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Abstract
Frye hypothesises that the complete Bible story is close to the narrative category of comedy (cf. Frye: 185). The wrath of the Father, which is appeased, the happy ending, and the signals of the final wedding feast are proof of his proposition. Expanding the theory, one could observe that the Bible contains characters typical of comedy also. Satan, for example, would be similar to the bomolochos, the character who is at the centre of the comic mood, and who steals and lies (cf. Wilkins: 88). The character is related to hedonism, food and the female element, which sometimes defeats him. The bomolochos is to be found in the slave Palestrio from Plautus’s The Braggart Soldier, in Shakespeare’s Falstaff from Henry IV, and also in the servant La Flèche from Molière’s The Miser. An ominous variation, useful for an understanding of the biblical Satan, is present in the potent local communist politician Bukara, from Brešan’s The Exhibition of Hamlet in the Village of Mrduša Donja. Satan is in the Bible the father of lies (Jn 8:44), he persuades other persons to steal food or bids food to cheat them; he lies to the woman in Genesis and tries to kill her in Revelations, yet suffers the final defeat.
The article investigates the following elements: a) stealing and frauds with food; b) frauds and conflicts related to women; c) tricks connected to power and knowledge; d) questions of life and death, around which Satan’s activities circle in the Bible. After an introduction providing general information, the marks are investigated in the following scenes: the commission of the Original sin (Gen 3); Job, Satan, and Yahweh (especially 1:9- 11); The Temptation in the Desert (esp. Mt 4:3-4); The Last Supper (esp. Jn 13:23-27);
Revelations (esp. chapter 12). The interpretation will analyse in more detail the relations of Satan / bomolochos to the other characters present in the scenes; and his role will be compared with the roles of a bomolochos in secular comedies.
