Clean Bible jokes, puns, and trivia
Like most college professors, I've seen hilarious errors
in student-written papers. Here are two recent ones:
- "There were a lot of times where Jesus
would speak to huge crows such as at the Sermon on the Mount."
- "What struck me most was they way they embarrassed
the gospel"
"Our mouths were filled with laughter" -- Psalm 126:2
Bible humor
Because so much of Holy Scripture is in story form, it lends itself to amusing twists of little
details that can be funny. This collection doesn't purport to be the best assortment of
Bible jokes and puns. Nevertheless, at least some of them will evoke chuckles from your friends.
Many of these humorous sayings, jokes and trivia from the Bible were collected from messages
floating around social media. Some appear to have come from Richard Lederer's
Anguished English (or else he got them from the same place I saw them).
The phrasing of several jokes and puns depends on the wording used in a specific English
translation of the Bible. In most cases, it's the classic King James Version.
Presenting this compilation doesn't mean I'm making fun of the Bible itself. Rather, it
indicates how much I treasure this "love letter from God." There are things in Scripture that I do
not take lightly and I will not trivialize them by turning them into jokes. Christ's suffering and
death by crucifixion is one of them.
-- compiled by Howard Culbertson
"Sarah said, 'God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will
laugh with me.'" -- Genesis 21:5
Funny Bible questions
- Question: Who was the greatest financier in the Bible?
- Answer: Noah -- he was floating his stock while everyone else was in liquidation.
- Question: What did God say after He created Adam?
- "I can do better than that." And so, He created woman.
- Question: Who was the greatest female financier in the Bible?
- Answer: Pharaoh's daughter -- she went down to the bank of the Nile and drew out a little
profit. Oops. That should read "prophet".
- Question: What kind of man was Boaz before he got married?
- Answer: Ruth-less.
- Question: Who was the first drug addict in the Bible?
- Answer: Nebuchadnezzar -- he was on grass for seven years. (Daniel 4:23-
33)
- Question: What kind of motor vehicles are in the Bible?
- Answer: Yahweh drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden in a Fury, an automobile produced
by Plymouth from 1955 to 1989.
- Israel's Triumph (a British automobile produced from 1921 to 1984) could be heard after
the death of Goliath (2 Samuel 17:52, New Living Translation.
- Honda... because Acts 2:12 says Jesus' followers "were all in one Accord," an
automobile
- In Psalm 83, the Almighty clearly owns both a Pontiac and a Geo. The passage urges the
Lord to "pursue your enemies with your Tempest and terrify them with your Storm." -- Psalm
83:15
- God may favor Dodge pickup trucks since the Israelites were warned not to follow Moses
up on the mountain "until the Ram's horn sounds a long blast." -- Exodus 19:13
- 2 Corinthians 4:8 describes a group traveling in a Volkswagen Bug: "We are hard
pressed on every side."
- Question: Where is the first baseball game in the Bible?
- Answer: In the big inning. Eve stole first, Adam stole second.
- Question: How did Adam and Eve feel when expelled from the Garden of Eden (Genesis
3:23-24)?
- Answer: They were really put out.
- Question: What is one of the things that Adam and Eve did after they were kicked out?
- Answer: They raised Cain.
- Question: What excuse did Adam give to his children as to why he no longer lived in Eden?
- Answer: "Your mother ate us out of house and home" (Genesis 3:6).
- Question: The ark was built in three stories. The top one had a window to let in light. How
did the bottom two stories get light?
- Answer: They used floodlights.
- How do we know Peter was a rich fisherman?
- Answer: By his net income.
- Question: Why was Goliath so surprised when David hit him with a slingshot?
- Answer: The thought had never entered his head before.
- What animal did Noah find it difficult to trust?
- Answer: The cheetah
- Question: What is the best way to get to Paradise?
- Answer: Turn right and go straight.
- Question: According to the Bible, which one of Yahweh's servants was the most flagrant
lawbreaker?
- Answer: Moses, because he broke all 10 commandments at once.
- Question: Which area of the Promised Land was especially
wealthy?
- Answer: The area near the Jordan River where the banks kept overflowing.
- Question: Who was the first person to download something from a cloud to two tablets?
- Answer: Moses
- Question: How do we know that Job went to a chiropractor?
- Answer: Because Job 16:12 says: "All was well with me, but . . . he seized me by the
neck"
- Question: Where is the first tennis match mentioned in the Bible?
- Answer: When Joseph served in Pharaoh's court.
- Question: Which Bible character had no parents?
- Answer: Joshua, son of Nun (Joshua 1:1).
- Question: Why didn't Noah go fishing?
