Hebrew Humor and Other Essays

BY J. CHOTZNER, Ph.D. LATE HEBREW TUTOR AT HARROW
LONDON LUZAC & CO., 46 GREAT RUSSELL STREET (PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO) 1905
OXFORD : HORACE HART PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
TO MY WIFE
The present volume contains a collection of essays, the majority of which were read as papers before various literary societies, such as the International Congress of Orientalists, the Biblical Archaeological Society, and the Jews' College Literary Association. Several of them have already appeared in various periodicals, such as the Imperial Asiatic Review , the Jewish Quarterly Review , and the Jewish Chronicle , and are now reproduced, with some slight modification, by the courtesy of the editors. Translations of some of the essays have also been published in Hebrew, French, and German periodicals.
The essays, it may be remarked, deal somewhat extensively with the humour and satire that is not infrequently to be found in the works both of ancient and modern Hebrew writers; and, as this subject has hitherto attracted but little attention, I am not without hope that these pages may be of interest to the general reader.
J. C.
London, June , 1905.
The Hebrew Bible rightly deserves to be termed the Book of Books in the world of letters: it is distinguished from other literary productions by the richness of its sentences, its charm of style and diction, its pathos, and also by the flashes of genuine humour, which here and there illuminate its pages. Naturally its humour differs materially from the broad, rich humour of Sterne, Cervantes, Voltaire or Heine, but it has a stamp of its own, which is in some respects akin to that found in certain passages of the ancient classics. One or two examples will serve.
In the first book of the Iliad , Homer describes a scene on Mount Olympus, in which the Greek gods and goddesses are represented as seated at a banquet, and waited upon by the lame Hephaestus. Observing his halting gait, they burst into peals of laughter. Comparable, perhaps, with this is the description of the well-known scene on Mount Carmel, when Elijah, the true prophet of God, gathered round him the false prophets of Baal. After they had leapt on the altar from morning unto even, crying incessantly, “Oh, Baal, hear us,” Elijah stepped forth, and exclaimed mockingly, “Cry ye louder, for he is a god; perhaps he talketh or walketh, or is on a journey; or peradventure he sleepeth and must be awaked” (1 Kings xviii. 27). The Aristophanic punning on proper names is paralleled not infrequently in the Bible. Thus, for example, the Hebrew word Nabal (1 Sam. xxv. 3), which means “rogue,” is well applied as the proper name of a man, who was noted for the baseness of his character. Characteristic, too, is the name of one of Job's fair daughters, Keren-happuch (Job xlii. 14), which literally means “a horn (or box) of cosmetics,” suggesting the means by which the owner of that name may occasionally have embellished her charms. To the same class belongs the term Tsara (צרה), which has the double designation of “a rival wife,” living in a country where polygamy is in vogue, and also of “misery.” The humour hidden in these three words is certainly not brought into prominence in the authorized English version, where they are respectively translated by “folly,” “Keren-happuch,” and “adversary.” From these examples it will be seen that an acquaintance with the idiom of the Hebrew tongue is essential to the thorough understanding of the Bible, and as Biblical critics have hitherto paid but little attention to this particular subject, the remarks to be offered on it in the present essay may, perhaps, be of some interest.