, Alice, to the moon." "Honey, I'm home." "Kiss my grits." "Dy-no-mite!" "Na-noo, na-noo." Catchphrases aren't only used in humor but in commercials as well. They are memorable and all end up being funny, if only through repetition. "Where's the beef?" "I ate the whole thing." "Does it hurt and have a temperature?"

Of course, Christ had his own catchphrases. "Amen, I say to you" is the most obvious, which is more like "Tell you true!" This is repeated to the point of pure humor in the Gospels. "The kingdom of heaven," and "the son of man" are two more. One of the funniest is "Boo-hoo to you!" (discussed later) which, unfortunately, gets translated as "Woe to you." Of course, we have a hard time hearing these phrases as humorous because we didn't hear them that way originally, but each one is rooted in humor. Even "the weeping and gnashing of teeth" hits me as humor, though as a different kind (exaggeration), which we will discuss later in the article.

Christ uses repeated patterns in many different ways. I may list a number of them in the future, but for now, we will stick with the beatitudes because they are an obvious example. They appear right at the beginning of the Gospels. They repeat the same patterns and even words in different ways. Let us look at how the fourth beatitude repeats the pattern set up in the first beatitude.

The Fourth Beatitude

Again, we start with "Lucky!" Now, when Christ pauses, the audience knows what is coming next, and people are probably already tittering. The thought is, "Who is 'lucky' this time?"

"The hungry and thirsty!" Obvious laugh line. By now, of course, the audience is in on the joke. Of course the hungry and thirsty are every bit as lucky as beggars! But the pattern leads them to ask, "Okay, hungry and thirsty for what?"

"For justice!" The tagline. Of course, this turns the meaning of "hungry and thirsty" completely around. Another laugh, bigger than the first.

But the audience now knows how this works. They are set up to expect an explanation of why these people are so lucky. The pause waits for the laughter to die down.

Then Christ says, "Because they will get their fill!"

This is a BIG laugh line, a tagline on top of the tagline.

It brings together both the idea of being hungry and the idea of getting justice, BUT getting "your fill of justice" is clearly a double edged sword. Those who think they want justice may want to rethink what they are asking for.

This is also a great example of how a verb at the end of the sentence works so well in humor. The last part "get their fill" is not a series of words in Greek, but a single verb.

Exaggeration

Of course, a lot of humor is based on exaggeration. A lot of this exaggeration suggests the humorous business that accompanied it when it was delivered. A lot of what Christ says is "over the top" and wouldn't have worked at all if the people of the time didn't see the humor in it. A lot of it would have simply come across as crazy.

No one can read Christ statement about seeing a speck in our brother's eye while missing the beam in our own without being struck by how exaggerated it is. Even then you have to imagine it being performed in front of a crowd with Christ having one arm acting as the "beam" over one eye, while offering to remove a speck from a friend's eye. This is very broad humor, slapstick. Christ wasn't afraid of embarrassing himself by seeming childish.

Unfortunately, people reading Christ today take every humorous exaggeration as gospel. (Pause). For them "a beam in the eye" is a weird outlier, rather than what is absolutely typical of Christ. They cannot hear the "perpetually flaming trash heap" as funny, partly because it has been translated into the boring "eternal fires of hell," but partly because generations of people have been brought up to see Christ as "holy," "divine," and little besides that. So, we don't hear the "weeping and gnashing of teeth" as a humorous illustration, as much as the Truth, with a capital "T." This makes Christ a really grim character, like John the Baptist, but that certainly isn't how he acts in the Gospels. He acts as though he doesn't have a care in the world.

A great repeated example of this grimness is the repeated phrase "Woe to you," which Christ uses many places, most noticeably in his long diatribe against the religious leaders of his time in Matthew 23:13-39. "Woe to you" sounds properly religious because you never hear anything like that said in real life. The Greek term translated as "woe" is an exclamation of grief like a wail or a sob, not just a term for sadness. It is an exaggeration.

However, people say something that means "woe to you" all the time in real life. They say, "Boo-hoo to you!" Notice, however, this phrase cannot be said seriously. Closer is the Jewish, "Oy vey." "Oy vey" is often, perhaps usually, used humorously, but it can also be a sincere expression of sorrow as well. The Greek word translated as "woe," ouai, is very similar. In English, we might use "so sad" in a similar way, with multiple meanings. It has an ironic edge. It can be used to minimize a list of people's complaints about their hardships, rather than emphasize people's mistakes. Christ uses "So sad for you" to make fun of both. It makes the condemnation lighter, not heavier because it is exaggerated and entertaining.

In listening to thousands of sermons, it is clear that pastors prefer quoting Paul, instead of Christ, even when both make the exact same points. Indeed, most of Paul's points comes directly from Christ. Since the faith is called "Christian" and Christ was the son of God, you would think that every pastor would go directly to the source, the words of Christ. But few do. Why? Because Christ exaggerates and plays around so much that pastors cannot explain his words in any logical way except as grim warnings. They cannot see or admit that Christ could see the humor in very serious matters. But what is humor other than the ability to see something from two perspectives at once?

