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The Humor of Jesus: Sources of Laughter in the Bible
The Humor of Sources of Laughter in the Bible [Paperback] [Apr 01, 2001] Palmer, Earl F. … 1573831808
- GenresHumorChristianity
128 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 3, 2026
I know. One star feels harsh, I get it. It isn't as though I don't like Earl Palmer. I've read him before and years ago I heard him preach. He was warm and affable and told good stories.
And it isn't I think this book isn't insightful. it is in places and I enjoyed reading how Palmer handles some stories and scriptures.
So why 1 measly little star? Well, some of it was that I was bored. Years ago I read a different study on this called The Humor of Christ by the Quaker author D. Elton Trueblood. It was dated and I don't think I have it anymore to compare to but I felt like the insights there, and the willingness to wrangle with Jesus's impolite humor (e.g. calling women dogs, and the Pharisees Tombs) was more substantive than this.
Also, this book is 20 years old but his examples of modern humorists and comedians were much older. he tells you of jokes Regan told, and Winston Churchill and FDR. I'm not sure, but I think his most contemporary example was Johnathan Winters. it makes this feel really dated precisely at the points Palmer is trying to be relevant.
But the real reason for 1 star, is that this book is sloppy. There are spelling and grammar errors. There are formatting errors. There are no footnotes despite a floating² buried in the text, making me think I was missing something. There were historical errors, factual errors, errors in biblical interpretation and the etymology of Hebrew words. Whatever the merits of this book were, it is mired by a lot of bad packaging and no proofreading.
I can't prove this, but Palmer's charm as a preacher was his extemporaneous style. He'd just get up and talk and somehow it would land where it was supposed to. I wonder if this book, other than the long unattributed quotations, was a transcript of a series of talks he gave on this topic?
And it isn't I think this book isn't insightful. it is in places and I enjoyed reading how Palmer handles some stories and scriptures.
So why 1 measly little star? Well, some of it was that I was bored. Years ago I read a different study on this called The Humor of Christ by the Quaker author D. Elton Trueblood. It was dated and I don't think I have it anymore to compare to but I felt like the insights there, and the willingness to wrangle with Jesus's impolite humor (e.g. calling women dogs, and the Pharisees Tombs) was more substantive than this.
Also, this book is 20 years old but his examples of modern humorists and comedians were much older. he tells you of jokes Regan told, and Winston Churchill and FDR. I'm not sure, but I think his most contemporary example was Johnathan Winters. it makes this feel really dated precisely at the points Palmer is trying to be relevant.
But the real reason for 1 star, is that this book is sloppy. There are spelling and grammar errors. There are formatting errors. There are no footnotes despite a floating² buried in the text, making me think I was missing something. There were historical errors, factual errors, errors in biblical interpretation and the etymology of Hebrew words. Whatever the merits of this book were, it is mired by a lot of bad packaging and no proofreading.
I can't prove this, but Palmer's charm as a preacher was his extemporaneous style. He'd just get up and talk and somehow it would land where it was supposed to. I wonder if this book, other than the long unattributed quotations, was a transcript of a series of talks he gave on this topic?
May 31, 2026
This is surely Mr. Palmer's rough manuscript, inexplicably published without editing, proofreading, or, as the kids say, fact checking.
One star for the quality of the work, one star for Mr. Palmer writing this in his 70s or so, having lived through WW2, Korea, Vietnam, and trying to raise our spirits about the humor of Christ on the cusp of the War on Terror.
He clearly was writing from memory, getting Jack Benny's classic sketch wrong, Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles wrong (multiple times over), and even quite a few Bible passages wrong (in content, not just interpretation, though he is pretty sloppy there, too). The Information Superhighway was only about 5 years old, and being in his 70s when it arrived, he probably was a bit intimidated by using it to look up things from his youth, or too tired to reach for a book or put in one of dozens of vhs tapes readily available featuring Jack Benny's sketches.
Punctuation occurs randomly. No explanation can exist for it other than a random punctuation generator. Prepositions, likewise, are selected haphazardly.
