The Book of J

My sense in this review is that I am close to "in over my head." Readers differ greatly on their evaluation of this work, including how well the translation is done, historicity of Bloom's speculation, and so on. But I'll "wade in" anyway, realizing that I can't directly assess the accuracy of the translation or the strength of Bloom's knowledge on the matter. Bloom's focus in this work is encapsulated by his statement that (Page 9): "In Jerusalem, nearly three thousand years ago, an unknown author composed a work that has formed the spiritual consciousness of the world ever since. We possess only a fragmentary text of that work, embedded within what we call Genesis, Exodus and Numbers, three of the divisions of Torah, or the five books of Moses."

First, Bloom's rendering of the Book of J is interesting. He and many others speculate that the Torah was a set of works written by different people, with someone (an editor) pulling the various parts together. J is for Yahweh, which term J uses when mentioning God. Another author, E, uses another term for God, Elohim. Thus, two of the purported authors are J and E. Other authors are P (Priestly), D (Deuteronomist), and R (Redactor, the editor who pulled the various pieces together).

Bloom hypothesizes that J was actually a woman, in or near Solomon's son's court. There is not much evidence one way or another for this suggestion, however. One wonders why he makes the argument given that it is pretty much pure speculation.

Second, there is the Book of J itself, translated from Hebrew by David Rosenberg. Bloom and Rosenberg both see the author as ironic and witty (Bloom uses the term "a dramatic ironist" [Page 317] to describe J), very different stylistically from the other alphabetized purported authors. And, in fact, if the translation is accurate, it is a wonderful read of someone who was a very talented writer. Familiar tales are told in a very different way (e.g., the Creation, the escape of Israel from Pharaoh, Moses and the wandering in the desert, the story of Joseph, and so on). Again, a number of reviewers believe that Rosenberg took considerable liberty in his translation. As already noted, I can't address that. But the translation as presented is riveting reading.

Third, there is a brief but rewarding afterward in which the translator describes his method.

Bloom concludes by identifying J as one of the great authors of all time. He says (Page 316): "By common consent, the Yahwist [that is, J] is one of the small group of Western authors we identify with the Sublime, with literary greatness as such. J's peers are Homer, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Milton, Tolstoy, Proust, and only a few others." While I can't address some of the serious criticisms raised by other reviewers, I can say that the Book of J itself, as translated by Rosenberg, is rich and rewarding to read.

Like anyone worth reading, Harold Bloom raises eyebrows and is provocative. Yet he is such an aesthete, that even only reading him is a pleasure. He has talked about literary criticism being a genre of its own, with which I can agree: and in this statement I've revealed the heart of this comment.

This is a 'controversial' book, in a way our media might somehow think something controversial. People get offended, and if you are a religious person (just as I am) and simply can't get past the things claimed in between the covers, then nothing can help. But if you are an adventurous and, above all, avid reader, then I might offer you a reading that might get interesting. And then I would strongly recommend Bloom's "Jesus & Yahweh" as well as the amazing Jack Miles' two biographies.

I find Bloom an intense thinker, but not only as a commentator, but as a 'creator' himself, in an ironic context. He has an individual voice, which comes through the text and subject, and while some more literate than yours truly have expressed disdain to this, I find it refreshing. For when I read Bloom (or Miles or Friedman, two more 'scientific' academics) I am not in search for historical truth. And with Bloom, this is the point: when we entertain the idea that there might've been a woman in the court of David, and later of Rehoboam, who might've been responsible for some of the greatest poetry for our souls. Bloom, of course, entertains the idea that there might have been a fellow artist who would've been responsible for much of the books of Samuel, an artistic rival (and inspiration?) of J. Friedman, of course, entertains a further theory that it was J all along who wrote not only much of Genesis and parts of the Torah, but the books of Samuel and Kings, too.

Now, for me this isn't a matter of believing these claims. For me a book like this is an intellectual and literary experience, which provokes any fiction that might someday come out of my imagination. Thus it is optimistic pragmatism of sorts: to think that anything we read feeds the poet in ourselves, and might someday result in a work of art. Bloom is just too great a writer and ironist to be dismissed.

These books make us think, they say, and my modification to this argument is that they feed our fiction. When I read Bloom, I'm not interested in historical truth, I am interested in the conditional, the possible and the impossible. Thus I don't have to concern myself about the 'attack' against the authenticity of the Scriptures. He is a literary magician, good enough a writer and lucid a thinker to take us to places in our mind we might never have found otherwise.

There are four other titles I've been tossing around besides this. One is in which Bloom continues on religion, "Jesus & Yahweh", two are the God-biographies of Jack Miles, "God: A Biography" and "Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God", as well as Richard Elliott Friedman's "The Bible With Sources Revealed". None of these are really concerned with faith (oh, I know: 'then again', you could say, 'everything has to do with faith'), only Bloom happens to be the most broodingly metaphysical. What they are concerned with instead is the nature of the Bible as a work of art (fact or fiction, it's once again up to you; I have my own beliefs, and I gladly welcome you to have yours), as a book that continues to inspire generations after another.