Paul takes Christ's messages and tones them down. Paul would be politically correct and say "sadly for you," not "boohoo to you." Paul was a writer and a preacher, while Christ went beyond preaching into entertaining. Christ's work was spoken, not written. It takes a certain force of personality to make his material work in front of a crowd.

People clearly "got" Christ's exaggerated humor for centuries and centuries. Remember, the movement was started with Christ's words written in the Greek. People read it and got the exaggerations as entertainment. The philosophy came later, but the sharpness of Christ's points was always there. It fit the overall pattern of the historical Christ as an exaggerated character in real life: the lowest of all men, a "bastard" who was condemned to death as a criminal who rose from the dead to become the highest of the high, the son of God, the most famous man in human history.

It wasn't until Christianity got "churchified" that the humor and exaggeration were completely lost. The Bible became the Vulgate and, in the process, more formalized. That process continued as the Vulgate gave birth to the various translated Bibles, with every version focusing on the "religious" issues of its age.

Adultery and Cutting off "Members"

To illustrate how Christ's exaggerated humor works, we will look at Christ's discussion of adultery, also from the Sermon on the Mount, Christ's first sermon in the Gospels. This is a great example because the exaggeration clearly has sexual overtones. Christ was never crude, but here he comes close. Everyone listening understood exactly what he was saying, even if people today don't get it.

First, he gives the traditional commandment, as follows the pattern in this section, then he says:

"But I tell you what. Everyone staring at a woman..."

Imagine him exaggerating the "staring" and drawing out "woman" to make it sound very, very womanly. The first necessary pause comes here.

"Pining for her," he continues, again exaggerating the passion of the idea, with a very euphonic, multi-syllabic verb in Greek.

"Has already defiled her," he continues. Again, imagine an exaggerated "defiled." Then comes the necessary pause.

"In his..." Here he stops again, perhaps seeming to search for the word that keeps it clean. He comes up with it and says triumphantly, "Heart!"

Now, imagine this kind of exaggeration in the next section.

"So, if it is your...uh...," He says, searching for the word, "Eye trips you up."

Imagine him pointing at his eye and adding a little stumble.

"Pluck it out! Toss it away!" Again, imagine him acting this out.

"Because it is altogether better to have your...uh," Again he searches for the word. "Member destroyed."

The Greek word "member" doesn't describe an eye, so there is a pause here as the audience figures out the member to which he is referring.

"Than have your whole body just tossed," he says, with the word "tossed" having a lot of double meanings, making it one of his favorites in these situations. "In the trash heap!"

Again, using the repeating pattern, Jesus does the last section. Again, just imagine a lot of exaggerated words and gestures.

"And if your, uh..." he says, starting a gesture downward with his hand, suddenly lifts it up and flexes it. "Right hand! Trips you up." It is easy to imagine him stumbling here as I have him do in my novelized version. This stumble seems to become part of the routine because when he builds on this line (see below), he adds "foot" to it.

Then he continues, "You should cut it out! Knock it off! And toss away! It is SOOO much better to have a, uh, 'member' destroyed than have your whole body dumped into that trash heap."

Now, try reading the "original" in any Bible you choose. Is it easier to image the grim man who made that speech drawing everyone from miles around or this entertainer? Which makes his point about looking at a woman as a sex object more persuasively, the "threatening" preacher or the moral humorist?

Developing Funnier Lines

The previous example of humor also enables us to see how Jesus developed his humorous lines over time. The previous example of the "trips you up" line was from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:30) but Jesus uses a more developed line later in Matthew 18:8, but he has added to it. The additions seem clearly intended to make it funnier and to fit better into his routine. 

In the later version, the line has "foot" added to it, which gives the "trips up" line and action a little more explanation, adding a connection between tripping and a bad foot. Adding foot is also funny because it doesn't fit as well  In this later version, the "eye" line follows the hand and foot line.

The line also has some word play added to its basic exaggeration. He adds a play on words, "good" versus "maimed" and "halt," which in Greek is kalos versus kullos and cholos. These allow him to add series of  five repetitious "ors." The repetition of "or" alternatives is a humorous technique we find in a other verses as well.

Christ and His Interactions with Others

How did Christ's contemporaries criticize him, as a stern moralizer or as a party animal? John was the stern moralizer

 and they called him crazy (Matthew 11:18 For John came neither eating nor drinking,). Christ took his message and made it something new, something amazingly entertaining. So what did they call him? A drunkard and party animal (Matthew 11:19 The Son of man came eating and drinking.)

And when Christ joked, people joked right back at him and he loved it! The most famous example is the discussion with the Canaanite woman where Christ refers to her people as "puppies." Of course, in most translations, this comes across as a cruel insult instead of a joke. But if it was an insult, why does the woman come back with what is clearly a joke about the puppies getting the crumbs (Matthew 15:27). Christ liked her joke so much he granted her wish instantly.

However, Jesus was not above the humorous insult. When the Pharisees warn Jesus that Herod wants him dead, Jesus sends word back to Herod referring to him as a "vixen" (Luke 13:32). This is lost in translation, which renders it as the more polite "fox." But the Greek word has both male and female forms, fox and vixen. Jesus chooses the female form, which is much less of a compliment than "fox," which simply means "crafty." 

Or look at the apostles. Admittedly, they are not portrayed as the brightest bulbs on the tree, but, again, that is because we don't see the humor inherent in so many situations. A lot of times, these people are having fun. They were criticized for enjoying themselves on a holy day, and Christ explains by asking, "Can the children of the bride chamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them (Matthew 9:15)?" So there was a sense of celebration in their group. This explains a lot of verses with which many people seem to struggle.

For example, when Christ says that people shouldn't divorce, Matthew 19:9, the apostles come back with the statement, "if that's the case, it's better not to marry!" This is clearly a joke. It is the same as, "Well, if I can't get divorced, I can't marry." It is especially funny because these apostles were all or almost all married men. During these times, hardly anyone got divorced, even though it was legal. The comment is typical married men complaining about marriage. It works in any era. Even today, with divorce so common, this joke still works. We might phrase it as, "I was about to get married, but then I found out what a divorce costs."

Christ's follow up to the apostles in this scene is just as light hearted. "Well, everyone can't welcome this lesson [about staying married], except those who actually get it."

Other Forms of Humor

There are many other forms of Christ's humor, but it would take a book to cover them all. However, some of them are even more common than the ones we've discussed. Among his other forms of humor are:

• Playing with double meanings. This is perhaps the most common form of humor. Any verse which seems particularly impossible in English translations is probably a play on words. For example, the word for "mountain" and "mule" are the same in Greek. So when Christ says that with enough faith, we can command a "mountain" to move, is he really taking about a mule?
• Playing with sound-alike words. Christ does this a lot as well. For example, the first-person pronoun "ego" is usually unnecessary in a sentence because it is part of the verb. It is used only to emphasize the role of the speaker. However, Christ most frequently uses "ego" with the verb that means "to say." Why? The phrase is "ego lego." I am always reminded of the commercial "let go my Eggo" when I run into it.
• Using complicated words for the sake of humor. Christ normally speaks very simply, especially in conversations with people. However, sometimes, especially when confronted by the scribes (the academics of the period) and Pharisees, he will start to use big, complicated words that he almost never uses otherwise because they are the kinds of words they use. It is his way of making fun of them. Whenever we see a verse with a lot of very uncommon Greek words, it is usually this type of situation. For example, see Matthew 7:23.
• Making up words. The Bible is written in koine, which is described as the "common" Greek, as opposed to educated Greek. However, a common feature of koine is the "coining" of new words. Putting the parts of other Greek words together to make new words. Christ does this, not to make deep philosophical points, but to be funny. For example, the word that gets translated as "thee of little faith" is a made up word where Christ makes the lack of faith into the form of a personal address. "Mr. Tiny Trust' is a close approximation in English. This seems to be humorous to me.
• In the parables, Christ usually uses a minimum of tricks to tell the story simply. However, it is easy to imagine him doing funny voices portraying the characters. He often tosses in a trick or two from the list above but nothing to distract from the story. However, often at the end he will add a subtle punch line. The "some a hundred fold, some sixty fold, some thirty fold" at the end of the Parables of the Sower is a good example. Why offer diminishing returns except to get a little laugh at the end? We only have to imagine the "hundred fold" being said dramatically and the "sixty" being said with a little disappointment, and the "thirty" being said with a shrug and a sigh.

Ancient Greek Humor

Finally, we should also note something of what we know about ancient Greek humor. Humor was a common feature of the Greek theater. Aristophanes made political jokes, imitating actual politicians. Greek humor, like all humor and that of Jesus, uses exaggeration and caricature to make its points. Symbolic characters, like those in the parables, were common. The caricature of the "common man," for example, was often an old man who is easily fooled. 

The Greek-speaking people of the ancient world told jokes, just like we do today.  They actually had  ‘joke-groups’ who met and traded jokes. One such group gathered regularly in the Athenian Temple of Heracles in the 4th century B.

Jesus often makes "actors" the foil of his humor. More commonly, the ancient Greek foil for jokes was the idiot (buffoon). One such joke goes: “An idiot, wanted to go to sleep but wanted a pillow. He asked his slave to give him an earthen jar for his head. The slave said that a jug was too hard. The idiot told him to fill it with feathers.” If we read some of the most severe statements made by Jesus regarding cutting off members, we hear these ancient echoes of jokes exactly like this. 

One of Jesus's favorite targets was the intellectual elites of his society, the Pharisees, their lawyers, and writers.  When we read his statements about them, we should keep in mind the ancient tradition of jokes about all of the "educated" classes, for example, jokes about doctors. There was an ancient Greek joke about someone who went to see a physician.  He complained, "I feel groggy for a half hour after I get up, and only then do I feel normal." The physician prescribed a simple solution,  “Get up half an hour later.”

As research continues, this article will be updated to reflect other common types of humor as they are encountered.