The content is jejune and mostly Mr. Palmer's wishful thinking about what is in the Bible. Sure, the basic premise that Jesus was funnier than most joyless Protestants want him to have been is correct, but you can get that from a lot of better written, better edited books. You can skip this one quite easily.
One star for the quality of the work, one star for Mr. Palmer writing this in his 70s or so, having lived through WW2, Korea, Vietnam, and trying to raise our spirits about the humor of Christ on the cusp of the War on Terror.
He clearly was writing from memory, getting Jack Benny's classic sketch wrong, Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles wrong (multiple times over), and even quite a few Bible passages wrong (in content, not just interpretation, though he is pretty sloppy there, too). The Information Superhighway was only about 5 years old, and being in his 70s when it arrived, he probably was a bit intimidated by using it to look up things from his youth, or too tired to reach for a book or put in one of dozens of vhs tapes readily available featuring Jack Benny's sketches.
Punctuation occurs randomly. No explanation can exist for it other than a random punctuation generator. Prepositions, likewise, are selected haphazardly.
The content is jejune and mostly Mr. Palmer's wishful thinking about what is in the Bible. Sure, the basic premise that Jesus was funnier than most joyless Protestants want him to have been is correct, but you can get that from a lot of better written, better edited books. You can skip this one quite easily.
November 27, 2016
As one of the eight books I purchased during Black Friday shopping this year in Estacada, I figured this book would be the source of humorous anecdotes as well as a look at the humor of the Bible that would help my own personal discussions as well as feed my own great interest in humor [1]. This book more than met those expectations, especially because it had an approach that took the Bible seriously, and in so doing saw the multiple layers of humor that exist in the Bible. Even more of interest to those of us who enjoy humor in our lives and in our writings, the author managed to contrast the biblical view of irony and humor with the views we see around us that are either gnostic or overly dark, and in so doing placed biblical humor in a particular context with certain boundaries about avoiding humor that serves to deride or ridicule others and also remember that in a genuine biblical irony (such as the kind of irony I often write about and experience) both the physical and spiritual layers are genuine. This view of humor itself is a great encouragement to the reader who may enjoy humor but may not think it to be something that is important to God, but rather an aspect of childish immaturity that remains with us long after we have begun to grow old and decrepit.
As a short book, this is not one that wastes the time of the reader. The author has a lot to say about humor in the Bible, particularly in the approach of Jesus Christ but also among the Apostles Paul and Peter and the psalmists and prophets of the Hebrew scriptures and even to the days of early human history in Genesis. At only 120 pages, this is a book that can be read profitably quickly, and also the sort of book that is particularly useful for those looking to share the comedy of the Bible with other brethren in conversation, public speaking, and writing. Despite the brevity of the book, though, the author includes quite a few humorous personal anecdotes as well as a discussion of those movies, comedians, and writers whom he views as being the most comical. The structure of the book itself is rather topical in nature: the author introduces the subject of humor, then discusses the many facets of humor, then discusses Jesus Christ specifically as a humorist, and then discusses the source of humor in the twin human fondness for the unexpected and repetition. After this the author discusses a staggering variety of types of humor, all of them with biblical examples, from the humor of the unexpected and the humor of repetition already mentioned to the humor of justice, misunderstanding, exaggeration, irony, healing humor, argument, salty humor, as well as love and joy. The end result is a book that serves as its own sort of healing humor for those readers who have been told that God is a serious being without any appreciation of wit or levity.
Nevertheless, although this book is very useful and very entertaining and also very enlightening, there are a few things that can be said against it. For one, the author has a mistaken view of the chronology of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, albeit one that is commonly held, and the continual repetition of the wrong days when Jesus Christ said or did something is a bit tiresome after a while. The second major flaw with this work is that the publisher involved (Regent College Publishing of Vancouver, British Columbia--the other Vancouver) really fell down on the job when it came to copyediting this book. The spelling errors in this book are numerous enough to be a bit distracting to the reader who is having to replace the right names for literary characters from Tolkien or the names of historical personages whose names are misspelled, as well as a few other stray typos. To be sure, these typos do not make the book a bad one, but this author clearly needs some help in copyediting and his publisher should have provided some resources for him in that fashion, and as a fluent writer myself, I certainly well understand how an author needs help from time to time making sure that the cleanliness of the text does not interfere with the joy of reading. This book, even with its flaws, is a joy to read, and one I will likely look at in the future when planning material to write or speak about.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2013...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2012...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...
