4th century AD joke book has ancestor of infamous Dead Parrot sketch

[n2doc]

Ancient Greeks pre-empted Monty Python


updated 5:50 p.m. ET, Fri., Nov. 14, 2008
ATHENS - "I'll tell you what's wrong with it. It's dead, that's what's wrong with it."

For those who believe the ancient Greeks thought of everything first, proof has been found in a 4th century AD joke book featuring an ancestor of Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch where a man returns a parrot to a shop, complaining it is dead.

The 1,600-year-old work entitled "Philogelos: The Laugh Addict," one of the world's oldest joke books, features a joke in which a man complains that a slave he has just bought has died, its publisher said on Friday.

"By the gods," answers the slave's seller, "when he was with me, he never did any such thing!"

In a British comedy act Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch, first aired in 1969 and regularly voted one of the funniest ever, the pet-shop owner says the parrot, a "Norwegian Blue," is not dead, just "resting" or "pining for the fjords."

The English-language book will appeal to those who swear that the old jokes are the best ones. Many of its 265 gags will seem strikingly familiar, suggesting that sex, dimwits, nagging wives and flatulence have raised laughs for centuries.

more:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27719686/

[skooooo]

1. There's nothing new under the sun. nt

[hobbit709]

2. Just proves once again that the old ones are the best ones.

[JohnyCanuck]

3. Dead parrot sketch on Youtube. (Now that's something the Greeks never had)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTSAFcLXqYY

[POAS]

6. No they had that

but it was a lot slower as it was delivered via horse and wagon by traveling troops a actors (don't think the Greeks allowed actresses did they?) rather than by electrons which were reserved for use by the Gods as lightening bolts!

[datasuspect]

4. and i'm sure there was a 4th century scold who reminded everyone how slavery was no laughing matter

and tsk tsk'ed them to death.

[jeff30997]

5. Knossos,Knossos !

Who's Theris ?

Adonis.

Adonis who?

Adonis a Mafia boss.

:P

[Peace Patriot]

7. Still laughing, every time I think of it, lo these 40 years.

Sitting here at 6:24 in the morning only one cup of joe old, giggling all over again. Just the thought of it. It has to be the funniest thing ever broadcast on TV.

----------

About the date. It's 4th century AD (not BC). Well into the Christian era. The Roman Republic long over with, and decayed into a corrupt imperium. And the 'christians' (ascendant patriarchs, not the real Christians) would shortly be burning the Alexandria Library and skinning alive its last philosopher--a mathematician and famous and beloved teacher named Hypatia, a woman.

A time for bitter, slashing, biting, aggrieved, desperate irony--from those who understood what was going on. Maybe the jokes didn't orginate in that era, but I can certainly grasp why they were made into a book in that era--a rare and precious object in those days, and so valued by the Alexandrians that they would stop ships from unloading mundane cargo (food, wine, cloth) at the harbor until the captain produced all the books on board, to be copied by Alexandria's scholars. Books were rare only because they didn't have printing presses. Literacy was actually very widespread in the Roman Empire until the 'christian' patriarchs took over. Then the western world suffered a thousand years of darkness and didn't really bathe in the sunlight again, until Monty Python hit the airwaves in 1969.

Was that our last shot at it?

Well, there's Jon Stewart, I guess. And oh God, Stephen Colbert!

[cobalt1999]

8. I'm not dead yet!

I'm sure this famous Monty Python scene was around during the Plague.

[CTyankee]

9. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gldlyTjXk9A

[immoderate]

10. Farts are ALWAYS funny.

--IMM :D