As a reader for my own pleasure of a lot of things that most people only study when forced to, I like to think that I have a better-than-average appreciation for the subtle sense of humor that a writer can work into a "serious" scholarly work. As G.K. Chesterton noted, serious and funny are not mutually exclusive, only funny and not funny. Believe it or not, St. Augustine had a sense of humor, and even St. Jerome, and it comes out even in the midst of some of his strongest invectives, if you have eyes to see it. It's not "comic relief" like in a movie, but it can help to relieve the tension and weight of the work in an analogous way.
In the course of reading two six-hundred-or-so page books of his, I came to appreciate N.T. Wright's brand of academic humor. One little touch I remember is where, in talking about some structural feature of the Parable of the Weeds Among the Wheat (Mt. 13:24-30) he asks about whether "a redactor has done this."
I have a feeling that someday (I don't know how long), as he writes more and more of them Peter's natural wit and clever humor will become more integrated into his academic voice, so that his academic treatises and scholarly articles will be highly amusing as well as edifying.
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