Speaking of the pseudepigraphic Testament of Abraham (esp. recension A) and how its narrative humour has been overlooked (something that is common in other non-canonical and canonical texts), Jared Ludlow wrote:
For many scholars, the humor is bypassed because it is felt that humor is trivial and childish and thus not associated with such serious works as the Bible or other religious texts.[1] Another reason humor is often overlooked is that it is only one of many instruments used by ancient writers to present their messages, so it is seldom the case that a religious work is humorous from start to finish. But this fact does not deny the humorous parts, or their importance in the overall presentation of the story. Brenner states:
It is often insisted upon that there is an inherent contrast between the didactic intent attributed to biblical literature in most of its manifestations and the employment of humour. Such a claim does not make much sense. Educational motives do not necessarily exclude humour. On the contrary. It is almost a truism to restate that some species of humour—notably parody, satire, and irony—have served, from antiquity on, to illuminate intellectual, moral and social problems. To assume that biblical thought found humour too unsuitable a vehicle to enlist for ‘sacred’ purposes seems absurd, since laughter may be a good teacher. Admittedly, though instances of biblical humour in its various guises are neither numerous nor always transparent, which does not absolve the critic from identifying and analyzing them wherever they do appear.[2]
Humor can thus prod the reader into thinking about the issues being cleverly displayed in a comic fashion. Most likely these images will remain with the reader much longer than bland exhortations.
Notes for the Above
[1] ‘History has always been considered an exclusively serious territory, but there is the undiscovered comic side to history . . . that is the trouble with intelligent people: there is an espirit de serieux lingering around the premises’. Ethan Levine, ‘Qohelet’s Fool: A Composite Portrait’, in Yehuda T. Radday and Athalya Brenner (eds.), On Humour and the Comic in the Hebrew Bible (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1990), pp. 277-94 (282).
[2] Brenner, ‘”Come Back, Come Back the Shulammite” (Song of Songs 7.1-10): a Parody of the WASF Genre’, in Radday and Brenner (eds.), On Humor and the Comic in the Hebrew Bible, pp. 255-56 n. 4. Cf. ‘As long as other problems in the interpretation of the novel are affected by the reader’s reactions to the presence or absence of humour or wit, then such an examination will be both necessary and worthwhile’. From Graham Anderson, Eros Sophistes. Ancient Novelists at Play (American Classical Studies, 9; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982), p. 11.
Source: Jared W. Ludlow, Abraham Meets Death: Narrative Humor in the Testament of Abraham (Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series 41; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 42-43