- Answer: He only had two worms.
- Question: How do we know the people on the ark with Noah did not play card games?
- Answer: Because Noah sat on the deck
- Question: Who was the first person to throw down a tablet and break it because he was
angry?
- Answer: Moses
- Question: Where is a square dance class mentioned in the Bible?
- Jonah 4:11 -- "There are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who
cannot tell their right hand from their left."
- Question: Who may have been the shortest man in the Bible?
- Answer: There are three possibilities --
1. Zacchaeus, so short he had to climb a tree to see Jesus. Luke 19:2-4
2. Bildad the Shuhite ("shoe height"), one of Job's three friends. Job 2:11
3. Nehemiah ("Knee High Miah"), the central figure of a book that bears his name.
- Question: Question: How long did Cain hate his brother?
- Answer: As long as he was able! (Abel)
Bloopers by students writing about the Bible
- Second of 10 Commandments: Thou shall cast no
idles.
- In the first book of the bible, Guinness, God got tired of creating the world, so He took the
Sabbath off.
- Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked: "Am I
my brother's son?"
- Noah's wife was called Joan of Ark. Noah built an ark, which the animals came on to in
pears.
- God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his
brother's birthmark. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.
- Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led the Hebrews to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread
which is bread without any ingredients.
- The Egyptians were all drowned in the dessert. Afterward, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide
to get the ten amendments.
- The seventh commandment is: Thou shalt not admit adultery.
- Moses died before he ever reached Canada. Then Joshua led the Hebrews in the battle of
Geritol.
- The greatest miracle in the Bible is when Joshua told his son to stand still, and he obeyed
him.
- David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Finklesteins, a race
of people who lived in Biblical times.
- Solomon, one of David's sons, had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.
- When Mary heard that she was the mother of Jesus, she sang the Magna Carta.
- When the three wise guys from the east side arrived, they found Jesus in the manager.
- Jesus enunciated the Golden Rule, which says to do one to others before they do one to you.
He also explained, "a man doth not live by sweat alone."
- It was a miracle when Jesus rose from the dead and managed to get the tombstone off the
entrance.
- The people who followed the Lord were called the 12 decibels. The epistles were the wives
of the apostles.
- One of the opossums was St. Matthew who was a taximan.
- Christians have only one spouse. This is called monotony.
"There's an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth . . .
A right time to cry and another to laugh" -- Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4 (The Message)
Bible humor
An elderly woman had just returned home from an evening church service when she realized
there was an intruder in her home. Seeing that he was in the act of robbing her home of its
valuables, the lady yelled "Stop! Acts 2:38!"1
Hearing her, the burglar stopped dead in his tracks and stood motionless. The woman calmly
called the police and explained what was going on.
As the officer cuffed the man to take him in, he asked the burglar, "Why did you just stand
there? All the lady did was yell a Bible verse at you."
"Bible verse?" said the burglar, "She said she had an ax and two 38's!"
1"Repent and be baptized, in the name of Jesus Christ so that
your sins may be forgiven. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." -- (Acts
2:38)
Ten ways the Bible would be different had it been written by college students
- The Last Supper would have been eaten the next morning -- cold.
- The Ten Commandments would have been only five. They
would have been double-spaced and written in a large font.
- The Bible would have come out in a new edition every two years in order to limit
re-selling.
- The reason the forbidden fruit would have been eaten was that it wasn't cafeteria
food.
- Paul's letter to the Romans would become Paul's e-mail to abuse@romans.gov.
- The reason Cain would have killed Abel: They were roommates.
- The place where the end of the world occurs: Finals, not Armageddon.
- Out go the mules, in come the mountain bikes.
- Reason why Moses and those following him would have wandered in the desert for 40 years:
They didn't want to ask directions and look like freshmen.
- Instead of God creating everything in six days and resting on the seventh, He would have put
it off until the night before it was due and then pulled an all-nighter.
If Moses had received the 10 Commandments via text
message:
no1 b4 me. srsly.
dnt wrshp pix/idols
no omg's
no wrk on w/end (sat 4 now; sun l8r)
pos ok ur m&d r cool
dnt kill ppl
:-X only w/ m8
dnt steal
dnt lie re: bf
dnt ogle ur bf's m8. or ox. or dnkey. myob.
ttyl, JHWH.
ps. wwjd?
Do the names of Old Testament peoples and tribes confuse you?
Here's a cartoon spoof on those names.
Help me find the origin of this cartoon!
I've had this in my files for several years but have lost track of where it was from or who the
cartoonist was. Do you know who the artist is? If so, e-mail me. I'd like to get in contact and get
permission to use it.
