Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine

Bloom's latest book (he's written more than 20 over a period of 40+ years) is a casual discussion of Jesus, Christ, and Yahweh. When I say "casual", don't get me wrong. This is not a coffee table book or a book for beginners. It is an incredible discussion by a top scholar of the interrelationships between 3 critical figures, but as a discussion it is more casual than it is scholarly (e.g., there are no footnotes, no index, no bibliography, etc). I would recommend this book to people with some background information about (at least 2 of) the 3 principles, yet a beginner also will find it enlightening. I am especially drawn to this book because Bloom agrees with me on some unpopular ideas about Jesus (e.g., he was in his 40s when he died, the Gospel of John reflects anxiety about the failure of the 2nd coming to come, the synoptic gospels are "conversionary inspiration", Josephus had his own agenda and isn't the neutral historian many people consider him to be, etc.). Of course, many of Bloom's ideas are not so non-traditional (e.g., Mark's gospel is the closest to the "real Jesus", biographers of Jesus read themselves into his life, etc). The book has no real organization, and he drifts back and forth between various themes. In most books this would be a negative, but in Bloom's hands the transitions are seamless and beneficial. Another positive aspect of this book is Bloom's breadth of scholarship. He is at home discussing Freud, Shakespeare, Whitman, Plato, Spinoza, Goethe, etc. He wanders from gnosticism to judaism to christianity to marxism. Here are some quotes... "I distrusted throughout this book every account available to us of the historical Jesus, and I have been unable to locate much of an identity between the Jew from Nazareth and the theological God Jesus Christ." (p. 238) "Freud's identification with Moses helps make Moses and Monotheism into one of the strongest of his more fantastic writings..." (p. 4) "He came not to abolish but to fulfill the Law, however fiercely St. Paul, Martin Luther, and many since have labored to misapprehend the subtlest of all teachers, whose ironies transcend even those of Plato's Socrates." (p. 130) Enough said. This book belongs in any serious scholar's library.

As Bloom might say, I've been brooding over this review. If you are a Sunday-school teacher looking for inspiration here, you will likely be disappointed. If you are an admirer of Bloom and his thinking and theories, you will be right at home. Let me start by saying that 'Divine' is full of some of Bloom's densest and least repetitive writing, as well as his most thrilling speculation and provocative scholarship. Even if you are a reader familiar with Bloom's books, you would do well to read his 'Book of J' and 'The American Religion' before picking up 'Divine'. I feel compelled to mention that in this book Bloom seems to associate Christianity and Karl Marx ('fantastic builder of error') and implicitly blames this odd amalgam for our current academic landscape, notoriously dubbed by Bloom 'The School of Resentment'. However, unlike all his books since around 1985, 'Divine' contains no explicit polemic against academic Leftists. The Bush administration now bears the responsibility for the sorry state of reading as well as for all the cultural ills of the West. Perhaps this three-headed monster has always been lurking in Bloom's ideas, or perhaps it is his new caprice. As an erstwhile Christian, I can anticipate certain readers' responses (and I feel certain Bloom can too) whose ox may be only a little gored, which would likely be enough for most. For, however spectacular his flights of fancy or how sound his scholarship, Bloom is clearly kinder to the text(s) of his Jewish roots than he is to Jesus or to Christianity. (For anyone who is familiar with Bloom's Anxiety of Influence theory, what is implicit in 'Divine' is the notion that Christianity is a dangerous 'weak misprision' or weak misreading of Tanakh, which is the reason Bloom places Jesus' section first in the book. It is not done to give Yeshua pride of place-- as it might appear to some-- but because Bloom himself is troping according to his own theory. The ordering of 'Divine' is a reversal of Old Testament/New Testament: the weak derivation, Jesus, placed first, is fulfilled by the stronger source, Yahweh, who is placed last). Although I find Bloom's intellectual understanding of the Christian psyche penetrating and accurate, it is clearly temperamentally impossible for him to engage Christianity and it's mysteries imaginatively with any real (as he might say) zest, since his fear and distaste are palpable even as his anatomies are dazzling, and even as I am left with a sense of his personal struggle. And although he may intellectually accept the notion that polytheism may not be inferior to monotheism, Bloom's spirit, as regards Jesus at least, balks at becoming too Greek. All that said, I'll say it again, bluntly: everything in the New Testament, as Bloom implies, may indeed be aesthetic bilge; 'a suicidal Yahweh' may be 'inconceivable' to a Jewish mind (the book's refrain); the apostle Paul may be an 'unlovable' and 'delusional agitator'; the Christ people claim to

Having just read this book, and being a long-time fan of Harold Bloom, I was curious what the reviews would be like. I see that they divide into three categories: those who haven't got a clue, those whose ox is being gored, and those like me who love it. To be fair, anyone who hasn't read Bloom before may fall into the first category through no fault of their own. But I had to laugh at the negative review by the guy who can't spell and doesn't value Shakespeare, probably an unsurprising combination. Then there are those who think Bloom writes badly and those (like me) who thinks he writes magnificently, and those who admit that he is a consummate biblical scholar and those (like the Booklist reviewer) who think he doesn't understand the Trinity, the Incarnation or the Atonement. Perhaps someone's ox is being gored there. Come on, no-one understands the Trinity! The most intelligent possible positive comment is that the Trinity is, and is supposed to be, a mystery. As Bloom (citing Pelikan) points out, the Eastern Church had the sense to leave it there. It is the Western Church, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, that sank into a hopeless swamp trying to analyse and rationalize it. Or mostly ignore it these days, at least in America. As Bloom remarks, it's either a friend in Jesus (Jesus-as-God) or possession by the Holy Spirit, and little attention is paid to the Father (who isn't very Yahweh-like anyway and has just about faded from the scene). Unless you're a religious muslim or jew. This is a wonderful book. Of course, as one reviewer said, it is Bloom thinking out loud and letting us listen. I think that's wonderful, myself, and too bad for those who don't - for whatever reason. Those who are intrigued by this book in spite of a sense of missing a lot, and who haven't read Bloom's earlier books, I urge them to do so. One I especially like which is useful for understanding some of Bloom's comments here is "The American Religion" (1992). I think it's out of print but it should be in libraries and it does come up used and also remaindered.