I have so far only talked about Bloom's commentary, but Rosenberg's translation of the claimed J source is capacious and ...prolix. But really, it's an interesting translation, and it offers a chance to look at J in a linear manner. Friedmann offers the most amazing parallel edition (he has different typefaces on the page separating the differing strands), but this book has its value. Both Bloom and Rosenberg underline the irony in the text, and they present some very convinging and insightful things. Yet, gosh, understandable is not translation this, yet this makes it the more fascinating.

I'll have to mention the irony here. One of the fundamentally great points in this book is the possibility to read the Scriptures as having a sense of a narrator, thus having a sense of humour. Bloom points out the fact that because of its status as a sacred document, the Bible has been subject to almost every other reading but literate. That is, there is amazing wit to be found just as much as there is life-altering wisdom. For an example, one of my personal favourites is a passage from I Samuel, 19:9, in fact, which is the climax of a series of attempts by Saul to harm David: Saul is being haunted by an evil spirit sent by God, and only David's playing of the harp comforts him. In this passage the spirit comes again and takes Saul over, and at the same time David plays his harp, Saul sitting next to him with a spear in his hand. This, of course, leads to nothing else but trouble. All of this, and especially the ninth verse, is expressed with such comic timing, irony, grace and compositional economy that makes my heart tremble. Wonder what a shame it is that the aesthetics of the text have been widely frowned upon or not looked upon at all, no matter from which direction you're approaching.

If you've read this far, you might've gotten the idea of how I read Bloom: as a lover of literature, of art. I don't agree with Bloom in some of his assertions, but when we come along a person who has such clear literate aesthetics and general knowledge of literature, it's time for celebration. This is very much worth your time, as here Bloom is almost as persuasive as he is when he's talking of either Hamlet or Falstaff. And that, by itself alone, is reason enough to listen.

With best regards,
AK

This was the most insightful commentary on the Bible I have ever read.

Literary analysis was never so meaningful. In fact, I believe the author read in more intricacies from J than were intended. Perhaps, perhaps not, but in any case I now have a far greater understanding as well as a greater appreciation for the Torah.

I have often felt that the drama within Genesis was Shakespearean in quality and design. But for difficulty in translation and an awkward sentence structure from Hebrew to English, this idea of mine was mere guesswork. I now know it is the case. It was explained beautifully. How many new doors are open?

There are three reasons to recommend The Book of J.

The first and-to me- the most important is that it
restores the original grammar of biblical Hebrew.
The language of the original text speaks is something
comparable to the present tense in English. Reading
the text this way contributes to a sense of urgency,
but also to a sense of the oral tradition from which
we assume these texts must have arisen. In short,
Rosenberg's translation sounds like somebody talking
to you.

The next good reason is that it reminds many of us that
this thing we call 'The Bible' is in fact many things.
In translation, the seams between the pieces are easity
covered over, but the raw language shows the different
roots clearly. This idea is called 'the documentary
hypothesis', but we shouldn't conclude that it is merely
a minor-league supposition. Other ideas about the Bible's
composition are hypothetical too.

Finally, it's good to be reminded that there's literature
here and that this literature is at the foundation of our
civilization. Even the angry denunciations of Bloom and
Rosenberg serve to reinforce the scary centrality of this
'book' that so many believe in and so few read.

I couldn't help wishing for some footnotes: a cross reference
to a 'standard' edition would have made this more fun. Also
some discussion of how the documentary hypothesis arose-it's
intellectual and cultural foundations would have been helpful.

Unlike many I suppose, I did not find the idea that J was a woman of royal blood particularly shocking. The Torah never seemed to me a work of the people and by the people; the people who wrote it and commented on it were nothing if not the elite. I had always taken that pretty much for granted. But Bloom did present a hypothesis that I found startling. For in this book he claims that the author of what many consider to be the core of the Torah/Old Testament conceived of her work as an epic, a kind of Iliad. Indeed, that she could do little else--for she (Bloom asserts) was not a terribly religious person herself.

This idea may seem blasphemous to many. It certainly seemed that way to me at first. But it also helps. It helps us recall that the men and women who wrote the Torah were intensely human and that whatever their motives they wrote a book that is, all else aside, brilliant literature that captivates so many as literature.

Surely then, it is worth rescuing the work of the first of these luminaries from the numerous redactors and the prison of holiness? Surely it is worth remembering that the author of the Book of J was, if nothing else, a brilliant writer. Bloom and Rosenberg have helped me at least do just that. And for that I thank them.