Jesus likely used humor in his teachings to engage with crowds and draw more people in. However, much of the humor from his time does not translate well due to issues with translation, oral transmission of stories, and lack of understanding tone and delivery. The New Testament shows evidence that Jesus used puns, humorous anecdotes, irony, hyperbole, and humorous parables. Whether all of these instances were meant as humor is still debated.

2. THE LINEUP
•HOW DO WE KNOW JESUS WAS FUNNY?
•WHY DON’T WE GET THE JOKE?
•WHAT KINDS OF HUMOR DO WE SEE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT?
•FUNNY OR NOT FUNNY?

3. HOW DO WE KNOW JESUS WAS FUNNY?

4. JESUS WAS AN
ITINERANT
PREACHER
Jesus would journey to a town, teach for a
while, and then move on.
He would have needed to speak in ways
that were easily understood and retained
by common people.

5. HE DREW LARGE
CROWDS
MATTHEW 8:1, “ When Jesus had come down
from the mountain, great crowds followed him…”
MARK 3:7, “… a great multitude from Galilee
followed him…”
MARK 5:24, “… a large crowd followed him and
pressed in on him.”
LUKE 5:1, “…the crowd was pressing in on him
to hear the word of God…”
JOHN 6:2, “a large crowd kept following him,
because they saw the signs that he was doing for
the sick.”

6. HE WAS CRITICIZED FOR IT
MATTHEW 11:18, “For John (the Baptist) came neither eating
nor drinking, and they say, „He has a demon‟; the Son of Man
came eating and drinking, and they say, „Look, a glutton and
a drunkard..!‟”
(Also recounted in Luke 7:33-34)

7. HUMAN BEINGS HAVE MORE THAN ONE DIMENSION

8. WHY DON’T WE GET THE JOKE?

9. TRANSLATION ISSUES: Some of Jesus’ humor as
recorded in the Gospels is reflected in plays on words that do
not transition from the original Aramaic into “the recipient
language”
TRANSMISSION ISSUES: Most scholars agree the
Gospels were first communicated orally and were not written
down until at least one generation after Jesus’ earthly
ministry.

10. UNKNOWN DELIVERY
THE MOST COMMON TYPE OF HUMOR EVIDENCED IN THE
GOSPELS IS IRONY WHICH IS DIFFICULT TO DISCERN IN THE
WRITTEN WORD
• 60% - 90% OF COMMUNICATION IS NON-VERBAL
• VOCAL ELEMENTS: TONE, INFLECTION, RATE, PITCH, VOLUME, RHYTHM,
INTONATION, STRESS, ETC.
• NON-VERBAL ELEMENTS: FACIAL EXPRESSION, BODY POSTURE, HAND
GESTURES, PHYSICAL DISTANCE, TOUCH, AND SO ON

11. FAMILIARITY BLINDNESS
EXTREME FAMILIARITY PREVENTS US
FROM TRULY SEEING SOMETHING
CLEARLY

12. SO MUCH OF OUR FOCUS IS THE PASSION
AND CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST

13. “
”
A misguided piety has made us fear that
acceptance of His obvious wit and humor would
somehow be mildly blasphemous or sacrilegious.
Religion, we think, is serious business, and
serious business is incompatible with banter.
ELTON TRUEBLOOD: THE HUMOR OF CHRIST

14. BUT WE ALSO FOCUS ON THE
RESURRECTION OF CHRIST

15. WHAT KINDS OF HUMOR DO WE SEE IN THE NEW
TESTAMENT?

16. PUNS OR WORD-PLAY
NOUN
A JOKE EXPLOITING THE DIFFERENT POSSIBLE
MEANINGS OF A WORD OR THE FACT THAT
THERE ARE WORDS THAT SOUND ALIKE BUT
HAVE DIFFERENT MEANINGS.

17. MATTHEW 23:24, “You strain
out a gnat (qalma) but swallow
a camel (gamla)!”

18. MATTHEW 16:18, “And I tell you, you are Peter (Petros), and on this rock (petra) I will
build my church...”
MARK 4:26, “And he said, „The kingdom of God is as if a man (adam) should scatter
(zara) seed (zera) on the ground (adama).‟”
MATTHEW 15:35-37, “Then ordering the crowd to sit (yashav) down on the ground
(esev), he took the seven (sheva) loaves and the fish; and after giving thanks he broke
(shavar) them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the
crowds. And all of them ate and were filled (seva); and they took up the broken pieces
left over, seven (sheva) baskets full.”
JOHN 3:8, “The wind (Greek, pneuma; Aramaic, ruha) blows where it chooses, and you
hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is
with everyone who is born of the Spirit (Greek, pneuma; Aramaic, ruha).”

