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"The Andrians were the first of the islanders to refuse Themistocles' demand for money; he had put it to them that they would be unable to avoid paying, because the Athenians had the support of two powerful deities, one called Persuasion and the other Compulsion, and the Andrians had replied that had replied that Athens was lucky to have two such powerful gods, who were obviously responsible for her wealth and greatness; unfortunately, however, they themselves, in their small and inadequate land, had two utterly useless deities, who refused to leave the island and insisted on staying; and their names were Poverty and Inability." Herodotus' Histories, 8.111, translated by Aubrey de Selincourt

One of the few attempts he makes at telling a joke. Not a very good joke, but it's his best attempt.

The context is that after the battle of Salamis, Themistocles sailed around the states that had refused to join the Greek coalition against the Persians. They had to pay him money or they had to withstand a siege. Andros, unfortunately, was besieged. This whole action seems to be the beginning of Athenian imperialism, and they would soon set up the Delian League.

I'm not sure if there was a disastrous result. I can't imagine either side would have liked to have their societies characterised as poor and weak or money-grabbing. Though Themistocles has a reputation for being a bit greedy.

So I was reading Culture of the Babylonian Talmud. There's a chapter on scholarly elitism in the Talmud. The latest layers of redaction specifically in the Babylonian (but not the Palestinian) Talmud has a number of profoundly negative and pejorative statements about the am ha-aretz, or peasantry, which are often specifically in contrast with their Palestinian counterparts.

There's no evidence that there was particular animocity between the Rabbinic establishment and the am ha-aretz during this period in Babylon. Without more evidence, it seems to be a literary phenomenon. Rubenstein suggests that these references form a genre of joke, the "peasant joke", which served a similar function and had similar form to modern racial or ethnic jokes--they're a bit of humorous snobbery, and are a convenient way of promoting subcultural identity by caricaturing outsiders.

I'll edit to add a thing with a few examples of puns in Jewish literature after lunch.

Puns. Jewish literature loves 'em. Always has, probably always will. The first ones are in the bible. My personal favorite is in Judges 10.

ויהי לו שלשים בנים רכבים על שלשים עירים ושלשים עירים להם להם יקראו חות יאיר

And he [Ya'ir] had thirty sons who rode on thirty donkeys ['ayarim] and they had thirty cities ['ayarim] which were called the villages of Ya'ir

Funny? I didn't think so. There are a lot of similar puns elsewhere. A dark one is in Exodus. When Joseph interprets others' dreams in prison, the text makes use of a double meaning. For one dream he uses "lift up your head" to mean "lift up your status from prison" and for another he uses it to mean "lift your head from your body by decapitation". A common genre is name-puns. Characters' names will somehow be "fulfilled" later in the narrative. Sometimes people talk about Rabbinic puns on biblical texts, but most of these aren't really puns or humor. They're exegetical or literary techniques, not attempts at humor.

What are attempts at humor are names of Rabbinic texts. It's customary to give works of Jewish law a title that references something biblical. One big one is the Tur. It's a Medieval law code, arranged into four topical volumes. The name is a reference to the four-rowed breastplate of the High Priest, and each of the sections has a name that is a line from the bible, and somehow also refers to the content. Another is Maimonides' Mishneh Torah. The subtitle is the Yad haChazakah, the Strong Hand. This is a biblical allusion, and also references that it is 14 volumes--"yad" is written the same was as "14" if you're writing numbers with the Hebrew alphabet. A commentary to the Shulchan Arukh (which means the "set table") is called the Mapah, which means tablecloth. The guy who wrote Kaf HaChaim has "Chaim" as his middle name, and his next book, Yagel Yaakov, references his first name, Yaakov (both of those are also biblical allusions). The Ben Ish Chai references the initials of its author, Yosef Chaim. Most recently, the Yalkut Yosef is written by a Rabbi named Yosef, and its name, "collection of Yosef", alludes to the fact that it is a collection of his responsa while also being a biblical allusion. R' Moshe Feinstein wrote Igrot Moshe, "epistles of Moses", which again is a biblical allusion while referencing that it's a collection of responsa and referencing his name. Eliezer Waldenberg and Sholmo Zalman Auerbach both titled their works with biblical allusions containing their names, with Tzitz Eliezer and Minchat Shlomo, respectively. The Chazon Ish is a bit different. It's a biblical allusion, and its meaning, "vision of a man", references the fact that it was published anonymously.

If you got bored with that, the short version--lots of Rabbis gave their works titles that referenced something subtly. Maybe the contents, maybe the structure, maybe their name, maybe something else, maybe a combination. They're really clever.

(This example is only really humorous--and even then darkly humorous--in retrospect, but it certainly was unofficial and accidental)

So, it's October of 1944, near the Philippines. . Late on the 24th, a Japanese strike force consisting of carriers and escorts was spotted. Admiral Halsey had been chosen for command specifically for his aggressive nature and he lived up to type. He sent a large force of carriers and battleships racing northward towards the Japanese force with the intentions of wiping it out entirely.