The Amorites and the Midianites were, of course, tribes with whom the Israelites had some
not-so-friendly encounters. The Amorites, mentioned in the Bible more than 70 times,
are described as "tall." The Midianites are mentioned in the Old Testament about 20
times.
The Samsoites? Well . . . . that name doesn't quite go back to Old Tetamet times although
Jesse Shwayder (1882 1970), founder of the Shwayder Trunk Manufacturing Company, did
name one of his initial cases after the Biblical strongman Samson, and began using the trademark
Samsonite in 1941.
Sarah said, "God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will
laugh with me." -- Genesis 21:6
Bible trivia tidbits
- Question: How many total words are there in the Bible?
- In terms of the English Bible, this varies from translation to translation. The range is from
just over 715,00 words to almost 785,000 words. This doesn't mean things have been left out or
added. It just means that some translations are more wordy than others in rendering the meaning
of the Hebrew and Greek originals. As for the number of letter characters, the total count in the
KJV is a staggering 3,116,480. That count would also vary from translation to translation.
- Question: How long did it take for the Bible to be written?
- Scholars say about 1,500 years went by from the time the first Bible book was written until
the last one was completed.
- Question: How many different authors were involved in writing the Bible?
- About 40
Some facts about the Psalms
- Question: Which Old Testament book is quoted most often in the New Testament?
- Psalms
- Question: What Bible chapter is the shortest?
- Answer: Psalm 117 with only 2 verses
- Question: What is the longest chapter in the Bible?
- Answer: Psalm 119 with 176 verses
- Question: As far as chapter count goes, which chapter is in the center of the Protestant
Bible?
- Answer: Psalm 118
- Question: Which verse is at the exact center verse of the Bible?
- Answer: Psalm 118:8
- Question: What is the longest book in the Bible?
- Answer: In terms of the number of chapters, it's the book of Psalms. However, in terms of
the number of words in the Hebrew language, it's Jeremiah. [ see the
lists of longest by chapter and longest in terms of word count ]
- Question: What is the shortest book in the Bible?
- Answer: In terms of the number of chapters, there are five with only one chapter: Second
John, Third John, Jude, Obadiah, and Philemon. In terms of number of words, Third John is the
shortest with 219 words in the original Greek.
- Question: Which of these men was not an author of at least one psalm? Moses, David,
Joshua, or Solomon
- Answer: Joshua
- Which of the Psalms is the only one that ends without some sense of praise to or hope in
God?
- Psalm 88 is the only psalm that ends without some sense of praise or hope in God.
- Over what period of time were the Psalms composed?
- David is, of course, considered the author of many of the Psalms. He lived from about 1035
BC to 970 BC. However, the poerty of the book of Psalms was composed over a period of
approximately 1000 years. Psalm 90 may be the oldest psalm, probably written by Moses around
1450 B.C. before his encounter with God at the burning bush where God
called him to liberate the Hebrew people from Egyptian slavery.
- The key word in the Psalms is "praise." It is pused more than 200 times in Psalms compared
with about 120 occurrences in all the rest of Holy Scripture combined.
- Which of the Psalms are acrostics?
- Psalms 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 119, and 145 are examples of acrostic Hebrew poetry. In these
seven psalms, the first letter of each line, verse or stanza begins with a successive letter of the
Hebrew alphabet. The acrostic aspect isn't, of course, readily apparent in versions of the Bible in
languages other than Hebrew. A good hint in looking for psalms that are acrostics is to look for
psalms with 22 verses since there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Psalm 119 is an
expanded acrostic in which the sections begin with succeeding Hebrew alphabet letters.
Is "BIBLE" an acronym?
Fact-check: The word "Bible" itself is not an acronym. It comes from the Latin word "biblia",
which simply means "book." The Latin word comes from a Greek word that is best rendered as
"scroll."
However, some have jokingly said that the letters of the English word Bible could stand for
"Best Instructions Before Leaving Earth."
So, no, the word Bible is not an acronym. The individual letters do not stand for other
words.
Reading the Bible aloud: Confirmation of a bit of trivia
I read somewhere that it would take about 75 hours to read the Bible aloud at a normal rate.
A little over 50 hours of that will be spent reading the Old Testament.
I mentioned this bit of trivia to a group of Haitian pastors on the island of La Gonave. The
pastor of the Church of the Nazarene in the mountain town of Grand Source challenged his youth
group to see how long it would take them to read the Bible aloud in Haitian Creole. He said if
they would do it, he would invite the people in their mountain village to come and listen
whenever they had time.
