> If the heavens ever did speak. > What would they say? > Who would they say it to? > And would we be able to hear it? > > -_On the Lamb, Ch. 8: The Water of Life_ --- Hi there, Welcome to Earth. It's fucked up here but it's also really beautiful and fun. There's lots of interesting things here on Earth. But definitely the most interesting thing is humans. ![[sumer-map-1.png]] This is Sumer. The first time we made cities, we made them here. ![[sumer-cities-ur.png]] The first one was somewhere near those three dots that say Ur. ![[sumer-map-2.jpg]] We didn't start being humans in Sumer. We were humans before. But Sumer is where we started doing something called civilization. It's in between two rivers, called the Tigris and Euphrates. You may have heard those words while you were half asleep, long ago, inside something called a school. I heard them there too. I remember thinking back then "Sumer is boring." I was wrong. Sumer isn't boring. Sumer is funny. Here are a few words, written in the oldest version of the Sumerian writing system. ![[old-sumerian-1.jpg]] That's the oldest version of the oldest writing system of the oldest culture on Earth. So right out of the gate, humans were funny. Back in 3000 BC. That's 5000 years ago! Humans were hilarious, even back then. But soon after we invented cities, we invented other things too. Serious adult things, like professionalism, accounting, bureaucracy, desks, and paperwork. Before there was paper, there was paperwork. It's true. Life got more serious and less funny, for people like me and you. It happened slowly. By 2800 BC, life was still funny, but you had to turn your head sideways to see it. ![[old-sumerian-2.jpg]] By 2500 BC, the funny parts of life got harder and harder to see and hear. Life itself was still funny. But the Serious Adult Things of civilization made the funny bits harder to hear and less clear. These days, the old things are almost impossible to hear, until we learn to listen closely. > _A dog walks into a bar._ That's how the first joke in human history (at least the first one we have a record of) begins. It's from almost 4000 years ago, around 1700 BC. In Sumer (you know Sumer). During the Old Babylonian Empire. And it's a bar joke. Here's the joke. > _A dog entered a tavern and said:_ > _"I can't see a thing. I'll open this one!"_ That's it. That's the first joke ever. (Like I said, civilization can make it harder to hear the old things.) Apparently the joke was all the rage back when it was written. About 4000 years after that, just a few years ago, the old Sumerian Dog Joke got popular again. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-01.png]] No one understands it. No one knows why it was funny. But we humans love trying to make sense of things. So naturally, humans came up with lots of theories about the joke. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-19.jpg]] None of the theories were very satisfying. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-24.jpg]] Not one of the theories had the real ring of truth. Some humans even hypothesized a lost "physical gesture" that was supposed to be performed alongside the joke. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-13.jpg]] No one really understood the joke. But that which is mysterious is revered. So we humans made many tributes to the joke. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-04.jpg]] Mostly they did this to pass the time, while they sat around hoping that someone would come along and tell them what this odd joke was about. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-10.jpg]] The joke took on a life of its own. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-22.png]] Some thought the joke had "gone stale," Or that maybe humor had just changed a lot since back then. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-03.png]] This was surely not so. Humans have always been funny. And humor (and humans) have always been the same. Because 1300 years _before_ the Sumerian dog joke, When humans first invented writing, and had to explain this new idea of "writing" to people who'd never heard of writing before... When they were asked by their friends _"What is this new writing thing?"_ and _"How does it work?"_ and _"Can you explain it simply?"