The fundimental challenge to reading this book is that in order to get it, you first have to read a lot of other books. Really, it is probably only barely humanly possible to read as many books as it would take. I'm sure that many Bloom fans will pick up this book and wonder where he's gone! I can sympathize--Confessions of a reviewer; I've only read enough other books to catch glimpses, as it were out of the corner of my eye, of what Bloom is talking about here. OK, lets get out of the way the inevitable comparison of this book to Bloom's earlier "Book of J". One of the things which makes "Book of J" so much more accessible is that in includes not just Bloom's commentary, but also a new translation of J itself, in one handy package This makes it easy to bounce back and forth between Bloom and J, and so its much easier to understand and absorb Bloom's abrupt insights. But a similar didacticism would be impossible for this book--the only way to do it would be to just put it on a shelf in the Library of Congress. But this book really shouldn't be compared to "Book of J". A much better comparison would be to the Gospel of Mark, which it bears resemblance in its literary technique and its "insider" outlook. First literary technique: Other reviewers have commented that Bloom seems to be randomly bouncing around among topics. But recall, the Gospel of Mark is famous for just the same thing! In the course of a few sentences, Jesus is baptised by John, driven into the wilderness, comes back, and starts proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Why this rapid cutting between scenes? Why these big gaps between sentences? Is Mark out of his mind? No--Mark realized that the best way come to grips with Jesus is to -leave- the gaps--because the reader will be forced to bridge those gaps to make any sense of the story. Its the _active_ mental act of bridging the gaps which Mark knows is necessary to really "get" who Jesus is. These gaps create such an imperative to be filled that both the authors of Luke and Mathew wrote books to fill them! And the fact that they both filled the gaps differently from each other creates another gap for us to bridge. Bloom is doing similar things in this book. Many times, he'll string two sentences together, and to my unread mind, they have no connection with each other. Sometimes I can bridge the gap, sometimes I can't. But when I can--wow. I wonder what it would be like to be able to bridge all the gaps in this book. This book also resembles Mark by its "insider" outlook. Recall how the Gospel of Mark begins--it doesn't start out by saying "Jesus was a guy who lived in palestine.." or by any description of who Jesus was--Mark's audience already knew who Jesus was, and apparently knew many other mysteries which Mark doesn't tell us about. We're supposed to be insiders by the time we read Mark. Similarly for Bloom's book--he just baldly assumes many things which we're already supposed to know. Bloom creates gap

Harold Bloom is almost overly frank about his personal predispositions throughout this book. He lets us know--repeatedly--that his religious leanings are toward a sort of gnostic, non-Covenental Judaism. And he admits that his ambition--through most of his 70-odd years--has been to read both the Jewish Bible (Tanakh) and the Christian Bible not only well, but also for himself. This book is the product of what can only ever be an unfinished project, since the greatness of the Jewish and Christian scriptures keep them always before us. Bloom's favorite characters in all of literature, in descending order, are Yahweh (of the Tanakh/Old Testament), Jesus (of the New/Belated Testament), and Hamlet. There is no shortage of reverence and amazement for Jesus and Yahweh in this book. The subject matter of this book necessarily precludes any attempt to artificially break it down into neat categories and packages. In other words, attempting to formally outline this book would be a harrowing experience. Bloom's writing wanders and trips and backtracks. But Bloom never lets key themes slip through the cracks: it's the first book I've ever read where I genuinely appreciate how repetitive it sometimes becomes. By returning to an underdeveloped theme several times in various contexts, we come to understand the rather nuanced and complex conclusions Bloom is trying to explain. Some critics have labeled this book self-defeating, but only because they misread it. These critics claim that Bloom asserts that everyone winds up seeing only themselves when they look at the person of Jesus Christ. That's not at all what Bloom says. The book's approach is as a character study of 3 fascinating characters: the historical Yeshua (Jesus, in Greek) of Nazareth; the divinity his followers either realized him to be or made him into, Jesus the Christ; and the God of the Hebrew scriptures, Yahweh. Bloom points out what should be painfully obvious to anyone who has read much in the subject: the so-called Quest for the Historic Jesus is a doomed enterprise. All extant texts about Yeshua of Nazareth are heavily proselytizing documents, intended to win people over to their set of beliefs rather than to create an accurate historical record. Because there is so little to work with in trying to uncover the "historical Jesus," most of the work consists of deciding which words, sentences, or authors to trust. It's a highly subjective process, and one in which the searcher is bound to reveal more to us about himself than about Yeshua of Nazareth. Because the enterprise is so flawed and suspect, Bloom hardly spends any time at all on the historical Yeshua; instead, he moves quickly on to the characters we find in the literary bodies of the Jewish and Christian Bibles. Bloom has not set out to write a polemic, and I don't think he has written one. He longs to discover what has happened to the ancient Yahweh of the Tanakh he reveres so deeply (and whom Jesus--for Bloom the greatest of Jewi