On a Monday, the young people started reading the Bible aloud from the
platform of their church building. Reading in 15-minute shifts for about 15 hours a day, those
young people in Haiti read the Bible aloud all the way through in a little over 79 hours.
Common sayings from the bible
Ask your friends: In which book of the Bible can each of these famous sayings be
found?
Do you sometimes quote the Bible without being aware of it? The English language is salted,
as are other languages, with biblical phrases and proverbs. Listed below are more than four dozen
of them.
To be sure, "cleanliness is next to godliness" is not one of biblical origin. Neither is
"God helps those who help themselves." That particular one is from Poor Richard's
Almanac produced by the American political figure Benjamin Franklin.
Here is a listing of oft-used English phrases with the scripture reference from which they
come given.
- "A law unto themselves" -- Romans 2:14
- "A house divided" -- Matthew 12:25, Luke 11:17 (quoted by Abraham link in an 1858
speech on the eve of the American Civil War)
- "A man after his own heart" -- 1 Samuel 13:14
- "Apple of my eye" Deuteronomy 2:10, Zechariah 2:8
- "At my wit's end" Psalm 107:27
- "Blind leading the blind" Matthew 15:14, Luke 6:39
- "By the skin of our teeth" Job 19:20
- "Can a leopard change his spots?" Jeremiah 13:23
- "Don't cast your pearls before swine" -- Matthew 7:6
- "Drop in the bucket" -- Isaiah 40:15
- "Dust of the earth" -- Genesis 13:16
- "Eat, drink, and be merry" -- Ecclesiastes 8:15
- "Eye for an eye" -- Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:20, Deuteronomy 19:21 Matthew
5:38
- "False prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing" -- Matthew 24:24, Mark
13:22
- "Fell on rocky ground" -- Matthew 13:5
- "Fight the good faith" -- 1 Timothy 6:12
- "Golden calf" -- Exodus 32
- "Good Samaritan" -- Luke 10:25-37
- "Hammer swords into plowshares" -- Isaiah 2:4
- "He gave up the ghost" -- Luke 23:46
- "He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone" --
John 8:7
- "Handwriting on the wall" -- Daniel 5:5
- "How are the mighty fallen" -- 1 Samuel 1:19-27
- "Labor of love" -- 1 Thessalonians 1:3
- "Letter of the law" -- 2 Corinthians 3:6
- "Many are called, but few are chosen" -- Matthew 22:14
- "Man shall not live by bread alone" -- Deuteronomy 8:3, Matthew 4:4
- "More blessed to give than to receive" -- Acts 20:35
- "My brother's keeper" -- Genesis 4:9
- "No peace for the wicked" -- Isaiah 48:22, Isaiah 57:21
- "Noting new under the sun" -- Ecclesiastes 1:9
- "One dead fly makes the perfumer's ointment give off a rancid stench" -- Ecclesiastes
10:1
- "Out of the mouths of babes" -- Psalm 8:2
- "Powers that be" -- Romans 13:1
- "Pride goes before a fall" -- Proverbs 16:19
- "Put the words in her mouth" -- 2 Samuel 14:3
- "Put your house in order" -- 2 Kings 20:1, Isaiah 38:1
- "Red sky at morning" -- Matthew 16:3
- "Rise up and shine" -- Isaiah 60:1
- "Salt of the earth" -- Matthew 5:13
- "See eye to eye" -- Isaiah 52:8
- "Signs of the times" -- Matthew 16:3
- "Soft answer turns away wrath" -- Proverbs 15:1
- "Stood by the stuff" (a reference to troops that guarded supplies) -- 1 Samuel 25:13,
30:24)
- "Strait and narrow" -- Matthew 7:14
- "Suffer fools gladly" -- 2 Corinthians 11:19
- "Sweat of your brow" -- Genesis 3:19
- "The love of money is the root of all evil" (frequently misquoted as "money is the root of all
evil") -- 1 Timothy 6:10
- "The truth shall make you free" -- John 8:32 (engraved on the wall of the original CIA
headquarters building in Washington, DC)
- "There's nothing new under the sun" -- Ecclesiastes 1:9
- "Thorn in the flesh" -- 2 Corinthians 12:7
- "To everything, there is a season" Ecclesiastes 3:1
- "Twinkling of an eye" -- 1 Corinthians 15:52
- "Wars and rumors of wars" -- Matthew 24:26, Mark 13:7
- "Weighed in the balances and found wanting" -- Daniel 5:5
- "What is truth?" -- John 18:38
- "Where there is no vision, the people perish" -- Proverbs 29:18
Can you think of other things that could or should be on this page? If so, drop me
an email and I'll add them.
-- compiled by Howard Culbertson,
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