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Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine
A provocative character study of the historical Jesus and Yahweh is presented from the perspective of a literary critic, citing inconsistencies and logical flaws throughout the gospels while arguing that the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament are incompatible texts that reflect differing political and religious purposes. By the author of The Anxiety of Influence. 75,000 first printing.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
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464 people want to read
About the author
Harold Bloom
1,712 books2,000 followersHarold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.
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October 9, 2021
Mixing Metaphors Is Dangerous Business
Theology, Harold Bloom recognises, is a style of poetry, mostly bad and often dangerous, especially when it starts up-ending established metaphors. Christian theology presents itself as commentary on foundational texts called the Bible. But these foundational texts are also poetic; they are theology not uninterpreted description. This is something which causes consternation to the theologians who wish to 'stabilise' sacred scriptures by fixing their meaning in order that theological thought can move on.
Literary criticism in the hands of a master like Harold Bloom breaks through the limits imposed by the discipline of theology. Specifically, literary criticism ignores theological intention. It doesn't care about faith or foundational texts. All texts are derivative. All texts are infinitely interpretable. The text, its characters, the coherence of its plot, its stylistic merits are the phenomena of interest, not its purported referent, God.
The question that Bloom poses is therefore literary: How does the mischievous, slightly insane character of Yahweh, one of the Hebrew divine names, become the sedate, unseen, somewhat redundant God the Father and his stand-in, Jesus the Christ, of the New Testament?
From a literary perspective, Yahweh is the supreme fiction created by any civilisation, anywhere, at any time. The only rival, according to Bloom, is Shakespeare's King Lear, who is clearly modelled on him. Yahweh is the protagonist of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, but not of the Christian Old Testament, which has high-jacked Yahweh as a character and re-cast him entirely.
The co-optation of Yahweh was possible because of the poetic nature of scripture. The dominant trope in theology is metaphor. Metaphors are malleable. Twist one component and the relationship among terms shifts in myriad ways. Yahweh of the Tanakh is a warrior, a somewhat irascible, often needy entity, who comes and goes without explanation. During his period of guiding the Israelites through the desert to the promised land he appears to go a little mad. He stands, sword in hand with Joshua at Jericho and directs the destruction of thousands of innocents from time to time. This is the God, Yahweh, of irony and hyperbole.
Shift the emphasis from war and unpredictability to unlimited power, however, and there is a totally transcendent entity with only the most distant relationship with his creation. Re-interpret petulant jealousy as fatherly concern and frustration with his children, we then have an intense regal love which is constant. Understand that apparent mass murder is part of a grand master plan and the bloodshed is subsumed within an eternal mystery in which we must maintain faith. This is God the Father of the Christian Trinity, a God of omnipotence, omniscience, and of total impassivity. Not the character Yahweh. Different play. Different script.
This poetic process of metaphorical transformation applies equally to the person of Jesus. Bloom counts at least seven different Jesuses in the New or, as he prefers, Belated Covenant. Jesus is, among others, the pious Jewish man who continues the traditions of the Tanakh as suggested in the Epistle of James. He is visibly transformed through the mysterious and ambiguous metaphor Son of God in the gospel of Mark. And most dramatically he is cast as the overwhelmingly metaphoric Word, the eternally present companion of God in the gospel of John.
This last metaphor is sufficiently powerful to replace even the Tanakh itself as the focus of worship. Bloom is quite explicit in his appreciation of the intent: "The entire argument of the Belated Testament is that a man has replaced scripture." And not just scripture: Jesus’s remark “Before Abraham was I am” is a clear literary dig at Yahweh himself who self-identified in the Tanakh as ehyeh asher ehyer, “I am Who am.”
The literary process reaches another local high point in the gospel of John. As Bloom correctly notes, "There is very little basis in the Synoptics [the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke] for the runaway Christianity [and anti-Semitism] of John....The central irony, for anyone who is not a Christian believer, is that the living Jesus of the Synoptics does NOT believe he is the Incarnation of Yahweh, and least of all at the moment of his death..." Thus there is a great deal of necessary back-filling theologically speaking, which will continue for several hundred years.
This process of literary transformation is triggered by Paul of Tarsus, a Jew who had never met Jesus but created a movement in his name. Jesus of Nazareth is entirely replaced by Paul with Jesus Christ, who is not to be known but simply 'believed on.' He has neither biography nor history that we can rely on.
As the protagonist of the New Testament Jesus Christ eclipses, or upstages, God the Father. The script laid out by Paul doesn't even have the Father in a walk-on part. Paul in fact conducts a very forceful aesthetic war, not against Yahweh whom he dares not attack, but against the vulnerable Moses, his go-to guy.
In Paul's hands Moses doesn't even rate second-billing. He's yesterday's news. Paul mis-quotes where he can and slanderously mis-interprets where he can't. Bloom can't resist Frederick Nietzsche's take on Paul:
Bloom's own opinion of Paul is only slightly less heated: "Paul is an obsessed crank, who confuses anyone attempting a dispassionate stance toward him."
Bloom's objective in the book is to demonstrate that Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus Christ, and Yahweh are three totally incompatible literary personages. That he succeeds is without doubt. He leaves the theological implications of this incompatibility largely to the reader.
Addendum
The day after posting this review an interesting academic pre-quel showed up in my internet feed. Although written from a theological not a literary perspective, it confirms Bloom's hypothesis of the metaphorical development of the idea of Yahweh out of the previous names of God in the ancient Middle East:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/1...
This is the abstract:
It is often taken for granted today that the differing terms for God in the Hebrew Bible function as synonyms, although, originally, not all terminology used for God referred to the same deity. This article provides an overview of the terms El, Yahweh, and Elohim, which are all equated today, and a hypothetical reconstruction of when these terms came to prominence in Ancient Israel. After plotting and considering the contribution of each term to the development of monotheism in Israel, which ultimately laid the foundation for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the following analysis considers some of the ensuing implications for communities of faith today when relating to their differing faith traditions.
Theology, Harold Bloom recognises, is a style of poetry, mostly bad and often dangerous, especially when it starts up-ending established metaphors. Christian theology presents itself as commentary on foundational texts called the Bible. But these foundational texts are also poetic; they are theology not uninterpreted description. This is something which causes consternation to the theologians who wish to 'stabilise' sacred scriptures by fixing their meaning in order that theological thought can move on.
Literary criticism in the hands of a master like Harold Bloom breaks through the limits imposed by the discipline of theology. Specifically, literary criticism ignores theological intention. It doesn't care about faith or foundational texts. All texts are derivative. All texts are infinitely interpretable. The text, its characters, the coherence of its plot, its stylistic merits are the phenomena of interest, not its purported referent, God.
The question that Bloom poses is therefore literary: How does the mischievous, slightly insane character of Yahweh, one of the Hebrew divine names, become the sedate, unseen, somewhat redundant God the Father and his stand-in, Jesus the Christ, of the New Testament?
