No comic author from the ancient world features the gods as often as
Lucian of Samosata, yet the meaning of his works remain contested. He is
either seen as undermining the gods and criticizing religion through his
humor, or as not engaging with religion at all, featuring the gods as
literary characters. His humor was traditionally viewed as a symptom of
decreased religiosity, but that model of religious decline in the second
century CE has been invalidated by ancient historians. Understanding
these works now requires understanding what it means to imagine as
laughing and laughable gods who are worshipped in everyday cult.
In Lucian's Laughing Gods, author Inger N. I. Kuin argues that in
ancient Greek thought, comedic depictions of divinities were not
necessarily desacralizing. In religion, laughter was accommodated to
such an extent as to actually be constituent of some ritual practices,
and the gods were imagined either to reciprocate or push back against
human laughter--they were never deflated by it. Lucian uses the gods as
comic characters, but in doing so, he does not automatically negate
their power. Instead, with his depiction of the gods and of how they
relate to humans--frivolous, insecure, callous--Lucian challenges the
dominant theologies of his day as he refuses to interpret the gods as
ethical models. This book contextualizes Lucian's comedic performances
in the intellectual life of the second century CE Roman East broadly,
including philosophy, early Christian thought, and popular culture
(dance, fables, standard jokes, etc.). His texts are analyzed as
providing a window onto non-elite attitudes and experiences, and
methodologies from religious studies and the sociology of religion are
used to conceptualize Lucian's engagement with the religiosity of his
contemporaries.
