ABSTRACT
So far we have seen laughter as a genuine religious expression, blossoming in myths and rituals, a characteristic of the divine. It established connections between humans and gods, individuals and society, the body and the world. In the Ancient Near Eastern and Greek worlds we have examined thus far, the power of laughter is unquestionable. Because of that power, Greek philosophers strove to put laughter in the firm grip of rational control. Theirs was a new attitude towards laughter—that of investigation, scepticism and criticism. The classicist Bracht Branham is probably right when he says that ‘there seems to have been an important shift in Greek thinking about laughter and the comic in the fourth century’ (Branham 1989:52). The philosophers were not sympathetic to laughter, but by singling laughter out as a subject for interest, its critics bore out the general impression that laughter in Greek culture was loud and important, a force in its own right. The philosophers, on their side, wanted to remove it from its privileged position and subordinate it to more serious issues.
