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blamazon

Copy pasting the completed translation:

"A friendly dog walks into a bar.

His eyes do not see anything.

He should open them."

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4000 year old dad jokes. This is the content I come here for.

Why is it certain that this is a joke and not some kind of wisdom, charm or unknown literary category?

> Why is it certain that this is a joke and not some kind of wisdom, charm or unknown literary category?

The distinction between those may not always be that well-defined.

I once read that the story of the Good Samaritan (by Jesus) follows the structure of a popular set of jokes (or possibly self-congratulatory "wisdom") of the time: something happens, a priest comes by and is useless, a Levite passes by and is useless, and finally a common Jew comes by and fixes the problem, and everybody gets to feel good about being a commoner and not some useless elitist. Except Jesus tripped up his audience by replacing the Jew with a Samaritan.

There is a famous story about Zhuangzi [if you prefer, Chuang Tzu] that goes like this:

-----

Zhuangzi and Huizi were crossing a bridge over the river Hao.

Zhuangzi said: the fish have come out to play; this makes them happy.

Huizi said: You are not a fish. How do you know what makes fish happy?

Zhuangzi said: You are not me. How do you know that I don't know what makes fish happy?

Huizi said: I am not you. Of course I do not know you. [But] you are certainly not a fish. Your non-knowledge of what makes fish happy is total.

Zhuangzi said: Please stick to your original [question]. You asked how I know what makes fish happy. You already knew that I knew this and [still] you asked me. I know it over the Hao.

-----

"I know it over the Hao" makes sense because in the original language, the word "how", 安, is also the word "where".

The story comes down to us as part of a foundational text. Is it wisdom or a cheap joke?

A lot of humour consists of buildup followed by a twist - the humour is in the contrast between the expected and the actual. This is very similar to explaining a concept that is flawed or misunderstood by building up a scenario where the expected outcome can be contrasted with an actual outcome. A smaller set replaces 'actual' with 'nonsense'.

The text may present this as wisdom, but I would say it is both wisdom and humour.

Because it starts with "A dog walks into a bar"

There's a similar koan with a dog, which is not intended as a joke; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative)

No bar tho.

For starters, it looks, and quacks, like a joke

That's because it had a very convoluted plastic surgery to make it so.

How rough is this translation? Does the "...walks into a bar" joke predate monotheism? Though we know that the Egyptian neighbours were drinking beer at the time, did either culture actually have drinking establishments?

Here's a Sumerian 'drinking song' about a drinking place, the female proprietor, and the process she performs to make beer.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-sip-from-an-an...

As I understand it, Sumerian culture had drinking establishments. Though they don't seem to have been freestanding business establishments, and were often part of some larger organization (like a temple).

So "bar" would be an updated translation that preserves the essence of an idea of walking into a drinking place, but obviously a lot of the cultural nuance around the social role of a Sumerian tavern is lost. It doesn't really seem important for this joke though.

It's well known that the Sumerians did indeed have drinking establishments. Lots of writings about them.

We had alcohol long before we invented second generation religions :-)

Does the original text really says: "walks into a bar"?

Different cultures may assign different connotations to what "bar" means, but first line of the original text says "walks into a [place]" and other sources using that same word [place] involve serving beer to patrons and/or prostitution there, so "bar" or "brothel" or "inn" may be roughly decent approximations; but "bar" has the "... walks into a bar" English trope going for it.

No, the original text says:

ur-gir15-re eš2-dam-še in-kur9-ma

Alternatively notated as:

/urgir-e ešdam-še i.n-kur-ma/

Oh, sure. More accurately translated as "tavern".

Depends on your definition of "tavern."

Having lived in both places, a "tavern" in New York and a "tavern" in Wisconsin can be different things, depending on a lot of factors.

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