One of our MABL (Master of Arts in Biblical Languages) students is showing a set of skills I had heretofore not seen in full blossom–he’s very nearly a stand-up comedian! Today he passed along some language jokes that would make any elementary Greek and Hebrew professor very proud, and thankfully, he has permitted me to post them here. Enjoy! And if you don’t smile, then please take it as definitive proof that you *need* to come study Greek and Hebrew here at HBU!  Merry Christmas!

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(1) Q: What kind of poker do Hebrew cowboys play?

A: Texas Cholem.

(2) Q: Where did extremely sick adjective go?

A: The adjectival intensive care unit.  (He himself went, by the way.)

(3) Q: What Hebrew vowel is so rare it only occurs in texts once every 75 years?

A: Halley’s Qamets.

(4) Q: What kind of airplane do Greek pronouns fly in?

A: The Pronominal Concorde, of course.

(5) Q: Which Hebrew vowel has also starred in several extremely violent action movies?

A: Steven Segol.

(6) Q: What’s the best app for studying Greek grammar?

A: Angry Verbs.

(7) Q: Why do so many young Hebrew farmers move to the city after their first crop?

A: How can you keep them on the farm once they’ve seen פְּרִי?

(8) Q: How do you know you’ve been studying Greek too hard?

A: At Christmas you see “‘Tis the season” and start trying to parse the “τις”.

(9) Q: How are many aspiring comedy careers like tsere, qamets, and chireq?

A: They’re not historically long.