From a literary perspective, Yahweh is the supreme fiction created by any civilisation, anywhere, at any time. The only rival, according to Bloom, is Shakespeare's King Lear, who is clearly modelled on him. Yahweh is the protagonist of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, but not of the Christian Old Testament, which has high-jacked Yahweh as a character and re-cast him entirely.
The co-optation of Yahweh was possible because of the poetic nature of scripture. The dominant trope in theology is metaphor. Metaphors are malleable. Twist one component and the relationship among terms shifts in myriad ways. Yahweh of the Tanakh is a warrior, a somewhat irascible, often needy entity, who comes and goes without explanation. During his period of guiding the Israelites through the desert to the promised land he appears to go a little mad. He stands, sword in hand with Joshua at Jericho and directs the destruction of thousands of innocents from time to time. This is the God, Yahweh, of irony and hyperbole.
Shift the emphasis from war and unpredictability to unlimited power, however, and there is a totally transcendent entity with only the most distant relationship with his creation. Re-interpret petulant jealousy as fatherly concern and frustration with his children, we then have an intense regal love which is constant. Understand that apparent mass murder is part of a grand master plan and the bloodshed is subsumed within an eternal mystery in which we must maintain faith. This is God the Father of the Christian Trinity, a God of omnipotence, omniscience, and of total impassivity. Not the character Yahweh. Different play. Different script.
This poetic process of metaphorical transformation applies equally to the person of Jesus. Bloom counts at least seven different Jesuses in the New or, as he prefers, Belated Covenant. Jesus is, among others, the pious Jewish man who continues the traditions of the Tanakh as suggested in the Epistle of James. He is visibly transformed through the mysterious and ambiguous metaphor Son of God in the gospel of Mark. And most dramatically he is cast as the overwhelmingly metaphoric Word, the eternally present companion of God in the gospel of John.
This last metaphor is sufficiently powerful to replace even the Tanakh itself as the focus of worship. Bloom is quite explicit in his appreciation of the intent: "The entire argument of the Belated Testament is that a man has replaced scripture." And not just scripture: Jesus’s remark “Before Abraham was I am” is a clear literary dig at Yahweh himself who self-identified in the Tanakh as ehyeh asher ehyer, “I am Who am.”
The literary process reaches another local high point in the gospel of John. As Bloom correctly notes, "There is very little basis in the Synoptics [the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke] for the runaway Christianity [and anti-Semitism] of John....The central irony, for anyone who is not a Christian believer, is that the living Jesus of the Synoptics does NOT believe he is the Incarnation of Yahweh, and least of all at the moment of his death..." Thus there is a great deal of necessary back-filling theologically speaking, which will continue for several hundred years.
This process of literary transformation is triggered by Paul of Tarsus, a Jew who had never met Jesus but created a movement in his name. Jesus of Nazareth is entirely replaced by Paul with Jesus Christ, who is not to be known but simply 'believed on.' He has neither biography nor history that we can rely on.
As the protagonist of the New Testament Jesus Christ eclipses, or upstages, God the Father. The script laid out by Paul doesn't even have the Father in a walk-on part. Paul in fact conducts a very forceful aesthetic war, not against Yahweh whom he dares not attack, but against the vulnerable Moses, his go-to guy.
In Paul's hands Moses doesn't even rate second-billing. He's yesterday's news. Paul mis-quotes where he can and slanderously mis-interprets where he can't. Bloom can't resist Frederick Nietzsche's take on Paul:
"Paul is the incarnation of a type which is the reverse of that of the Saviour: he is the genius in hatred, in the standpoint of hatred, and in the relentless logic of hatred...What he wanted was power: with St. Paul the priest again aspired to power."
Bloom's own opinion of Paul is only slightly less heated: "Paul is an obsessed crank, who confuses anyone attempting a dispassionate stance toward him."
Bloom's objective in the book is to demonstrate that Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus Christ, and Yahweh are three totally incompatible literary personages. That he succeeds is without doubt. He leaves the theological implications of this incompatibility largely to the reader.
Addendum
The day after posting this review an interesting academic pre-quel showed up in my internet feed. Although written from a theological not a literary perspective, it confirms Bloom's hypothesis of the metaphorical development of the idea of Yahweh out of the previous names of God in the ancient Middle East:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/1...
This is the abstract:
It is often taken for granted today that the differing terms for God in the Hebrew Bible function as synonyms, although, originally, not all terminology used for God referred to the same deity. This article provides an overview of the terms El, Yahweh, and Elohim, which are all equated today, and a hypothetical reconstruction of when these terms came to prominence in Ancient Israel. After plotting and considering the contribution of each term to the development of monotheism in Israel, which ultimately laid the foundation for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the following analysis considers some of the ensuing implications for communities of faith today when relating to their differing faith traditions.
February 28, 2012
A difficult but fascinating examination of the two most impenetrable literary characters of all time: Yahweh and Jesus of the Gospel of Mark. Bloom also examines the various other versions of Yahweh (Allah, God the Father) and Jesus (the mysterious but historical Yeshua of Nazareth, the other synoptic Gospels, John, the Gnostics). Now, the very fact that more multiples of these mysterious and endlessly compelling figures exists may surprise those immersed in the rhetoric and teachings of the Christian right and modern theology, but Bloom, as he states many times, is writing for exactly that reason; he seeks to expose falsehoods that are accepted as fact by most Americans. And who better to take on these characters than Bloom, the greatest living writer on Shakespeare, the Bard being the only writer to create characters that rival Yahweh and Jesus in depth and aesthetic eminence. As Bloom's books so often do, Jesus and Yahweh refers heavily to Shakespeare and Freud as well as to a number of religious sages, philosophers, and modern academics most of whom were unfamiliar to me. Essentially, Bloom's central thesis is that Judaism and Christianity are fundamentally irreconcilable religions, but this has been obscured to the point where it is sacrilege to support this idea, for which Bloom provides extensive evidence. Bloom also makes the controversial but very welcome point that from a literary point of view there should be no distinction between sacred and religious texts. All of the typical joys of Bloom's work are present here: a beautifully rendered and engaging prose style, wit, extensive research and a knowledge of literature that is truly second to none, resistance to popular but malignant trends in academe, etc. It also had the flaws, minor as they are, most notably a tendency to repeat certain ideas more than is necessary, in chapter after chapter. But that is a minor point.
This is one of the most thought provoking books on religion that has been written in recent years, and Professor Bloom's ideas are sure to cause disquiet in both the religious and secular. He reveals how mistaken the majority of both groups are in their assumptions about Jesus and Yahweh, the two most central and undefinable figures of Western literature.
This is one of the most thought provoking books on religion that has been written in recent years, and Professor Bloom's ideas are sure to cause disquiet in both the religious and secular. He reveals how mistaken the majority of both groups are in their assumptions about Jesus and Yahweh, the two most central and undefinable figures of Western literature.
