The Importance of Dying on Stage
Why St Bartholomew is depicted with a flaying knife
August is the month of jokes, thanks to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world. It was already the largest when I first performed there in 1996 as part of my university revue. It was called ‘The Usual Sketches’. Our flyer had us looking like The Usual Suspects poster. I returned to the Fringe the following year and then again after leaving university in 1999, when my show, Infinite Number of Monkeys, was nominated for the Perrier Best Newcomer Award.
The main Perrier Comedy award used to be a pathway to long-term TV success. When it started in 1981, it was won by The Cambridge Footlights containing Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson. Ten years later, it was won by Frank Skinner. Eddie Izzard, Lily Savage and Jack Dee were nominees. You get the idea.
According to The Rest is Entertainment, winning the award or doing well at the Fringe is no longer the predictor of success it once was. But the Fringe is still gigantic. There are over 4000 shows running this month in August. 1600 are comedy shows. That’s a lot of comedians. What’s the collective noun for rookie comedians? A quiver?
The point is this: even 9/11, the Credit Crunch, Covid, the disastrous tram project and Edinburgh City Council could not douse the raging fires of the comedy Fringe.
Perhaps this has been ordained by the Lord himself. The day celebrating the patron saint of comedians, St Lawrence, falls squarely in the middle of the Fringe season on 10th August. And it keeps running until 24thAugust, when we remember another holy joker, St Bartholomew. He is not only in the Bible (so Anglicans can have a feast day) but he also makes a joke in the Bible. And it doesn’t go very well. Which is funny.
What’s the Big Joke?
If you’ve read this blog for a while, you’ll already know the joke. That is because Bartholomew, listed as one of the twelve disciples in Matthew, Mark and Luke, is almost certainly Nathanael in John’s Gospel.
Bartholomew wasn’t given ‘Nathanael’ as a new name by Jesus, like Simon being called Peter ‘the Rock’. This would have been much to the relief of the other Simon, the Zealot who could have that name to himself. Jesus would still call Peter by his original when he’s doing something wrong, like falling asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane. That is distinctly un-rocklike behaviour.
So one man is Bartholomew in three gospels and Nathanael in the other, how can we be sure they are the same person with two different names?
That’s My Boy
First, Bartholomew is not really a name, but a description. His name is Bar-tholomew. That is, he is the son of (‘bar’) Tolmai, or Ptolmey, or similar. He may well have been known as that, but he would have had his own name. Otherwise his own son would have to be Barbar-tholomew, which makes him sound like a well-to-do elephant. Or a sheep.
Philip’s Pal
Secondly, if we look at the list of the disciples in Matthew (10:2-4), Mark (3:16-19) and Luke (6:13-16) we will find the same names (with one exception), often paired:
Simon Peter and Andrew; James and John.
Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew
James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus/Judas; Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot.
Philip is paired with Bartholomew in the Synoptic gospels. If we look in John’s gospel, we won’t find a list of twelve names, although ‘the Twelve’ is assumed in John 6:67-71 and referred to three times. In Chapter 1:43-46 we meet Philip:
The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.” Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
Philip runs to his friend Nathanael. It seems reasonable that they are a pair. Nathanael, son of Tolmai, then cracks the joke:
“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.
“Come and see,” said Philip.
I’ve written about this before so if you’re interested, you can read about that via a link at the bottom.
Tough Crowd
Nathanael’s joke bombs, and so we return to theme of comedy and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which has not only given me the highest highs as comedian, but also the lowest lows in comedy. It’s hard to generate much momentum in the room when it’s only five o’clock in the afternoon and in a venue that seats a hundred, your cast outnumbers the audience. Yup. Been there. Gilded Balloon 1997. (Sidenote: that show was also seen by Hugh Laurie, who was lovely but said nothing about it afterwards. Which said everything.)
So perhaps it’s appropriate that St Bartholomew’s symbol is a flaying knife. The reason for this is not the inappropriateness of his joke in John 1. In fact, the church tradition that I’ve read does not seem in the slightest bit interested in linking Bartholomew with Nathanael, whose symbol would surely be the branch of a fig tree under which Jesus sees him sitting.
Church tradition is much more excited by Bartholomew’s career as an apostle, making disciples of all nations as instructed by Jesus. It was Armenia where Bartholomew and Thaddeus (aka Jude) were quite the hit and held in high regard, not least because they were martyred there. St Bartholomew was flayed alive and then beheaded. Joking apart, this is a horrible story, but exactly what Jesus promised his followers. To follow Jesus is die. But to die is gain.
It’s always hard to imagine, but all the great comedians have had truly terrible times on the stage. All of them. Without exception. But any comedian who ‘dies’ on stage will tell you they learned from the experience. That’s why it’s called: ‘dying’. And it is only through death that we can be reborn into something better. That said, none of us want to be exposed to a flaying knife.
St Bartholomew is, therefore, the patron saint of tanners – whom he shares with the wisecracking St Lawrence that I wrote about a fortnight ago. So why not celebrate St Bartholomew’s Day, with a night out at some comedy and bag of pork scratchings? I’m not even joking.
Or you could book some comedy to come to your church. I can help with that:
Being Funny for Money
I’m writing another one-man funny Bible show. It doesn’t have a title yet but it will be me being funny about the Bible for an hour. Nice and simple. No fancy powerpoint like Water into Wine. So if you want me to come to your church, you can have your choice of dates by getting in now. ‘Reply to’ this email and I’ll get it. Or contact me here.