As a short book, this is not one that wastes the time of the reader. The author has a lot to say about humor in the Bible, particularly in the approach of Jesus Christ but also among the Apostles Paul and Peter and the psalmists and prophets of the Hebrew scriptures and even to the days of early human history in Genesis. At only 120 pages, this is a book that can be read profitably quickly, and also the sort of book that is particularly useful for those looking to share the comedy of the Bible with other brethren in conversation, public speaking, and writing. Despite the brevity of the book, though, the author includes quite a few humorous personal anecdotes as well as a discussion of those movies, comedians, and writers whom he views as being the most comical. The structure of the book itself is rather topical in nature: the author introduces the subject of humor, then discusses the many facets of humor, then discusses Jesus Christ specifically as a humorist, and then discusses the source of humor in the twin human fondness for the unexpected and repetition. After this the author discusses a staggering variety of types of humor, all of them with biblical examples, from the humor of the unexpected and the humor of repetition already mentioned to the humor of justice, misunderstanding, exaggeration, irony, healing humor, argument, salty humor, as well as love and joy. The end result is a book that serves as its own sort of healing humor for those readers who have been told that God is a serious being without any appreciation of wit or levity.
Nevertheless, although this book is very useful and very entertaining and also very enlightening, there are a few things that can be said against it. For one, the author has a mistaken view of the chronology of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, albeit one that is commonly held, and the continual repetition of the wrong days when Jesus Christ said or did something is a bit tiresome after a while. The second major flaw with this work is that the publisher involved (Regent College Publishing of Vancouver, British Columbia--the other Vancouver) really fell down on the job when it came to copyediting this book. The spelling errors in this book are numerous enough to be a bit distracting to the reader who is having to replace the right names for literary characters from Tolkien or the names of historical personages whose names are misspelled, as well as a few other stray typos. To be sure, these typos do not make the book a bad one, but this author clearly needs some help in copyediting and his publisher should have provided some resources for him in that fashion, and as a fluent writer myself, I certainly well understand how an author needs help from time to time making sure that the cleanliness of the text does not interfere with the joy of reading. This book, even with its flaws, is a joy to read, and one I will likely look at in the future when planning material to write or speak about.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2013...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2012...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2011...
February 23, 2013
This is a quick, thought-provoking read on the nature and purposes of humor in the Bible and the Christian life. There's some lovely stuff in here, though I actually thought the most compelling moments came when Palmer was talking about something other than humor: he has some really touching discussions of forgiveness, faith, hope, love, and joy, and I think that's probably most of what I'll take away from this read. I appreciated a lot of his comments about humor, though I wish he'd included a more balanced discussion of "dark" humor (satire and so forth). I guess I found Palmer a little overly optimistic/naive for my taste -- then again, he'd probably find me excessively cynical.
I'd be tempted to give this four stars, but two things hold me back. First, most of Palmer's extra-biblical examples of humor and humorists came from media that I'm too young to have much exposure to. Second, this book desperately needed a proofreader. There are a fair number of irritatingly obvious mistakes (most seem not to be actual grammar mistakes, but simply typos). Still, for a book that can easily be read in under two hours, I found it pleasant and occasionally quite inspiring, and it made me eager to get to know God better. So, not bad at all!
I'd be tempted to give this four stars, but two things hold me back. First, most of Palmer's extra-biblical examples of humor and humorists came from media that I'm too young to have much exposure to. Second, this book desperately needed a proofreader. There are a fair number of irritatingly obvious mistakes (most seem not to be actual grammar mistakes, but simply typos). Still, for a book that can easily be read in under two hours, I found it pleasant and occasionally quite inspiring, and it made me eager to get to know God better. So, not bad at all!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews