Old Testament as Satire?

[Sajara]

I was reading the article about how Facebook was banning Atheism and it took me a bit to realize that it was from a satire website. That led me to question how people thousands of years into the future would be able to tell the difference between this satire article and real news if they didn't have the proper context of that website being a satirical website.

I continued my thought out the other way. How would we know if books from the past were actually meant to be satirical, especially something like the Old Testament. How would we know that the collection of stories were meant to be taken seriously and not written as satire/jokes? I mean, a lot in there is hard to handle if they aren't meant as satire/jokes. The whole listing of generations makes a lot more sense if it is meant as a joke .

 

[DrZoidberg]

Satire on the level of "By the way, before coming here I set your cat on fire. Just kidding"

 

[DLH]

As much as the Bible is misunderstood as misrepresented by religiosity, I honestly don't think that the opposite end of the spectrum - Satire would have been much worse.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I always thought the New Testament was a joke.
Scripture Night Live:
Okay, so what do we know about the Messiah?
He'll be named Immanuel.
Great, great, so in OUR skit, we'll call him....Jesus.
Why?
It's a pun.
Genius.

Okay, what else?
Well, he's a descendant of David, and heir to the throne.
But not through Jehoiakim. Prophecy says none of his heirs will ever sit on the throne.
Okay, great! We'll make our Immanuel (sic) a descendant of Jehoiakim!
Through his mother or his father?
BOTH! We'll put Jehoiakim in both lineages!
I dunno.... Do you think the audience will really get it?
Maybe not right away, but after they wait for Jesus to return for a hundred years or so, the penny'll drop.

 

[DLH]

I always thought the New Testament was a joke.
Scripture Night Live:
Okay, so what do we know about the Messiah?
He'll be named Immanuel.
Great, great, so in OUR skit, we'll call him....Jesus.
Why?
It's a pun.
Genius.

Okay, what else?
Well, he's a descendant of David, and heir to the throne.
But not through Jehoiakim. Prophecy says none of his heirs will ever sit on the throne.
Okay, great! We'll make our Immanuel (sic) a descendant of Jehoiakim!
Through his mother or his father?
BOTH! We'll put Jehoiakim in both lineages!
I dunno.... Do you think the audience will really get it?
Maybe not right away, but after they wait for Jesus to return for a hundred years or so, the penny'll drop.

Hello, Keith,

Immanuel, in the case of Jesus, is a title name. To the ancients, names had meaning. In Hebrew Immanuel means With Us Is God. Other title names were applied to Jesus prophetically, such as Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince Of Peace. (Matthew 1:23 / Isaiah 9:6)

You might want to be more specific when you are talking about prophecies. The prophecy of Jehoiakim says that he will have no one sit on the throne of David. (Jeremiah 36:30) In other words the throne in Jerusalem. None did, including Jesus.

 

[Keith&Co.]

tough room.

 

[fta]

Some theologians have argued that the apparent nihilism of the book of Ecclesiastes ("All is vanity ... The dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward") means that it must be a "parody", and the author is assuming the identity of an unbeliever in order to satirise his beliefs.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Nah. Humor is death to religion.

 

[arcadia]

...and religion is often death to those who see the humor.

...and to those who have a different sense of humor.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

It would be highly unlikely for all of the texts to be satire. At least one of them could be, though.

 

[credoconsolans]

I always thought the New Testament was a joke.
Scripture Night Live:
Okay, so what do we know about the Messiah?
He'll be named Immanuel.
Great, great, so in OUR skit, we'll call him....Jesus.
Why?
It's a pun.
Genius.

Okay, what else?
Well, he's a descendant of David, and heir to the throne.
But not through Jehoiakim. Prophecy says none of his heirs will ever sit on the throne.
Okay, great! We'll make our Immanuel (sic) a descendant of Jehoiakim!
Through his mother or his father?
BOTH! We'll put Jehoiakim in both lineages!
I dunno.... Do you think the audience will really get it?
Maybe not right away, but after they wait for Jesus to return for a hundred years or so, the penny'll drop.

Hello, Keith,

Immanuel, in the case of Jesus, is a title name. To the ancients, names had meaning. In Hebrew Immanuel means With Us Is God. Other title names were applied to Jesus prophetically, such as Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince Of Peace.

(Matthew 1:23 / Isaiah 9:6)

You might want to be more specific when you are talking about prophecies. The prophecy of Jehoiakim says that he will have no one sit on the throne of David. (Jeremiah 36:30) In other words the throne in Jerusalem. None did, including Jesus.

So? Names mean something now, too. Roan means "little seal". Arthur means "bear".

So what if Immanuel meant something?

It's also a name.

Just like Yeshua is a name, but it also means "salvation". Are you now going to claim Yeshua is also a title?

 

[DrJim]

Many scholars think that Jonah was written as a satire on traditions of prophets. Jonah doesn't want to profess and is the only prophet of the bunch that actually gets people to repent. Too bad its the Assyrians in Nineveh and not the Israelites he was preaching to.

 

[Malintent]

I have posed that to fundies long ago... That those books were a tragic comedy about the ills of power.. the sarcasm lost over the ages... Just dismissed off hand and some references to all the witnesses that counted as evidence (the contents of this sentence is true).

 

[ideologyhunter]

I like the conjecture but so far I fall on the side of 'No, it can't be satirical.'
1. The ancients were retards.
2. The Golden Age of Satire didn't commence until the 1600s, in France -- am I wrong?
3. As stated by someone else, humor is the mortal enemy of sanctimonious religion.
Imagine if it was satire -- and all the death penalties were meant to be jests -- only to be carried out later by humorless church authorities. That would be dark humor by definition.

 

[Malintent]

I like the conjecture but so far I fall on the side of 'No, it can't be satirical.'
1. The ancients were retards.

Ignorant people, to our standards, but not incapable of 'jest' by any means. WHAT they thought was funny might very well be totally differnet than what counts as humor to our current standards. Disembowelment may have been great 'stand-up'. The weekly hanging in the courtyard was a fun family event.

2. The Golden Age of Satire didn't commence until the 1600s, in France -- am I wrong?

That's Shakespeare's time. He was a genius of satire, pun, and spoof... but he sure didn't event laughter.

3. As stated by someone else, humor is the mortal enemy of sanctimonious religion.
Imagine if it was satire -- and all the death penalties were meant to be jests -- only to be carried out later by humorless church authorities. That would be dark humor by definition.

your putting the cart before the horse... of course humor is the enemy of sanctimony... totally. that makes "The Comedy of the New Testament" even more genius as a work of satirical art. "Alice in Wonderland" (or, "Through the Looking Glass"), said the Queen, "OFF WITH HIS HEAD!!!". It's still funny, given the right context and delivery of the line.

 

[James Chapman]

I like the conjecture but so far I fall on the side of 'No, it can't be satirical.'

2. The Golden Age of Satire didn't commence until the 1600s, in France -- am I wrong?

Not to defend the conjecture--which is certainly far-fetched--but satire has a far older pedigree than you allow. Aristophanes, the greatest satirical playwright of classical Greece, lived in the 5th century BCE.