Satire

For some reason there are people out there, both Christian and non-Christian, under the misimpression that satire is unchristian.

This is due, in part, to the fact that many people don’t know their way around the OT at all, while their command of the NT is sketchy at best.

But satire is a regular feature of the Bible. There’s a lot of light-hearted satire in Proverbs and the Book of Jonah, while Amos and Mat 23 are studded with satirical barbs.

There is also a satirical genre known as the taunt-song, which you find in both Testaments:

Exod 15:1-18
Num 21:27-30
Judg 5
1 Sam 17:45-47
1 Kgs 18:27
Ps 2
Ps 115:2-8
Ps 135:15-18
Isa 14:3-21
Isa 44:9-20
Jer 10:1-16
Jer 38:22
Ezk 27-28
Hab 2:18-20
Rev 18-19

There are also some brain donors who equate satire with bearing false witness.

Needless to say, bearing false witness has contextual reference to perjurious testimony in a court of law. It has nothing to do with satire.

If someone accuses a satirist like Juvenal, Voltaire, Erasmus, Swift, Cervantes, Alexander Pope, or Mark Twain of “lying,” then this accusation says a good deal less about the character of the accused than it does about the mental ability of the accuser.