August 2, 2021
A work studded with extraordinary and unsettling insights -- Christianity an usurpation rather than excrescence of Judaism? The New Testament as deliberate misreading of the Hebrew Bible?
In this slim, dense volume, Harold Bloom, the late Yale humanities professor — who did not shrink from antagonizing America's million-mom PTA by declaring that it would be better if grade school children should read nothing at all than read Harry Potter — sets his sights on even larger game: the Godhead Him/Her/It/Themself.
A life of literary study and criticism has evidently left Bloom bereft of any approach to Yahweh and Yeshua other than as literary characters. But then, as he had already made clear in his Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human, Bloom considers all of us literary characters, too -- or, worse luck, poor parodies thereof.
In his at times too-cryptic aphorisms and in the way he interpenetrates the personal with the cosmic, Bloom reminds me of no one so much as another great nay-sayer: Frederick Nietzsche.
In this slim, dense volume, Harold Bloom, the late Yale humanities professor — who did not shrink from antagonizing America's million-mom PTA by declaring that it would be better if grade school children should read nothing at all than read Harry Potter — sets his sights on even larger game: the Godhead Him/Her/It/Themself.
A life of literary study and criticism has evidently left Bloom bereft of any approach to Yahweh and Yeshua other than as literary characters. But then, as he had already made clear in his Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human, Bloom considers all of us literary characters, too -- or, worse luck, poor parodies thereof.
In his at times too-cryptic aphorisms and in the way he interpenetrates the personal with the cosmic, Bloom reminds me of no one so much as another great nay-sayer: Frederick Nietzsche.
July 29, 2007
Yeeshua. I've finished this now. Bloom makes some very interesting observations, but I felt all the way through that he sort of missed that there are actual humans inventing the human and so he ends up either writing about literature as if it's real or about real people as if they're literary inventions. I dunno, maybe I need to read some of his other works to get the hang of his thinking.
January 16, 2009
Fascinating book that takes theological and historical research on Jesus and the Tanakh and uses the tools of literary criticism to explore vast difference between the Jewish G-d and the Christian Christ. With echoes of his Anxiety of Influence, Bloom essentially sees Christ and Christianity as founded on creative "misreadings" of YHWH and the Jewish scriptures.
Want to read
February 27, 2017I’ve watched/listened to several interviews* Bloom gave and took some notes. But you must never forget that Bloom has got a cultural Jewish back ground.
1- It’s interesting his model of viewing biblical figures as “literary characters”. Jesus, and Jacob, even God, are viewed as “literary characters”.
2- Jesus is viewed as Hamlet …”unpredictable…and abrupt”; there are (according to the counts of Bloom) at least 7 versions of Jesus. Mark’s (Gospel) version is the one that’s assimilated to Hamlet.
3- God/Yahweh is like King Lear: “intense and irascible”.
4- To Bloom, there’s uniqueness in the American Christianity. It has its roots in the work of Emerson; it started “ecstatically” in 1801 in Kentucky.
5- As for the God/Yahweh, in present times, Bloom says “he has chosen to be absent”. I am referring the times of “Benito Bush” (Bloom’s expression).
6- As a personal “staggering” experience, Bloom recalled his talks with some Americans (in the south) who say they talk with Jesus on a daily basis.
7- On his work he had recourse to the Geneva Bibles.
8-There's a mismatch between Yahweh and Jesus.
-----
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PNV3...
1- It’s interesting his model of viewing biblical figures as “literary characters”. Jesus, and Jacob, even God, are viewed as “literary characters”.
2- Jesus is viewed as Hamlet …”unpredictable…and abrupt”; there are (according to the counts of Bloom) at least 7 versions of Jesus. Mark’s (Gospel) version is the one that’s assimilated to Hamlet.
3- God/Yahweh is like King Lear: “intense and irascible”.
4- To Bloom, there’s uniqueness in the American Christianity. It has its roots in the work of Emerson; it started “ecstatically” in 1801 in Kentucky.
5- As for the God/Yahweh, in present times, Bloom says “he has chosen to be absent”. I am referring the times of “Benito Bush” (Bloom’s expression).
6- As a personal “staggering” experience, Bloom recalled his talks with some Americans (in the south) who say they talk with Jesus on a daily basis.
7- On his work he had recourse to the Geneva Bibles.
8-There's a mismatch between Yahweh and Jesus.
-----
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PNV3...
October 6, 2012
I went through a brief Bloom phase shortly after college, reading a few of his more accessible books, and flattering myself to think that I had the capacity to understand and critique his arguments. If ever such a window was open, however (and I think it unlikely that it ever was), I have to conclude that it has long since closed. The truth is that, regardless of intellect, I lack the context to properly keep up with what he's saying here and elsewhere, and given that I have no interest in devoting years of study to literary criticism, kabbalah, and gnostic mysticism, I never will. All of which is just to say that everything I say from here on out should be taken with the appropriate half pound of salt.
First of all, I'm not sure what Bloom's purpose here is. His volume in neither introductory nor comprehensive, and his argument is so scattershot that I really have no idea what his conclusion is, or if he even intends one in the first place. If it's biographical, why does he wait until he's twenty pages from the end to begin discussing Yahweh's psychology? If it's literary, why is there so little close analysis of actual biblical text? If it's historical, why does he bounce around chronologically? As near as I can figure, his primary point seems to be that the god of the Old Testament is different from the god of the New Testament, who is in turn different from the god worshiped by (primarily American) Christians today, thus suggesting that our Judeo-Christian society bears no resemblance to actual Judaism or Christianity (although if you ask me, that argument was made to much better affect in Stephen Prothero's Religious Literacy).
On the other hand, I do kind of understand the point of the book (albeit in a rather cynical, nasty way). Because when I think about Bloom, I think about his obsessions: namely his idea that human personality as we know it is a literary construction (which I find believable, if a bit strange) and his habit of connecting everything (and I mean everything) to Shakespeare, especially the characters of Hamlet and Falstaff (although Lear seems to have supplanted Falstaff in this volume, whether as a more decorous choice for a book about divinity, or as a symptom of Bloom's own changing feelings, I cannot say). With that in mind (and I'm certainly not the first to posit this), I suspect Bloom sees himself as Falstaff's heir. Personally, however, I've always seen his true literary antecedent as Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty. Humpty's (Mr. Dumpty if you're nasty) insistence that when he uses a word that its meaning depends on what he wants it to mean is an act of pure ego, and Bloom seems to capture that comical impulse in a serious way. His conjectures become facts upon which he can further conjecture, and this is most apparent when speaking about both Shakespeare and the Bible, two areas where facts are in such short supply. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, and it can be entertaining, but there always seems to be a moment where I find myself wondering whether what I'm reading is anything more than cleverly-spun webs of bullshit. So that's my opinion of Bloom: that his writing is a pure manifestation of his ego, deducing the existence of a world that fits his conclusions and then willing it into being. Put another way, I don't think it's a coincidence that the cover of this book reads "Jesus and Yahweh / Harold Bloom / The Names Divine".
That's the broad strokes for me, although I feel like there's more that I can/should say, although a lot of it boils down to my own religious obsessions and skepticism. For example, I'm not sure I understand Bloom's own faith. He clearly believes the Bible, as we know it, to be a text constructed and assembled, by distinct people, since its first appearance (appearances), for many and varied reasons, often far from spiritual. Yet at the same time, he seems to treat it as an abstract truth, its flaws and inconsistencies a part of its inherent design, rather than a consequence of its slipshod manufacture. The nearest analogy I can think of would be trying to analyze the personality of Batman, while treating all his varied incarnations as part of a unified whole, rather than as completely separate entities created by a multitude of writers. Instead of boiling them all down into a skeleton of the "essential Batman", however, he seems to be rationalizing the inconsistencies, treating the goofy, campy 1960's TV character as the same person as Frank Miller's bitter, violent Dark Knight, and trying to explain their coexistence as a symptom of the creation, rather than the creators.
Yeah, maybe I should have stopped with "Bloom thinks he's god" rather than "I think Bloom thinks that god is Batman."
First of all, I'm not sure what Bloom's purpose here is. His volume in neither introductory nor comprehensive, and his argument is so scattershot that I really have no idea what his conclusion is, or if he even intends one in the first place. If it's biographical, why does he wait until he's twenty pages from the end to begin discussing Yahweh's psychology? If it's literary, why is there so little close analysis of actual biblical text? If it's historical, why does he bounce around chronologically? As near as I can figure, his primary point seems to be that the god of the Old Testament is different from the god of the New Testament, who is in turn different from the god worshiped by (primarily American) Christians today, thus suggesting that our Judeo-Christian society bears no resemblance to actual Judaism or Christianity (although if you ask me, that argument was made to much better affect in Stephen Prothero's Religious Literacy).
On the other hand, I do kind of understand the point of the book (albeit in a rather cynical, nasty way). Because when I think about Bloom, I think about his obsessions: namely his idea that human personality as we know it is a literary construction (which I find believable, if a bit strange) and his habit of connecting everything (and I mean everything) to Shakespeare, especially the characters of Hamlet and Falstaff (although Lear seems to have supplanted Falstaff in this volume, whether as a more decorous choice for a book about divinity, or as a symptom of Bloom's own changing feelings, I cannot say). With that in mind (and I'm certainly not the first to posit this), I suspect Bloom sees himself as Falstaff's heir. Personally, however, I've always seen his true literary antecedent as Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty. Humpty's (Mr. Dumpty if you're nasty) insistence that when he uses a word that its meaning depends on what he wants it to mean is an act of pure ego, and Bloom seems to capture that comical impulse in a serious way. His conjectures become facts upon which he can further conjecture, and this is most apparent when speaking about both Shakespeare and the Bible, two areas where facts are in such short supply. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, and it can be entertaining, but there always seems to be a moment where I find myself wondering whether what I'm reading is anything more than cleverly-spun webs of bullshit. So that's my opinion of Bloom: that his writing is a pure manifestation of his ego, deducing the existence of a world that fits his conclusions and then willing it into being. Put another way, I don't think it's a coincidence that the cover of this book reads "Jesus and Yahweh / Harold Bloom / The Names Divine".
That's the broad strokes for me, although I feel like there's more that I can/should say, although a lot of it boils down to my own religious obsessions and skepticism. For example, I'm not sure I understand Bloom's own faith. He clearly believes the Bible, as we know it, to be a text constructed and assembled, by distinct people, since its first appearance (appearances), for many and varied reasons, often far from spiritual. Yet at the same time, he seems to treat it as an abstract truth, its flaws and inconsistencies a part of its inherent design, rather than a consequence of its slipshod manufacture. The nearest analogy I can think of would be trying to analyze the personality of Batman, while treating all his varied incarnations as part of a unified whole, rather than as completely separate entities created by a multitude of writers. Instead of boiling them all down into a skeleton of the "essential Batman", however, he seems to be rationalizing the inconsistencies, treating the goofy, campy 1960's TV character as the same person as Frank Miller's bitter, violent Dark Knight, and trying to explain their coexistence as a symptom of the creation, rather than the creators.
Yeah, maybe I should have stopped with "Bloom thinks he's god" rather than "I think Bloom thinks that god is Batman."
September 30, 2015
I have not read anything by Harold Bloom before this book, so I do not have a strong bias one way or the other about him. I wanted to like this book, but I had to stop about 2/3 of the way in to it. He makes too many mysterious claims, such as "I am a Gnostic Jew," for me to even say there is a sustained argument here. At best, his argument could be summarized as Mark's Jesus seems a bit like the thoroughly human Yahweh of the Torah (and in particular, the J strand, which Bloom still thinks may be from Bathsheba!). You would do better reading a bibliography beyond that, as he merely hints at arguments made by others, although I will admit he makes interesting suggestions, like the book on the psychological profile of Jesus, which I forgot to write down...
April 7, 2009
This book was way too intellectual for my poor brain. Perhaps if I had read some of the author's previous books I would have understood his points of view better, especially all the references to connect Shakespeare and Jesus. I found the book a difficult read that was repetitious and rambling. What was his point? He did make a consistent case for Yahweh and the Hebrew bible being quite different from the Christian God and the Old Testament, which he believes was remodeled to accomodate the Gospels in the New Testament. Jews and Christians are different! Well I guess that may be news to some people, but he lost me early on in the book and I would not recommend it.
January 17, 2012
a comparison of the two from a literary standpoint, i.e. as literary characters. I knew a lot more about Jesus than Yahweh going in, being well versed in my catechism, but the God of the Tanakh (what Christians call the Old Testament) was a revelation (no pun intended). As usual, Bloom has his mannerisms (like repeating his thesis way too often), but I've always found his rambling criticism to be much like my own, and he always always makes me want to reach for whatever books he's discussing, and that's a good thing.
August 30, 2012
Bloom is brilliant and has read everything and incorporates everything he's read into everything he writes. I did not, finally, agree with all of his conclusions but found him fascinating and am glad I read his book for his many interesting leads into other texts. I especially appreciated his discussion of Kabbalah. Will return to this book from time to time.
August 28, 2023
Rolicking good ride, positively brimming with witty heresy. Bloom is a joy to read.
May 22, 2016
Harold Bloom es el crítico literario más famoso de los Estados Unidos, ha escrito más de 25 libros y en este caso entra al estudio de "Jesús y Yahvé. los Nombres Divinos," desde su muy particular punto de vista, ni como filósofo, ni como teólogo, sino como literato y judío.
El ensayo está dividido en 2 partes, la primera está dedicada al Jesús histórico y a los Evangelios que fueron escritos para divulgar sus enseñanzas. Afirma que realmente la vida de Jesús está contenida en 2 líneas en la "Historia de los Judíos"del mentiroso Josefo, y en los Evangelios que relatan parte de su vida, pero que fueron escritos por personas que ni de segunda mano lo conocieron, empezando por el Evangelio del supuesto san Juan, escrito 100 años después de la Crucifixión. Para el autor, el más interesante y misterioso es el de Marcos en donde se relatan las parábolas, cuyo significado es ininteligible o enigmático; para muestra léase Marcos 4:II-12, aun en la Biblia Católica, cuando les dice a los Apóstoles "Se les ha dado el secreto del reino de Dios, pero para los otros todo viene en parábolas, para que puedan ver pero no percibir, para que puedan oir pero no entender..." Aunque Marcos parece no saber de quién son estas palabras, el autor nos informa que provienen de Isaías.
La segunda parte corresponde a Yahvé. Nos cuenta el origen del Dios como Dios de la Guerra, de su forma de hablar diferente a la de Jesús, del rechazo a la subsumisión de Yahvé al Dios padre cristiano. La personalidad de Yahvé es diferente a la del Dios viejo que forma parte de la Trinidad. Para hacer más clara esta situación Bloom nos cuenta que el verdadero Jesús era fidelísimo a la Ley judía, que jamás pensó hacer una nueva religión y que en ella participasen los gentiles. Y por lo que hace al misterio de la Trinidad, este fue inventado por Atanasius, un poco antes del Concilio de Nicea en donde fue aceptado como dogma. En fin, que el estudio termina pidiendo una nueva alianza con Yahvé, misma que debe ser cumplida por ambas partes, tanto por Yahvé como por su pueblo elegido.
El ensayo está dividido en 2 partes, la primera está dedicada al Jesús histórico y a los Evangelios que fueron escritos para divulgar sus enseñanzas. Afirma que realmente la vida de Jesús está contenida en 2 líneas en la "Historia de los Judíos"del mentiroso Josefo, y en los Evangelios que relatan parte de su vida, pero que fueron escritos por personas que ni de segunda mano lo conocieron, empezando por el Evangelio del supuesto san Juan, escrito 100 años después de la Crucifixión. Para el autor, el más interesante y misterioso es el de Marcos en donde se relatan las parábolas, cuyo significado es ininteligible o enigmático; para muestra léase Marcos 4:II-12, aun en la Biblia Católica, cuando les dice a los Apóstoles "Se les ha dado el secreto del reino de Dios, pero para los otros todo viene en parábolas, para que puedan ver pero no percibir, para que puedan oir pero no entender..." Aunque Marcos parece no saber de quién son estas palabras, el autor nos informa que provienen de Isaías.
La segunda parte corresponde a Yahvé. Nos cuenta el origen del Dios como Dios de la Guerra, de su forma de hablar diferente a la de Jesús, del rechazo a la subsumisión de Yahvé al Dios padre cristiano. La personalidad de Yahvé es diferente a la del Dios viejo que forma parte de la Trinidad. Para hacer más clara esta situación Bloom nos cuenta que el verdadero Jesús era fidelísimo a la Ley judía, que jamás pensó hacer una nueva religión y que en ella participasen los gentiles. Y por lo que hace al misterio de la Trinidad, este fue inventado por Atanasius, un poco antes del Concilio de Nicea en donde fue aceptado como dogma. En fin, que el estudio termina pidiendo una nueva alianza con Yahvé, misma que debe ser cumplida por ambas partes, tanto por Yahvé como por su pueblo elegido.
July 23, 2007
This is a really well written, critical look at both Jesus Christ and Yahweh, the two main characters of modern day Christianity and Judaism respectively. Harold Bloom makes an excellent case showing how the "Father in Heaven" as depicted by modern day Christians bears little resemblance to the Yahweh of the Tanakh. I'm not sure either Jews, Christians, or Muslims will *like* what he has to say, but he definitely takes a very critical look at how we have come to understand these characters, and where this understanding has come from. I constantly found myself disagreeing with him on a dogmatic level, which slowly turned into agreement as I opened up to my own preconceived notions.
I don't want to make it sound like Harold Boom is a staunch supporter of Judaism while only critical of Christianity, he is not. He identifies w/Judaism only in that he was born and raised Jewish, and has a very objective voice, and is critical of much of the aspects of both of these traditions.
While at times hard to follow, if you are a student of religious traditions, you will most likely get quite a bit from this book and I can easily recommend it.
I don't want to make it sound like Harold Boom is a staunch supporter of Judaism while only critical of Christianity, he is not. He identifies w/Judaism only in that he was born and raised Jewish, and has a very objective voice, and is critical of much of the aspects of both of these traditions.
While at times hard to follow, if you are a student of religious traditions, you will most likely get quite a bit from this book and I can easily recommend it.
Read
June 27, 2009First of all, do NOT if you choose to read this book be intimidated by his chosen prose or tone. He may be a Yale scholar, but he is certainly not a writer by any means. He's a critic. This book, this slim, adhd-paced book, has more references to other books and his opinions of those books' authors than illuminating his own.
Secondly, his point, apparently, is that Jesus Christ, Yahweh, God, and Jesus Christ are four different personalities. But, after more than halfway through this sorry excuse for a book, the point in my own uninformed, common sense, maybe the answer is that simple, opinion can be easily explained.
Thirdly, he likes to stick to a handful of big words seemingly designed to assert his intellect over the reader.
Do not waste your time.
Secondly, his point, apparently, is that Jesus Christ, Yahweh, God, and Jesus Christ are four different personalities. But, after more than halfway through this sorry excuse for a book, the point in my own uninformed, common sense, maybe the answer is that simple, opinion can be easily explained.
Thirdly, he likes to stick to a handful of big words seemingly designed to assert his intellect over the reader.
Do not waste your time.
September 6, 2010
YAWN.....!!!!!
I could continue with a textual exegesis but YAWN about covers it.
NOTHING NEW HERE FOLKS....MOVE ALONG!!!
Not even very useful as an intro....
I must stop buying stuff with the names Jesus and God in the title.
They, at best, amount to intellectual pornography...without the money shot!!!
I could continue with a textual exegesis but YAWN about covers it.
NOTHING NEW HERE FOLKS....MOVE ALONG!!!
Not even very useful as an intro....
I must stop buying stuff with the names Jesus and God in the title.
They, at best, amount to intellectual pornography...without the money shot!!!
April 8, 2016
i first read Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine several years ago. At that time I rated it four-stars. I have recently reread it and have a much better grasp of Bloom's ruminations than I did before. This book is truly a (and I quote) "brilliant and provocative character study of Jesus and Yahweh." Five stars.
July 23, 2016
For those who really know how to read what's on the page (including the Bible). It's fascinating to see how "all too human" Yahweh first turns into God the Father and then into a retired entity of gaseous nature . And how Joshua of Nazareth is transformed into a theological God of the Gentiles.
April 22, 2019
We all know my stance on Christianity, right? Although I was raised Roman Catholic, I am not religious, and I think it is irresponsible and childish to believe in an all-powerful entity that has a personal relationship with everyone. Harold Bloom is a prolific writer and critic. In the book Jesus and Yahweh, Bloom explores the characterizations of three characters from the Bible. These are Yeshua of Nazareth, Jesus Christ the Theological God, and Yahweh, the God who shows human traits. In this text, Bloom argues that Yeshua, Jesus Christ, and Yahweh are incompatible with one another. In personality and in how they are characterized, they do not meld together into one being.
Bloom begins his study by stating eight preliminary musings that will help you through. First off, the New Testament generally follows the Old Testament except when it comes to Jesus’ aphorisms, wise sayings, and parables. Second, Jesus had an internal monologue that eventually allowed for the development of Shakespeare’s characters like Falstaff and Hamlet. Third, the Jesus Christ present in Mark’s Gospel is probably the closest to the original Yeshua, Matthew softens Mark, Luke makes a strange tangent and has more of a darkness to his Jesus. Fourth, the historical Jesus existed, but it is impossible to glean his entire personality from the Bible considering how fragmented it is. Modern Christianity is no better, making a Jesus for everyone. He is an empty shell, a faceless husk that becomes what the reader or believer wants. Fifth, the Gospels were not intended to be a Biography, but rather a sort of tract to make people convert. Sixth, people have searched for a Historical Jesus, but again, no one has been successful in finding him, instead finding their own biases and beliefs at the end. Seventh, the relationship between Love and the Law was central to Jesus and his ministry. Paul is the one who popularized his teachings with the non-Jew, Jesus did not feel it necessary to extend to them apparently. Finally, the Old Testament is better since Yahweh is more interesting as a character.
Bloom begins his exploration by discussing what is agreed upon by scholars, turning first to Jesus. For instance, it is generally thought that the same author wrote The Acts of the Apostles and The Gospel According to St Luke. This is due to the similar writing styles. There are a number of revelations in this book that are quite interesting. Bloom offers his opinion on a number of writings and works of other authors. So although some of this information is stuff I have heard before, this is all presented in an accessible manner. Even things I never scrutinized before, like the order of books in the Bible are discussed at length. I know that there are non-canonical texts that were not included in the Bible for some reason, but I am not a scholar and don’t know the whys and wherefores. Mark’s Gospel is the oldest of the four, but it is not the oldest extant piece of writing on the early Christians. The oldest pieces of writing we have are from Paul of Tarsus with his letters. Surprisingly, while Mark’s Gospel is the most original of the four it is thought that it was based on an earlier work that is now lost. Yeshua and Jesus are also explored through the lens of St John’s Gospel and through the story of how the Trinity came to be a thing. In the sense of the Trinity, it is argued that Christianity is not monotheistic, but rather polytheistic and it is difficult to argue against this. So some Greek Church Fathers came up with a counter-argument to all of this. This mainly relies on saying that our minds cannot grasp the truth, but it is better than the 'take it or leave it' stance of Augustine.
With the opening of the second part of this book, we focus on Yahweh. There is no way to know how to actually pronounce his name since it was a closely guarded secret in the Oral Tradition. Most of Bloom’s coverage involves the Old Testament since that is where Yahweh is focused. It discusses his name being sacred and how he was more often referred to as Adonai or Elohim, which makes sense to me. It goes in depth into Yahweh’s covenant, discussing his powers and separation from us.
Anyway, this book is enthralling. I found it to be enjoyable and interesting all at once. Unfortunately, I usually read books I enjoy so this does lose a bit in being a review.
Bloom begins his study by stating eight preliminary musings that will help you through. First off, the New Testament generally follows the Old Testament except when it comes to Jesus’ aphorisms, wise sayings, and parables. Second, Jesus had an internal monologue that eventually allowed for the development of Shakespeare’s characters like Falstaff and Hamlet. Third, the Jesus Christ present in Mark’s Gospel is probably the closest to the original Yeshua, Matthew softens Mark, Luke makes a strange tangent and has more of a darkness to his Jesus. Fourth, the historical Jesus existed, but it is impossible to glean his entire personality from the Bible considering how fragmented it is. Modern Christianity is no better, making a Jesus for everyone. He is an empty shell, a faceless husk that becomes what the reader or believer wants. Fifth, the Gospels were not intended to be a Biography, but rather a sort of tract to make people convert. Sixth, people have searched for a Historical Jesus, but again, no one has been successful in finding him, instead finding their own biases and beliefs at the end. Seventh, the relationship between Love and the Law was central to Jesus and his ministry. Paul is the one who popularized his teachings with the non-Jew, Jesus did not feel it necessary to extend to them apparently. Finally, the Old Testament is better since Yahweh is more interesting as a character.
Bloom begins his exploration by discussing what is agreed upon by scholars, turning first to Jesus. For instance, it is generally thought that the same author wrote The Acts of the Apostles and The Gospel According to St Luke. This is due to the similar writing styles. There are a number of revelations in this book that are quite interesting. Bloom offers his opinion on a number of writings and works of other authors. So although some of this information is stuff I have heard before, this is all presented in an accessible manner. Even things I never scrutinized before, like the order of books in the Bible are discussed at length. I know that there are non-canonical texts that were not included in the Bible for some reason, but I am not a scholar and don’t know the whys and wherefores. Mark’s Gospel is the oldest of the four, but it is not the oldest extant piece of writing on the early Christians. The oldest pieces of writing we have are from Paul of Tarsus with his letters. Surprisingly, while Mark’s Gospel is the most original of the four it is thought that it was based on an earlier work that is now lost. Yeshua and Jesus are also explored through the lens of St John’s Gospel and through the story of how the Trinity came to be a thing. In the sense of the Trinity, it is argued that Christianity is not monotheistic, but rather polytheistic and it is difficult to argue against this. So some Greek Church Fathers came up with a counter-argument to all of this. This mainly relies on saying that our minds cannot grasp the truth, but it is better than the 'take it or leave it' stance of Augustine.
With the opening of the second part of this book, we focus on Yahweh. There is no way to know how to actually pronounce his name since it was a closely guarded secret in the Oral Tradition. Most of Bloom’s coverage involves the Old Testament since that is where Yahweh is focused. It discusses his name being sacred and how he was more often referred to as Adonai or Elohim, which makes sense to me. It goes in depth into Yahweh’s covenant, discussing his powers and separation from us.
Anyway, this book is enthralling. I found it to be enjoyable and interesting all at once. Unfortunately, I usually read books I enjoy so this does lose a bit in being a review.
January 22, 2022
Yes, it really is as bad as I rated it.
I do not wish to live in an echo chamber, and I like to listen to other people's views, so I gave this book a chance knowing that it would be controversial.
Harold Bloom, the author, has an encyclopedic memory of the classic works of literature, but then again, he is the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University.
If you are a bitter atheist, you might get off on reading his rants, however if you have any back round in a "Christian" church, or any respect for the man- Jesus of Nazareth, then it is highly likely that you will be deeply offended by the writings of this author.
