page Preface v I. Humour of the Bible 1 II. The Bible and the Ancient Classics 13 III. Art among the Ancient Hebrews 24 IV. The Life of the Hebrew Women of Old 36 V. Curiosities of certain Proper Names in the Bible 43 VI. Sketch of the Talmud 47 VII. The Humour of some Mediaeval and Modern Hebrew Writers 58 VIII. Yedaya Bedaresi, a Fourteenth-Century Hebrew Poet and Philosopher 71 IX. Immanuel di Roma, a Thirteenth-Century Hebrew Humorist, and a Friend of Dante 82 X. Kalonymos ben Kalonymos, a Thirteenth-Century Satirist 103 XI. Abraham Ibn Chasdai, and his Book “The Prince and the Dervish” 117 XII. Isaac Erter, a Modern Hebrew Humorist 127 XIII. Leopold Zunz 140 XIV. Samuel David Luzzatto and Zachariah Frankel 154 XV. The Influence of Hebrew Literature on Heinrich Heine 165 XVI. Modern Hebrew Journalism 174 I ERRATA Page 34, line 28, read _Philo_ instead of _Plato_. Page 37, line 27, read _conjux_ instead of _coniux_. Page 79, line 14, read ‪פירוש‬ . . . ‪ופירוש‬ instead of ‪פרוש‬ . . .‪ופרוש‬. I HUMOUR OF THE BIBLE The Hebrew Bible rightly deserves to be termed the Book of Books in the world of letters: it is distinguished from other literary productions by the richness of its sentences, its charm of style and diction, its pathos, and also by the flashes of genuine humour, which here and there illuminate its pages. Naturally its humour differs materially from the broad, rich humour of Sterne, Cervantes, Voltaire or Heine, but it has a stamp of its own, which is in some respects akin to that found in certain passages of the ancient classics. One or two examples will serve.