The Bible and the Comic Vision

Oft-read texts gain dimension and depth when read in new contexts. Whedbee offers just such an experience in his readings of segments from the Hebrew Bible in light of the comic vision. While many readers have noted what he calls "lineaments of the comic vision" (p.5) in a variety of materials from the Bible, sustained readings of extended texts as comic are rare. As Whedbee notes, for many readers and their interpretative contexts "the coupling of comedy and the Bible is a contradiction in terms" (p.1). By contrast, he suggests just such a coupling leads to interpretative riches. His study falls into two central parts: "The Genesis of Comedy" which involves a serial reading of Genesis as comedy; "Generating Comedy" which entails readings Exodus, Esther, Jonah, Job, and Song of Songs as a "drive to comic regeneration" His introduction traces four interrelated aspects of the comic vision; his conclusion pulls core themes into a comprehensive view relating the comic and the tragic. Four aspects or "lineaments" of comedy are focal: (1) A U-shaped plot ends in an upswing toward life, regeneration, and festive celebration. (2) Characters tend toward conventional types - "buffoons, clowns, fools, simpletons, rogues, and tricksters" (p. 7). (3)Various "linguistic and stylistic habits and strategies" (p. 8) come into play: punning, parody, hyperbole, redundancy, repetition; incongruity, irony, discrepancy, reversal, surprise. (4). Functionally, comedy plays between the conservative and subversive, calling all structures into question even as it transforms them into new creations. [Full Review]

The search for humor in the Bible is not an entirely new quest. Several scholars including the author of the monograph under review, have undertaken such work, but typically, their foci have been on brief pericopes believed to have comic import. Moreover, such studies usually have proceeded without defining what is meant by "humor" and how one might spot it in an ancient text, whose cultural and social matrices are so removed from our own. This work is distinctive. It sets out to establish research parameters by shifting the discussion of humor away from definitions and toward an anatomy of general characteristics: "I will not offer a definition or reductive formula; rather I want to draw out certain recurrent features of comedy, features which appear throughout the ages in classic comic works and thus tie disparate comic forms together in a kind of 'family of resemblance'" (p. 6). After grounding his conception of humor in contemporary literary criticism, Whedbee looks anew at biblical texts and sees in them a series of conditions that, when combined, demonstrate the presence of humor. These conditions include a context of central themes, textual or thematic incongruity, and an ironic central theme or U-shaped plot. "Thus whatever trials and threats the hero must endure, comedy usually ascends from any momentary darkness and concludes with celebration, joy, and at least the promise of new life" (p. 7). Whedbee's study further divides comedy into types e.g., tricksters, buffoons, rogues), linguistic and stylistic strategies (e.g., word play, parody, redundancy), and functions and intentions, by which he means both transformative (subversive) and restorative (conservative) aims. [Full Review]