Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Chris:

Okay, okay, I don't see the joke. True, those 
of us of Norwegian heritage have a reputation 
of having no sense of humor, so my lack of 
seeing the joke may be genetic, but I don't 
see a joke when a people and their land are 
named after their ancestor's nickname. Further, 
that Esau got his nickname from two sources, 
makes perfect, nonjoking sense. So where's the 
pun?

Oh yes, the definition for pun that I use is 
almost the same as the one you referenced below, 
except I add even non-joking plays on words that 
sound similar. But even with my expanded 
definition, I still don't see a pun in 
Genesis 25. Where's the play on words?

Karl W. Randolph.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Heard, Christopher" <Christopher.Heard AT pepperdine.edu>

> Karl,
> 
> You seem to have an idiosyncratic, or at least non-standard,
> definition of what a "pun" is. According to my English dictionary
> nearest to hand, a pun is "a joke exploiting the different possible
> meanings of a word or the fact that there are words that sound alike
> but have different meanings." An example given is "the pigs were a
> squeal," which is a pun because in English "a squeal" can refer both
> to a sound pigs make and to a delightful experience.
> 
> Thus when the narrator of Genesis uses אדם )DM in Gen 25,
> exploiting the different possible senses of the word as the color
> red, the name for a stew, a nickname for Esau, and the name of the
> people/nation of Edom, that certainly qualifies as "punning" in the
> sense defined above (which is not "what I think of," but what my
> dictionary reports as the commonly accepted usage).
> 
> Chris

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