Biblical Humor and Performance

Audience Experiences That Make Meaning

Edited by Peter S. Perry

Cascade, 2023

What's so humorous about the Bible? Quite a bit, especially if experienced with others! Nine biblical scholars explore their experiences of reading and hearing passages from the Bible and discovering humor that becomes clearer in performance. Each writer found clues in their chosen biblical text that suggested biblical authors expected an audience to respond with laughter. Performers have a powerful role in either bringing out or tamping down humor in the Bible. One audience may be more disposed to respond to humor than another. And each contributor found that experiencing humor changed the interpretation of the biblical passage. From Genesis to Revelation, this study uncovers the Bible's potential for humor.

Shifting Gears or Splitting Hairs?

Performance Criticism’s Object of Study

by Zechariah P. Eberhart

Religions 2023, 14(9), 1110

This article is but one voice in the midst of a much broader conversation, attending to whether the differences between narrative and performance criticism are a matter of degree or kind. Narrative and biblical performance criticisms are natural bedfellows. The two appear genealogically related as they share similar founders, attend to similar features, and to a degree share similar interests with regard to interpretation. In fact, their interests appear to be so closely aligned at several points that attempts to distinguish between these two approaches run the risk of simply “splitting hairs”. Yet, our recognition of these distinctions is essential for highlighting the unique contribution of each approach. In what follows, I suggest that the differences between performance and narrative criticisms are rather (at least theoretically) a “shifting of gears”, a progression toward a more complex understanding of how biblical texts work in various contexts and how we as scholars may approach them as objects of study. While the object of study in narrative criticism is relatively well established (again, at least theoretically), this is not necessarily the case for performance criticism. In short, by way of contrast, I will suggest that for performance criticism, its object is similar to yet distinct from the object of study of narrative criticism. Such a claim is by no means groundbreaking, especially among the performance critics, nor should it necessarily be viewed as controversial. Rather, in exploring the contours of each approach, this contribution aims to provide additional theoretical credence to certain areas within this conversation. In doing so, this inadvertently has implications not only for our thinking in this particular volume, but also perhaps more broadly for biblical studies.

Read the full article here

Questioning the Questions around Jesus’s Authority in Mark 11:27–33

A Performance Perspective

by Michael R. Whitenton

Religions 14.8 (2023)

The rise of performance criticism prompts questions about its relationship to other disciplines, most notably narrative criticism. While narrative critics traditionally focus solely on the textual elements within their cultural context, performance critics adopt a broader understanding of the term “text”, encompassing not only the cultural context but also performative aspects, such as the setting for public reading, the involvement of a skilled performer, and dynamics introduced by a diverse performance audience. This article demonstrates the distinctiveness of a performance-critical approach through a reappraisal of Mark 11:27–33, showing how such an approach yields different interpretive results when compared to traditional narrative criticism. More specifically, whereas traditional narrative readings generally conclude that Jesus is merely evading his interlocutors, I argue that a performance-critical approach suggests that many ancient listeners would have concluded that the lector-as-Jesus was insinuating, for those with ears to hear, that Jesus’s authority derives from God and was granted at his baptism.

Read the full article here

New Testament as Oral Performance

Lecture and Performances by David Rhoads

Presented at Moravian Seminary in 2016

Before they were set down in writing, the gospels and epistles of the New Testament were transmitted orally to transform and empower early Christian communities. In many parts of the world, the Bible is still heard and spoken much more than it is read. As scholars are increasingly aware, the orality of biblical traditions deeply conditioned the ways in which they were originally composed, presented, and understood; and a full and accurate understanding of the Bible requires an awareness of its “performative” character. These lectures will highlight the oral dimension of the gospel message, illustrating it with performances of portions of Mark and of Paul’s letter to Philemon.

Lecture 1: The Gospels as Oral Performances In the predominantly oral cultures of antiquity, the Gospels were first experienced as storytelling events designing to transform and empower communities. The lecture will illustrate this with a performance of the first part of the Gospel of Mark.

Lecture 2: Letters as Oral Performances The original recipients of New Testament epistles experienced them as oral presentations. What difference does it make to experience a letter as a performance? The lecture will include a demonstration of Paul’s letter to Philemon.

Clck to watch the video:

The New Testament as Oral Performance from Moravian Seminary on Vimeo.