Bloom views the Bible as yet another famous work of literature, and treats it according to that notion.
He breaks it down and criticizes it- as I expected, but his personal beliefs and caustic remarks are harsh and totally insensitive to a reader with love for Jesus.
I drew the line when he attacks the Apostle's Paul and Mark, and Jesus, but firmly stands up for the Pharisees of Jesus day.
The author thinks that the best "gospel" in the Bible is the gnostic writings of the "Book of Thomas". He also has some strange man crushes on Hamlet and Sigmund Freud, whom he keeps circling around back to.
Bloom firmly fills the unfortunate, but sadly often true stereotype of the haughty, bombastic, and pseudo- intellectual Ivy League professor that the Far Right hates so much.
I do not wish to live in an echo chamber, and I like to listen to other people's views, so I gave this book a chance knowing that it would be controversial.
Harold Bloom, the author, has an encyclopedic memory of the classic works of literature, but then again, he is the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University.
If you are a bitter atheist, you might get off on reading his rants, however if you have any back round in a "Christian" church, or any respect for the man- Jesus of Nazareth, then it is highly likely that you will be deeply offended by the writings of this author.
Bloom views the Bible as yet another famous work of literature, and treats it according to that notion.
He breaks it down and criticizes it- as I expected, but his personal beliefs and caustic remarks are harsh and totally insensitive to a reader with love for Jesus.
I drew the line when he attacks the Apostle's Paul and Mark, and Jesus, but firmly stands up for the Pharisees of Jesus day.
The author thinks that the best "gospel" in the Bible is the gnostic writings of the "Book of Thomas". He also has some strange man crushes on Hamlet and Sigmund Freud, whom he keeps circling around back to.
Bloom firmly fills the unfortunate, but sadly often true stereotype of the haughty, bombastic, and pseudo- intellectual Ivy League professor that the Far Right hates so much.
April 18, 2019
I wish Goodreads had an “interesting “ rating. I found this book very interesting, not sure how much I really liked it. I am sure much of that is due to my own faith which has been a lifetime of development and still grows with the twists and turns of life.
If you read this book you’ll need to keep a dictionary at hand, and perhaps some sort of encyclopedia so you can look up the many references that the author makes.
I have two more books by this writer and I am looking forward to reading them, I am sure they will be interesting, I hope I like them better than this one.
If you read this book you’ll need to keep a dictionary at hand, and perhaps some sort of encyclopedia so you can look up the many references that the author makes.
I have two more books by this writer and I am looking forward to reading them, I am sure they will be interesting, I hope I like them better than this one.
May 9, 2021
Bloom's mind was really crumbling to bits by the time he wrote this. There are some impishly subversive insights here into the character of Yahweh, but they were already laid out in the amusing Book of J from 15 years earlier. Read that, not this!
April 17, 2024
To be a literary critic is a good way to understand another way the relation between those divinity name. This will move us from our tradition position to a new and uncomfortable but necessary perspective.
Good reading!
Good reading!
Read
December 25, 2020Shout out to this book in a column I wrote herehttps://themillions.com/2020/12/a-yea...
February 25, 2021
Boring and rambling. I expected something different, but yet this is a book written by a critic, not a writer or a historian. A waste of time.
June 29, 2022
Bloom is Bloom? Brilliant in the ways he is brilliant, irritating as heck in the ways he is irritating as heck. If you haven't read him before, I wouldn't start here.
November 22, 2013
I recently read Harold Bloom's 'Jesus and Yahweh the Names Divine'.
Bloom confuses me. To be fair, any literary critic applying the literary lense to Divinity would confuse me.
Literary criticism for me ultimately is two dimensional. Ultimately, the critic judges words on paper, not living, breathing characters.
As I believe both Jesus and Yahweh are each living and presumably breathing, I believe any two dimensional analysis is incomplete.
But Bloom seems to believe this sort of judgement is complete. Does he have a personal relationship with Jesus? Does Bloom pray? Does Bloom worship?
The most Bloom will own up to is that he views Gnosticism to be the religion or worldview of Great Literature.
Bloom, analyzing Jesus and Yahweh, each on terms I think they would find absurd, allows Divinity to be created by the 'Old Covenant' and 'Belated Covenant' writers, as if they were two characters out of any popular novel.
As a result, there is no unified theory for Jesus or Yahweh. Mark's Jesus is different than Matthew's Jesus, etc. etc. etc.
But for me, human personality transcends literary criticism, as it's aspects are more than manifold and too numerous to literally count.
And if human personality is manifold, how much more so is the Divine Personality?
Where I see Jesus and Yahweh as being greater than human understanding, and as a result only grappled at by the best means possible, Bloom finds literature to be the know all be all Truth.
I am of the mind that the Biblical Literature serves to illumine the modern day Christian, not to replace saving Faith for the modern day Christian.
Jesus spoke in a dynamic way, his parable anchored in the dynamism of Nature and the Pastoral. His Gospel was decidedly to be rooted in action for the early Church, not to be rooted in intellectualism. Yahweh, whether commanding Abraham to sacrifice his only son, or destroying the twin cities of Tyre and Sidon is utterly incomprehensible to me as a literary character. Motivation, environment, parentage and political circumstances, just a few of the literary devices, simply do not apply to the Creator.
Bloom is not going to answer if the 'Old Covenant' and the 'Belated Covenant' are spiritually true, only if they are existentially true. And I am of the persuasion that God chose not to reveal Himself in these terms.
If God had wanted to be critiqued literally, I believe He would have chosen the urbane Greeks and Romans to write His story as opposed to the disciples, most of whom were uneducated in rhetoric, grammar and so forth.
I think Bloom gets the cart before the horse. The Scriptures are there to serve the Faithful, and not vice versa, and I don't see much Faith in Bloom.
Bloom confuses me. To be fair, any literary critic applying the literary lense to Divinity would confuse me.
Literary criticism for me ultimately is two dimensional. Ultimately, the critic judges words on paper, not living, breathing characters.
As I believe both Jesus and Yahweh are each living and presumably breathing, I believe any two dimensional analysis is incomplete.
But Bloom seems to believe this sort of judgement is complete. Does he have a personal relationship with Jesus? Does Bloom pray? Does Bloom worship?
The most Bloom will own up to is that he views Gnosticism to be the religion or worldview of Great Literature.
Bloom, analyzing Jesus and Yahweh, each on terms I think they would find absurd, allows Divinity to be created by the 'Old Covenant' and 'Belated Covenant' writers, as if they were two characters out of any popular novel.
As a result, there is no unified theory for Jesus or Yahweh. Mark's Jesus is different than Matthew's Jesus, etc. etc. etc.
But for me, human personality transcends literary criticism, as it's aspects are more than manifold and too numerous to literally count.
And if human personality is manifold, how much more so is the Divine Personality?