What he didn't know was that the Japanese had successfully snuck a force of surface ships through the San Bernardino Strait and were currently attacking a force of destroyers and escort carriers that were hopelessly overmatched. If this American force was destroyed it would be possible for the Japanese surface force to destroy the American invasion fleet. A succession of frantic messages were sent to Halsey's force--the only nearby ships that could hope to slug it out with the Japanese fleet. With growing alarm, Halsey figured out that he had to send forces back south to safeguard the vulnerable troop ships.

There was one message that stood out amidst the chaos of battle.

"TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG FROM CINCPAC ACTION COM THIRD FLEET INFO COMINCH CTF SEVENTY-SEVEN X WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS."

The World Wonders. Halsey took it as a biting personal critique of his leadership. (The rest of the message translates as a request from Admiral Nimitz asking for the location of the planned Task Force 34 that was supposed to guard San Bernardino Strait)

The offending phrase wasn't supposed to be part of the message.

If you look closely at the message, you see that it begins with "The Turkey Trots"--double consonants (skipping the "the"). This was padding used to complicate Japanese efforts to break American encryption. "The World Wonders" wasn't a critique, it was the padding at the end of the message. Double consonants were used at the beginning and end of the message. The signal office screwed up and included the offending phrase in the dispatch to Halsey when they should have removed it.

So, the loss of life in the desperate fighting of that day makes this “dig” just one somewhat humorous part of a much darker struggle, but I thought it fit the theme for the day. The message should have been hidden—it was likely a previously selected reference to the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Balaclava—but was accidentally included and Halsey certainly took it as an extremely personal critique.

Some unintentional scatological humor from the life of St. Martin:

Tum vero, ac si candens ferrum faucibus accepisset, longe reductis dentibus digitos beati viri vitabat attingere: et cum fugere de obsesso corpore poenis et cruciatibus cogeretur, nec tamen exire ei per os liceret, foeda relinquens vestigia fluxu ventris egestus est.

"And indeed, as if he had taken red-hot iron into his mouth, flinched back trying to avoid the fingers of the blessed man [in his mouth], and, forced to flee from the besieged body and the torture, but not being able to exit through the mouth, went out by flux of the bowel, leaving a fetid trail behind."

And from the Irish!

"He took a handful of water to put on his face. One of his men stopped him: ‘O king,’ he said, ‘do not put that water on your face.’ ‘Why?’ asked the king. ‘I am ashamed to say,’ said he.‘What shame do you have at telling the truth?’ asked the king. ‘This is it,’ he replied; ‘the clergy's privy is over that water.’ ‘Is it there,’ asked the king, ‘that the cleric himself goes to defecate?’ ‘It is indeed,’ said the youth. ‘Not only,’ said the king, ‘shall I put it upon my face, but I shall also put it in my mouth, and I shall drink it (drinking three mouthfuls of it), for the water into which his faeces go is a sacrament to me.’ That was told to Muru, and he thanked God that Aed Alláin had such faith. Then he summoned Áed Alláin to him (Áed Uaridnach was another of his names), and Muru said to him: ‘Dear son,’ he said, ‘as reward for that reverence you have given the church, I promise, in God's witness, that you will take the kingship of Ireland shortly."

In Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, he refers at several times to his main source, the Vulgate Arthur, a.k.a. the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. This was a popular French telling of the Arthur legends. But the funny thing is, whenever Malory says "as the French book saith", he's lying. He uses that phrase specifically to point out places where he has changed the story, but of course only people who have read the Vulgate could possibly know that. (I even wrote a paper about this, if anyone wants to see it.) So, while it's not exactly an official document, I thought that sort of sly in-joke might fit nonetheless.

Since /u/telkanuru got us started with the Irish, I would be remiss if St. Brigit went without mention. In the Bethu Brigte, the anonymous author recounts an incident in which Brigit is forced to deal with the people in her life who wish to marry her off despite her intent to remain unwed:

There were poor people living close to Dubthach's house. She went one day carrying a small load for them. Her brothers, her father's sons, who had come from Mag Lifi, met her. Some of them were laughing at her; others were not pleased with her, namely Bacéne, who said: ‘The beautiful eye which is in your head will be betrothed to a man though you like it or not.’ Thereupon she immediately thrusts her finger into her eye. ‘Here is that beautiful eye for you’, said Brigit. ‘I deem it unlikely’, said she, ‘that anyone will ask you for a blind girl.'

No one else seemed to like her little joke. Her brothers began to panic, running around trying to find water to clean out the wound, but Brigit seemed unconcerned:

‘Put’, said she, ‘my staff about this sod in front of you.’ That was done. A stream gushed forth from the earth. And she cursed Bacéne and his descendants, and said: ‘Soon your two eyes will burst in your head.’ And it happened thus.

Have any historians ever embarked upon reading and researching a primary source, only to discover at the end, it was a shaggy dog story?

In its original sense, a shaggy dog story is an extremely long-winded anecdote characterized by extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents and terminated by an anticlimax or a pointless punchline.