Table Of ContentLAUGHING GODS, WEEPING
VIRGINS
Laughter in the History of Religion
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LAUGHING GODS,
WEEPING VIRGINS
Laughter in the History of Religion
Ingvild Sælid Gilhus
London and New York
First published 1997
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004.
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
© 1997 Ingvild Sælid Gilhus
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Gilhus, Ingvild Sælid
Laughing gods, weeping virgins: Laughter in the History of
Religion/Ingvild Sælid Gilhus.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Laughter—Religious aspects—Comparative studies. I. Title.
BL65.L3G55 1997
291.2–dc21 96–53412
ISBN 0-203-41160-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-71984-0 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-16197-5 (Print Edition)
CONTENTS
A cknowledgements v ii
I NTRODUCTION 1
L aughter, the body and two fields of meaning 2
T heories of laughter 5
H istory of religions 7
T hree cultural contexts of religious laughter 9
1 T HE ANCIENT NEAR EAST: LAUGHTER OF
DERISION AND LAUGHTER OF REGENERATION 15
L aughter and trickery 1 5
C reation, change and control 1 9
G ods and human beings 2 3
J ahweh and the battle against erotic laughter 2 4
D ivine laughter: its channels and consequences 2 8
2 G REECE: WHEN LAUGHTER TOUCHES THE
UNTHOUGHT 30
C unning gods/immortal gods 3 1
L aughing women 3 5
B etween comedy and tragedy 4 0
C haotic laughter 4 4
3 R OME: CRITIC OF LAUGHTER AND CRITICAL
LAUGHTER 46
‘ All this business of laughter-raising is trivial’ 4 7
C ritical laughter 4 9
O n tour with the gods 5 2
A nimals and mysteries 5 5
vi LAUGHING GODS, WEEPING VIRGINS
T he divine man and the mocking of Christianity 5 9
F arewell to laughter 6 2
4 E ARLY CHRISTIANITY: LAUGHTER BETWEEN
BODY AND SPIRIT 64
C hurch Fathers and Desert Fathers 6 5
W eeping virgins 7 0
D id anyone laugh? 7 2
T he ludicrous Jahweh and the laughing Christ 7 4
G nostic mythology 7 8
S piritual laughter 8 1
5 M EDIEVAL CHRISTIANITY: CARNIVAL, CORPUS
CHRISTI AND BODILY LAUGHTER 83
T he Feast of Fools 8 5
D eforming the Lord’s Supper and elevating the ass 8 9
C arnival in religion 9 2
C orpus Christi 9 4
E mbodied laughter 10 2
F rom body to mind 10 6
6 M ODERNITY AND THE REMYTHOLOGIZATION
OF LAUGHTER: CHURCHLY BOREDOM AND
THERAPEUTIC LAUGHTER 109
B akhtin and utopian laughter 11 0
P ostmodern mythology 11 4
C hrist as clown 11 6
T he laughing Christian 12 0
J okes of criticism and doubt 12 5
R olling in the aisles 12 7
7 R ELIGION OF JOKES: FLIRTATION WITH THE EAST13 1
B uddhism comes laughing 13 1
T he joking guru 13 5
A key symbol 13 8
A bsolute self/relative world 14 2
C ONCLUSION 14 5
N otes 15 0
B ibliography 16 3
I ndex 18 2
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Though the idea was conceived earlier, the actual work on this
book started four years ago during a sabbatical year in Oxford. I
am grateful to the University of Bergen and the Norwegian
Research Council for giving me the grant that made this stay
possible.
While working on the book I received valuable help from sev-
eral of my colleagues. I owe special thanks to Lisbeth Mikaelsson
for fruitful discussions and her comments on the manuscript dur-
ing these years. I would like to thank Richard H.Pierce, Anne
Stensvold, Einar Thomassen, Anne Wik and Knut Aksel Jacobsen
for careful reading and helpful comments on various parts of the
manuscript. I extend my thanks to the librarians at the Ash-
molean Library in Oxford and the University Library in Bergen
who provided me with the books I needed. I also owe my grati-
tude to Lauren Bryant who helped me with the editing of the
manuscript and to Judith Cabot for improving its language. Part
of chapter 5 includes in revised form material published in
Numen, 37, 1, 1990. I am grateful to the editors for permission
to use it here.
Finally my sincere thanks are due to my husband Nils Erik
Gilhus, for his firm support, and to our children, Alette, Mar-
grete, Kristoffer, Kaare and Ingjerd who accompanied their par-
ents on their sabbatical.
Ingvild Sælid Gilhus
September 1996
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INTRODUCTION
Religion and laughter are different kinds of human phenomena:
one involves an upturned vision, the other a bodily reaction. Reli-
gion seriously addresses questions of ultimate concern; laughter is
mostly unserious. In other words, religion and laughter should
not go well together. But they do; there is scarcely a religion that
does not include laughter in one form or another, be it in myths,
rituals or theological treatises. In many religions, laughing gods,
tricksters, holy fools, carnivals, comedies and clowning are stock
in trade. The ludicrous makes a travesty of the sacred; when, for
a short while, laughter sweeps away the holy cosmos, the divine
order is exposed as an arbitrary construct.
This book is an analysis of how laughter has been used as a
symbol in myths, rituals and festivals of Western religions and
has thus been inscribed in religious discourse. It is not a book
about the liberating effect of religious laughter, the joys of heaven
or religious humour in general. Because my aim is to investigate a
sign, not a sound, my subject is never the passing laughter of the
individual, but rather, the laughter forever caught in culture and
preserved; my focus is on what is written about laughter in the
context of religion.
Because of its lack of decorum and its threat to orderliness,
laughter has again and again been subjected to critical discourse
and systematization. It has been a subject of scientific inquiry at
least since the time of Plato. Greek philosophers restricted it.
Christian theologians condemned it: the monks and virgins of the
early Church in particular had to maintain a serious countenance.
The Buddhists gave careful recommendations for how Buddhas,
monks and other would-be holy men should laugh. But just as
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