Where I see Jesus and Yahweh as being greater than human understanding, and as a result only grappled at by the best means possible, Bloom finds literature to be the know all be all Truth.
I am of the mind that the Biblical Literature serves to illumine the modern day Christian, not to replace saving Faith for the modern day Christian.
Jesus spoke in a dynamic way, his parable anchored in the dynamism of Nature and the Pastoral. His Gospel was decidedly to be rooted in action for the early Church, not to be rooted in intellectualism. Yahweh, whether commanding Abraham to sacrifice his only son, or destroying the twin cities of Tyre and Sidon is utterly incomprehensible to me as a literary character. Motivation, environment, parentage and political circumstances, just a few of the literary devices, simply do not apply to the Creator.
Bloom is not going to answer if the 'Old Covenant' and the 'Belated Covenant' are spiritually true, only if they are existentially true. And I am of the persuasion that God chose not to reveal Himself in these terms.
If God had wanted to be critiqued literally, I believe He would have chosen the urbane Greeks and Romans to write His story as opposed to the disciples, most of whom were uneducated in rhetoric, grammar and so forth.
I think Bloom gets the cart before the horse. The Scriptures are there to serve the Faithful, and not vice versa, and I don't see much Faith in Bloom.
February 28, 2016
Part of 2016 reading challenge - category: "A book about religion (fiction or nonfiction)"
Overall, an interesting but tough read. I definitely felt lost when Bloom started talking about Kabbalah, since it's a subject that I know very little about (although it did spark an interest to learn more about it).
I don't know that I necessarily agree with all of what Bloom says in this book, but I found it interesting since he approaches Biblical texts from a purely literary point of view. For quite some time, I've felt like one of the shortcomings of American, evangelical Christianity is a fear of looking at the Bible in literary terms, as though thinking of it as literature negates its truth.
One aspect of the book I found interesting was Bloom's discussion of the fact that a "Judeo-Christian" heritage is an impossible idea, since Christianity, he claims, was constructed on a deliberate misreading of Old Testament scriptures and an intentional misunderstanding of the Covenant. Bloom's description of his relationship with Yahweh, as a "Gnostic Jew," is also really interesting. There is a section in which he describes being haunted by Yahweh (literally--he has nightmares about him) and even though he is a non-believing Jew, he still feels Yahweh's sway over his life, in a way.
If I don't remember anything else from the book, there is one quotation that will stick with me. Near the beginning of the book, he discusses Yeshua (the historical person, not Jesus the Christ), and says: "of Yeshua all we rightly can say is that he is a concave mirror, where what we see are all the distortions each of us has become." I think that is a really beautiful description.
Overall, an interesting but tough read. I definitely felt lost when Bloom started talking about Kabbalah, since it's a subject that I know very little about (although it did spark an interest to learn more about it).
I don't know that I necessarily agree with all of what Bloom says in this book, but I found it interesting since he approaches Biblical texts from a purely literary point of view. For quite some time, I've felt like one of the shortcomings of American, evangelical Christianity is a fear of looking at the Bible in literary terms, as though thinking of it as literature negates its truth.
One aspect of the book I found interesting was Bloom's discussion of the fact that a "Judeo-Christian" heritage is an impossible idea, since Christianity, he claims, was constructed on a deliberate misreading of Old Testament scriptures and an intentional misunderstanding of the Covenant. Bloom's description of his relationship with Yahweh, as a "Gnostic Jew," is also really interesting. There is a section in which he describes being haunted by Yahweh (literally--he has nightmares about him) and even though he is a non-believing Jew, he still feels Yahweh's sway over his life, in a way.
If I don't remember anything else from the book, there is one quotation that will stick with me. Near the beginning of the book, he discusses Yeshua (the historical person, not Jesus the Christ), and says: "of Yeshua all we rightly can say is that he is a concave mirror, where what we see are all the distortions each of us has become." I think that is a really beautiful description.
November 15, 2014
I always enjoy Harold Bloom. He brings a strong aesthetic stance and a deeply Jewish sensibility to his criticism. In spiritual matters he favors the concrete, mythological, and imaginative over theological hairsplitting. I read this volume from a library copy so wasn't able to mark it up and make it mine - regrets about that.
Bloom draws a bright line between Jesus and "Christ" - the former a Palestinian Jew, the latter a construction of his followers. The Jew was more of a cool guy - the later Christ a turnoff because of his grandiose, fabricated status.
While there is some sense that the Jesus communities - especially John's - grew the myth somewhat, every early witnesses is clear that Jesus was not your typical prophet, that he forced the issue by voluntarily going down, with the expectation of ushering in God's rule by doing so. This isn't an invention or elaboration, it's a very good conclusion from the evidence.
So I don't see the Jesus/Christ split so starkly. Of much more interest to me is this special confluence of conditions and mission - th amazing ethical and religious stance that Jesus embodied, coupled with the audacity to expect that he could speak for God and get God to reconnect with history and keep his promises. THAT's what I find amazing in the gospels, and I believe it's all deeply true at multiple levels - historical, mythological, cosmological, and spiritual.
Bloom draws a bright line between Jesus and "Christ" - the former a Palestinian Jew, the latter a construction of his followers. The Jew was more of a cool guy - the later Christ a turnoff because of his grandiose, fabricated status.
While there is some sense that the Jesus communities - especially John's - grew the myth somewhat, every early witnesses is clear that Jesus was not your typical prophet, that he forced the issue by voluntarily going down, with the expectation of ushering in God's rule by doing so. This isn't an invention or elaboration, it's a very good conclusion from the evidence.
So I don't see the Jesus/Christ split so starkly. Of much more interest to me is this special confluence of conditions and mission - th amazing ethical and religious stance that Jesus embodied, coupled with the audacity to expect that he could speak for God and get God to reconnect with history and keep his promises. THAT's what I find amazing in the gospels, and I believe it's all deeply true at multiple levels - historical, mythological, cosmological, and spiritual.
September 5, 2008
Quite an interesting little book. I particularly liked the sections on Jesus and Yeshua, as I'm more familiar with the subject. The section on Yahweh was more confusing, as Bloom ranged into subjects beyond and out of my field of comprehension, like gnostic Judaism, kabbalah, ruminations on shekkinah, and ancient and recent talmudic sages/prophets. Overall, his argument is that the New Testament is a bald misreading of the Torah, and the personality of Jesus is incompatible with the fiery one of Yahweh.
Overall, though, there were way too many digressions into and comparisons with Shakespeare and Hamlet, as well as Freud, which seemed badly dropped in and completely unrelated to the subject. What they have to do and how they comment on Yahweh and Jesus, I still don't know. But it was well-written and thought-provoking and seemed very smart.
Overall, though, there were way too many digressions into and comparisons with Shakespeare and Hamlet, as well as Freud, which seemed badly dropped in and completely unrelated to the subject. What they have to do and how they comment on Yahweh and Jesus, I still don't know. But it was well-written and thought-provoking and seemed very smart.
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