The Hebrews show up much better.
In recent years Renan and Carlyle both declared the Jewish race possessed no sense of humor, but their opinions probably reflected their own viewpoint.
For the early examples of Hebrew Satire and Parody are distinctly humorous both in intent and in effect.
Parody is, of course, the direct outcome of the primeval passion for mimicry. The first laugh-provoker was no doubt an exaggerated imitation of some defect or peculiarity of another. And the development of the art of amusement took centuries to get past that preliminary thought.
The tendency to imitation was the impetus that turned the religious hymns into ribaldry and wine-songs, and the religious or funeral festivals into orgies of grotesque masquerading.
And Hebrew literature is renowned for its parodies of serious matters both of church and state.
With this race, satire sprang from parody and grew and thrived rapidly.
To quote from the learned Professor Chotzner:
“Since the birth of Hebrew literature, many centuries ago, satire has been one of its many characteristics. It is directed against the foibles and follies of the miser, the hypocrite, the profligate, the snob. The dull sermonizer, who puts his congregation to sleep, fares badly, and even the pretty wickednesses of the fair sex do not escape the hawk-eye of the Hebrew satirist. The luxury and extravagance of the ‘Daughters of Zion’ were attacked by no less a person than Isaiah himself; but human nature, especially that of a feminine kind, was too strong even for so eminent a prophet as he was, and there is no reason to suppose that the lady of those days wore one trinket the less in deference to his invective.
“There are, in fact, several incidents mentioned here and there in the pages of the Bible, which are decidedly of a satirical nature. Most prominent among them are the two that refer respectively to Bileam, who was sermonized by his ass, and to Haman who, as the Prime Minister of Persia, had to do homage publicly to Mordecai, the very man whom he greatly hated and despised. Nay, we are told, that, by the irony of fate, Haman himself ended his life on the exceptionally huge gallows which, while in a humorous turn of mind, he had ordered to be erected for the purpose of having executed thereon the object of his intense hatred.