“Christ Was Crucified, And You Laugh?” Reconsidering the Laughter of Early Christians

A common scholarly narrative in the history of Christianity proposes that, overall, early Christians did not laugh, or at least they attempted not to laugh (Gilhus 1997; Halliwell). Many sources from this broad and diverse corpus support such a claim: Clement suggests that his community should excise people who stir up laughter (Paedagogus 2.5.45.2); Gregory of Nazianzus finds laughter itself worthy of derision (Orat. 11.5); and John Chrysostom famously rails against laughter as an inappropriate behavior for followers of Jesus, reminding them that Christ was crucified “and you laugh?” (Homilies on Ephesians 17). While scholars compile this compelling mountain of evidence, they regularly note a few exceptions to this trend: Prudentius portrays the martyr Lawrence repeatedly deriding and laughing at the Roman prefect who investigates and executes him (Peristephanon 2; Conybeare); Abba Pambo, known from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum), mocks a pair of demons who harass him (Pambo 13); and Chrysostom claims that his own audience laughed at his homilies (Homilies on Hebrews 15.8). Many exceptions come together, as scholars tell and retell this narrative, under the umbrella of Gnosticism or some similar category by a different name: Jesus laughs at John’s ignorance in relation to his own esoteric knowledge in the Secret Book of John (13:18–20); a codex from Nag Hammadi attests two versions of a story where Eve laughs as enemies sexually assault a shadow of her form rather than her person (Gilhus 2011, 128–29); and Irenaeus charges Basilides with perpetuating a claim that Jesus laughed as another man was crucified in his stead (Against Heresies 1.24.4), a trope evident in The Apocalypse of Peter (81–3) and the Second Treatise of Great Seth (56). Still other exceptions rarely appear in these conceits: Clement explains that certain laughs reveal orderliness (Paed. 2.5.46.1) and uses laughter to police proper behavior (2.5.45.1) following a longstanding Roman practice; Gregory’s claim discussed above similarly relies on laughter as a policing tool to be turned against itself (Orat. 11.5); and although he often claims that Jesus never laughed, Chrysostom relishes a story of Jesus mocking the Pharisees (Homilies on Matthew 19.2). To treat this amount of evidence as exceptional or separable from an antigelastic consensus held by most early Christians seems misguided.

I suggest that the scholarly narrative told of laughter in early Christianity simplifies the diversity found between sources and within individual ones to represent a proto-orthodox antigelasticism defined in opposition to Jewishness/Judaizing on one end (Boyarin) and to Gnosticism on the other (King). It prioritizes specific claims made by primary sources that fit into an overdetermined view of an “orthodox” early Christianity as opposed to diverse forms of Christianity interacting with one another and with non-Christian communities. Primary sources that run counter to the “orthodox” view appear only as exceptions to orthodoxy. So, instead of representing the diversity of views skimmed above, this scholarly narrative claims simply that Christians didn’t laugh. Sometimes this antigelasticism evidences an ethical development (Halliwell) and others an authoritarian tendency (Hayes), but it always serves to differentiate Christians from their neighbors (understood primarily as Jews and “pagans”).

In this paper, I argue (following King and Boyarin) that this narrative takes heresiological arguments about laughter from early Christians as statements of a pre-existing orthodoxy rather than as attempts to define Christians in distinction to their neighbors. When Irenaeus claims that only Gnostics depict a laughing Jesus (Against Heresies 1.24.4), it justifies the excision of any laughing Jesus from Christianity even as sources not regularly considered Gnostic (Infancy Gospel of Thomas a.8.1 or b.6.2; John Chrysostom Homilies on Matthew 19.2) attest the trope. And when John Chrysostom prohibits his audience from joining Antiochene Jews in their frivolity (barefoot dancing and laughing!) at an upcoming festival (Against the Jews 1.4.7), it justifies the omission of images where Christians laugh (see above) from their supposed antigelastic tendencies. Ultimately, I argue that by taking rhetorical attempts to define Christians against their neighbors as statements of orthodoxy (or even of consensus), this scholarly narrative upholds aspects of a “parting of the ways” historiography that easily slips into antisemitic tropes of Christian supersessionism: e.g., the juxtaposition of a Yahweh who laughs as he dominates opponents with a Jesus who supposedly never laughs easily supports antiJewish claims of a wrathful Jewish god and a forgiving Christian one. My paper calls for a necessary remapping of early Christian laughter in all its diversity, and particularly as a topic that often shows connections across categories of Christian/Jewish/Pagan and diversity within a given category (here: Christian). This map wouldn’t obscure antigelastic claims made by Christians but would understand them as representatives of a diverse tradition.

Boyarin, Daniel. Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.

Conybeare, Catherine. "The Ambiguous Laughter of Saint Laurence." Journal of early Christian studies 10, no. 2 (2002): 175-202. https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.2002.0018.

Gilhus, Ingvild Saelid. Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins: Laughter in the History of Religion. London: Routledge, 1997. doi:10.4324/9780203411605.

———. "Why Did Jesus Laugh? Laughing in Biblical-Demiurgical Texts." In Humor and Religion: Challenges and Ambiguities, edited by Hans Geybels and Walter Van Herck, 123–40. New York: Continuum, 2011.

Halliwell, Stephen. Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Hayes, Christine. “Humor and Play in Rabbinic Literature: Laughing at God.” Paper presented at the FSU John F. Priest Lecture, Tallahassee, January 18, 2024.