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

A common scholarly narrative in the history of Christianity proposes that early Christians did not laugh. While this narrative compile compelling evidence from their primary sources, they often treat the equally compelling evidence of Christian laughter as exceptional. I suggest that this narrative simplifies the diversity found between sources and within individual ones to represent a proto-orthodox antigelasticism defined in opposition to either Jewish or Gnostic groups who, unlike the early orthodox Christians, laugh. I linger on the rhetorical use of laughter by John Chrysostom to differentiate between Antiochene Christians and Jews, and by Irenaeus to differentiate between his own orthodoxy and Gnostic heresy. I suggest that scholars should take these claims as rhetorical strategies of social formation rather than statements of pre-existing orthodoxy. I call for a remapping of early Christian laughter in all its diversity, showing connections across categories of Christian/Jewish/Pagan and diversity within each community.