About

There are a lot of ways to read the Bible. This one comes with jokes.

Our approach is simple: Read the Bible. Crack a smile. Think a while. Every entry gives you the verse, a joke about it, and — if you click the little arrow — a discussion question for further reflection in light of the joke.

We take the Bible seriously. We just don't believe reverence and a sense of humor are mutually exclusive. The jokes here, for the most part, do real interpretive work. They emerge from a careful analysis of the text: the tension, the gap, the odd detail you only notice when you're paying close attention. In that sense, the joke is the interpretation. The comedy is the commentary.

That doesn't mean we play it safe. Some of the quips are provocative, dark, or bawdy — there's satire and sarcasm and we won't pretend otherwise. But they're never cheap shots. It's a comfortable kind of edginess: the way you rib an old friend, the teasing you only risk with something you genuinely love and respect.

And if the Bible is your Scripture, then some of the humor here is self-deprecating. We are laughing at ourselves. To poke fun at what you hold most sacred isn't irreverence. It's the sign of a mature faith, rooted deeply enough to risk seeing ourselves as others see us — and the grace to chuckle at what we find.

We're also not the ones who started it. The Bible is funnier and edgier than it gets credit for. Whole books like Jonah and Esther are built on satire and irony. Numerous stories, like Balaam and his talking donkey, are surely meant to be entertaining. Jesus was sometimes sarcastic and taught in cartoonish images, like the man trying to remove a speck from his neighbor's eye with a pole sticking out of his own. And as for dark and bawdy, check out Genesis 38, Judges 19, Ezekiel 16 and 23, Nahum 3, Psalm 137, Song of Solomon 5, and Revelation 69.

Even the theology runs on the raw materials of comedy: God is three and one, Jesus is fully God and fully human, people are totally free and God is totally in control. Humor lives in paradox and incongruity — and so, it turns out, does the faith. So when we read the Bible with a grin, we aren't breaking the rules. We're following them.

Whether you're a devout believer, a curious skeptic, a backslider who wandered off in the middle of Leviticus, or a heathen who's never opened the Bible in your life, you're welcome here. Come for the jokes. Stay for the Scripture. Leave with something to think about.