19. HUMOROUS ANECDOTES
STORIES RETAINED IN THE GOSPELS THAT
HAVE A HUMOROUS TWIST

20. MARK 15:17, “And he cautioned
them, saying, „Watch out—beware of
the yeast of the Pharisees and the
yeast of Herod.‟ They said to one
another, „It is because we have no
bread.‟ And becoming aware of it,
Jesus said to them, „Why are you
talking about having no bread?‟”

21. JOHN 1:35-37, “Philip found Nathanael and said to him, „We have found him about whom
Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.‟
Nathanael said to him, „Can anything good come out of Nazareth?‟… When Jesus saw
Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, „Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no
deceit!‟”
MARK 7:18, “Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from the outside cannot defile,
since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?”

22. IRONY
NOUN
THE EXPRESSION OF ONE’S MEANING BY
USING LANGUAGE THAT NORMALLY SIGNIFIES
THE OPPOSITE, TYPICALLY TO HUMOROUS OR
EMPHATIC EFFECT.

23. MATTHEW 16:18, “And I tell
you, you are Peter, and on this
rock I will build my church...”

24. MATTHEW 7:16, “Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?”
MATTHEW 24:28, (referring to false prophets) “Wherever the corpse is, there the
vultures will gather.”
MATTHEW 23:2-3, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses‟ seat; therefore, do
whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not
practice what they teach.”

25. HUMOROUS PARABLES
EDIFYING STORIES JESUS TELLS THAT
HAVE A HUMOROUS TWIST

26. LUKE 18:2-5, “In a certain city
there was a judge who neither
feared God nor had respect for
people. In that city there was a
widow who kept coming to him
and saying, „Grant me justice
against my opponent.‟ For a
while he refused; but later he
said to himself… „Because this
widow keeps bothering me, I
will grant her justice, so that
she may not wear me out by
continually coming.‟”

27. HYPERBOLE
The use of exaggeration as a
rhetorical device or figure of
speech for the purpose of
creating a strong impression.

28. LUKE 14:26, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and
children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”
MATTHEW 5:29-30, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away;
it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown
into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is
better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.”

29. FUNNY OR NOT FUNNY?

30. LUKE 5:37-39, “And no one
puts new wine into old
wineskins; otherwise the
new wine will burst the
skins and will be spilled, and
the skins will be destroyed.
But new wine must be put
into fresh wineskins. And no
one after drinking old wine
desires new wine, but says,
‘The old is good.‟”

31. LUKE 16:16-17, “The law
and the prophets were in
effect until John came; since
then the good news of the
kingdom of God is
proclaimed, and everyone
tries to enter it by force. But
it is easier for heaven and
earth to pass away, than for
one stroke of a letter in the
law to be dropped.”

32. MATTHEW 25:14-30, A master, before
leaving his home to travel, entrusted his
property to his servants. One servant
received five talents, the second two
talents, and the third one talent, according
to their respective abilities. Returning after
a long absence, the master asked his
servants for an accounting. The first two
servants explain that they have each put
their money to work and doubled the value
of the property they were entrusted with,
and so they are each rewarded. The third
servant, however, has merely hidden his
talent in a hole in the ground, and is
punished.

33. Mark 7:24-30, “He entered a house and
did not want anyone to know he was
there. Yet he could not escape notice, but
a woman whose little daughter had an
unclean spirit immediately heard about
him, and she came and bowed down at
his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of
Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to
cast the demon our of her daughter. He
said to her, „Let the children be fed first,
for it is not fair to take the children‟s food
and throw it to the dogs.‟ But she
answered him, „Sir, even the dogs under
the table eat the children‟s crumbs.‟ Then
he said to her, „For saying that, you may
go—the demon has left your daughter.‟”

35. RESOURCES
(1964) New York: Harper
Collins Publishers
(1991) pp. 397-400. New York:
Oxford University Press