_ The inventors of writing smiled, and nodded, and wrote this. ![[old-sumerian-3.jpg]] We can't know much about the ancient past. But I'd bet my life the ancient readers laughed. The Sumerians had sophisticated visual arts. They could depict entire human beings, not just disembodied parts. And a stick figure of a human female would hardly be more complex or less clear, For the early writers to write, Or for the early readers to understand and hear. Why not use a stick figure? One with arms, legs, a head, and dignity! They didn't choose the stick figure. They were humans. They chose this. Because it was simple, it was elegant, it was obscene, & it was true. But most important: Because it was funny. As funny to them five thousand years ago as it is to me and you. And that was 1300 years before the Sumerian Dog Joke So no. We can not explain the Sumerian dog joke away by waving our hands and saying "humor has changed since then." But where could we possibly find anything timeless in a joke like this, let alone something funny? What was the joke again? ![[sumerian-dog-joke-29.jpg]] Curiously, one thing that many humans agreed on was that the joke was "probably something about sex." ![[sumerian-dog-joke-09.jpg]] They didn't know how or why it would be "something about sex." They just agreed it probably was. Because, you know, humans are like that. That's one part of human life that's always been with us, after all. I mean, we humans even put this picture in the Louvre. Probably the best museum on Earth. This. ![[ishtar-vase-in-the-louvre.jpg]] That's in the Louvre! Right there in Paris, under the same roof as Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. Why? Because despite it being little more than a crude doodle of lady parts, it's also ancient, and timeless. That one's from Sumer too. So is this one here. Same deity, same pose, but better this time, and less crude. ![[ishtar-statue.jpg]] So given all that, it's at least worth considering that maybe humor (and humans) have always been the same. So back to the joke. The first joke we humans ever wrote. What the hell was it about? We don't know much. Here's all we know for sure: Humans have always been the same. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-12.jpg]] So armed with their modern tools, and with the vague idea that the joke was "probably something about sex," the modern humans analyzed the ancient Sumerian text. They learned its verbs and its nouns, in search of hints and lost context. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-06.jpg]] Experts in Scandanavian archaeology chimed in, with evidence from Nordic history, to corroborate the theory that it was "probably about sex." ![[sumerian-dog-joke-14.jpg]] Distinguished scholars in linguistics argued the joke must have been funny enough to be worth carving into rock, or at least a clay tablet. A convincing point. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-11.jpg]] And but so... If humor hadn't changed since Sumer. Maybe something else had changed. Maybe Dogs? Unlikely. Maybe Beers? Not enough to explain the joke. Maybe Bars? Hmm. What were those like, back then? Let's go see... ![[sumerian-dog-joke-33.png]] Interesting. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-16.jpg]] Not so different from bars today. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-17.jpg]] Just different enough. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-18.jpg]] Most striking of all were the long tubes. Clearly straws of some kind. But much longer than the straws of today. Thicker too. ![[sumerian-dog-joke-20.jpg]] It was then that a voice arose out of the confusion, a voice of one crying in the wilderness of the modern town square and the voice said: ![[sumerian-dog-joke-15.jpg]] > _A dog walks into a bar._ > _He says: I can't see a thing._ > _Ah! Here's one._ That's it. That's our species' first joke. Had the anonymous prophet known on the internet as "Hot Larry Summers" unraveled the 4000 year old mystery? That's not for me to say. But that's the oldest joke. It's only a few lines. And the joke doesn't matter much, at the end of the day. But the story of it matters, to get us thinking about the Old Things in a timeless, and human, and irreverently reverent eternal sort of way. Now, I should explain the gift. Because it's another human first. ![[prose.jpg]] The first prose our species wrote. That was something called J. ## The Book of J So what's the first prose, and what's the Book of J? Well, J stands for "Yahwist." (Good question. It's because the word "Yahwist" in German has a J instead of a Y.) The Yahwist (or Jahwist (aka, J)) is the name that bible scholars gave to the anonymous Author of the earliest parts of the Old Testament. Or Hebrew bible. Or Torah. Or Pentateuch. Or whatever you prefer to call it. Regardless of what we call it, I'm sure you've heard of the book. The bible isn't the sort of book that has an Author name on the cover. But people who study biblical history and archaeology for a living have managed to separate different Authors of the bible by their writing styles, word usage, and which era of the Hebrew language they use. We can tell the difference between modern English, Shakespeare English, Middle English (like Chaucer), and Old English (like Beowulf.) And once we're back at Old English, it's pretty much unreadable. > Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, > þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, > hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. That's the first line of Beowulf in Old English. You probably can't read it. Neither can I. It's usually translated to Modern English like this: > So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness. But word for word, taken literally, it's more like this: > What. We of-the Spear-Danes in year-days, > of-people-kings, glory heard-of, > how those princes courage performed. So language changes a lot, and it's not hard to tell the difference between different eras of the same language. Over the past century or so, some bible scholars have done that for Hebrew. And if you use those techniques to tease apart the Old Testament, you can hunt down the earliest and oldest Author of what we now call the Old Testament, which also happens to be the earliest and oldest long work of prose our species wrote. And like we already mentioned above, that Author was someone called the Yahwist (aka J). J wrote most of the stories everyone remembers best. Adam and Eve. The tree of knowledge. Cain and Abel. Noah and the flood. The tower of Babel. The Abraham story. Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot's daughters having sex with their dad while he's sleeping. (And naming the incest babies Ammon and Moab, two places right next to ancient Israel.) ![[biblical-israel-map.png]] Jacob tricking Esau (also known as Edom, see map above one more time) out of his birthright in exchange for some red soup. (A pun based on the fact that Edom in old Hebrew sounds like the word for "red.") Jacob working 7 years for his uncle Laban to get permission to marry Rachel, only to realize after the wedding night (how drunk was he?) that Laban tricked him into marrying his other daughter Leah, presumably as retalliation for Jacob's earlier trickery of Esau above. Jacob working 7 more years and ending up marrying Rachel too. Jacob's two sister-wives and their legendary sibling rivalry, in which they go back and forth adversarially impregnating both themselves and the maids to try to out do each other, and naming each of the kids a different Hebrew pun resulting in the twelve children of Jacob that become the twelve tribes of Israel. ![[rachel-and-leah-all-tall.png]] Rachel stealing something from her dad, and when he says "Rachel, c'mon, I know you're sitting on it, get up" she lies and says "I can't, um... I'm on my period?" and he goes "Dammit, ok you win." And Jacob wrestling with an unknown god figure all night, and as a result, getting renamed to "Israel." All of the above stories are by a single Author. That's J. Later authors (called by scholars the Elohist (E) the Priestly source (P), and the Deuteronomist (D)) added sentences and paragraphs in the middle of what J wrote. As we leave Genesis and enter into Exodus, we hear less of J and more of E and P. Leviticus is all P. Numbers is mostly E and P. Deuteronomy is almost entirely D. But Genesis -- all the stories we remember most -- is J. J shows up again in 2nd Samuel to tell the court history of David, but that's a story for another day. So, why am I talking about this? Let's look at the big picture and wrap up. It's impossible to drive around any modern Western city without seeing references to the bible everywhere. Once you have even passing familiarity with the bible, it's impossible not to see them. And (aside from the Jesus related ones) the vast majority are references to J. The later authors -- E, P, D, the prophets, and so on -- wrote what they wrote as revisions, supplements, and commentary on J. J was already a famous work, and known to them, at the time that they wrote. The inverse is likely not the case. What J wrote -- all those stories we've painted Western civilization with -- was written without knowledge of the later Authors or what they would add. It's impossible to understand how the bible came into existence without first understanding where it began. To do that, we have to read what J wrote, without latter day revisions and additions. There appear to be sections of J that were censored or lost. References remain in the Job 9:13 and 26:12, in Psalm 89:10, and in Isaiah 51:9 to what appears to have been J's original (now lost) version of the creation story in Genesis 1. The version we have today is a later revision by P (the author of Leviticus, and much of the law code in Exodus and Numbers). Because of that, it is impossible to read every word of J's original text. But the parts that remain are surprisingly complete and coherent, as a single narrative, after the latter day editions are removed. Whether you're religious or unreligious, whatever the bible is to you now, it is interesting to see what the bible was when it began. The Book of J is one of the strangest, cleverest, most ironic and witty works ever written. Its genre it not clear. It's all of them. It's far from obvious that J is a religious text at all. J is a Rorschach test. I have my own opinions about what J was up to, who she was, and what she believed. But those opinions reflect as much about me as they do about the text. Reading J is worth it, for all people of all faiths or none. Whether you're a believer or unbelievers, read J. You'll never look at the bible the same way again. Love always, -Son of J