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Genesis Is Good Literature – Bloom’s Book of J The Book Of J See also reviews of Bloom’s Anxiety of Influence, Omens of Millennium, and Western Canon. See also Disney’s Genesis (satire) Appendix - Book of J Chronology Although ostensibly a book
of literary criticism, Bloom's Book Of J,
does more than stake out a claim for the J writer as one of the giants in
Western literary history, he also uses his interpretation of the Book Of J to
attack what he refers to as the "normative tradition" of Christianity
and Judaism: the Yahweh depicted in the Book of J does not provide the
foundation for the Judaeo-Christian ethic, nor for many other ideals that we
associate with Christianity. German high criticism of the
Bible, beginning in the early 19th century, discovered that the Pentateuch
(first five books of the Bible, commonly ascribed to Moses, except by scholars)
was based primarily on earlier works, and had undergone centuries of revision[1]. The earliest source book
of the Five Books, the work of the so-called "Yahwist" or
"Jahwist" (J writer) predates the works of the P or Priestly writer,
the E or Elohist writer, and the R writer, the Redactor, who is most responsible
for the shape of the five books we have today, as well as for the Hebrew Bible.
According to Bloom, the "normative" interpretation of the Pentateuch
is due to subsequent revisions, and is wholly absent in the earliest writer,
the J writer. Instead what we get from the
Book of J (newly translated from the Hebrew by David Rosenberg, his translation
of the text forming the middle portion of this book) is a writer of sublime
irony; a writer with close affinities to Shakespeare or Kafka. J was not a religious
writer. Her depiction of Yahweh should be considered blasphemous by believers
in the normative tradition. Her Yahweh suggests reality itself, or the ironic
place of man in a universe that places limitations on his actions, rather than
any ethereal being shorn of human-all-too-human characteristics. According to Bloom's
interpretation, Yahweh is always somewhat impish and self-contradictory. His
formation of man from clay suggests a "child making mud pies" and J's
depiction of the creation of man differs from other ancient near Eastern
creation stories in that Yahweh does not use "the potter's wheel,"
found in Egyptian myths among others. Moreover, the created man is monist, an
integrated living being, rather than a being of spirit, soul, and body. (In Hebrew,
"soul" conveys the sense of the whole living person, kind of like our
phrase "not a soul".) Bloom finds it somewhat ironic that Adam is
allowed to name all the animals, while he futilely seeks a mate among them.
This is but the first instance of Yahweh's effect on Man, which is primarily to
remind him of his incommensurateness. That the J writer spends
about six times more space covering the creation of woman than she did the
creation of man is but one indication that the J writer was a woman (more on
this later). In Rosenberg's translation,
reinforced by Bloom's interpretation, the Garden of Eden story lacks an
Original Sin sort of theme. Yahweh himself seems extraordinarily
self-contradictory and obstructionist by creating a creature that he wants to
obey him, yet forbids him to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good Or Evil, or
apparently the Tree Of Life (the Tree Of Life being a familiar symbol(?) from
other ancient Near Eastern myths). That "Hava" and Adam do so is seen
more as an instance of childlike curiosity than anything resembling original
sin. Neither the snake nor Hava come off very badly in J's Eden, and it is
Yahweh himself who looks unseemly, by forbidding them to eat the fruit of the
tree in the first place, and then later meting out a punishment far in excess
of the crime. But again, according to
Bloom the point of the story is not about good or evil (which never really
concern Yahweh or the principle players of the Book of J). For Bloom, these
normative concerns were written in later (as was the majestic creation story of
Genesis 1, and the phrase of God creating man in "our own image"). It
is about childlike disobedience of the father, and punishment incommensurate to
the crime. It is Kafkaesque, in that Yahweh, as reality, doles out a fate that
is undeserving and inexplicable. J's Yahweh is a far cry from
the gaseous vapor God handed down by the normative tradition. Yahweh is very
anthropomorphic compared to the God of the rest of the Bible (or man is
theomorphic, see below). He is human-all-too-human, and frequently appears on
the earth in person: walking in the garden, asking if Adam disobeyed him (when,
if omniscient he should know), giving an on-the-ground inspection before he
confuses the speech at Babel (again, an indicator of Yahweh wanting man to be
like him, but thwarting him when he tries), closing up Noah's ark with his own
hands, allowing Sarah's insolence when she doubts she will bear a child,
haggling with Abram over the number of good people it would require for Yahweh to
not destroy Sodom; allowing his blessing to be "stolen" a few times
by the cunning Jacob, who wrestles with either Yahweh himself or one of the
Elohim ("angels") to re-earn it; attempting to murder Moses, his own
recently chosen prophet; leading the Israelites in the wilderness for little
apparent reason; and not allowing his reluctant chosen prophet to even see the
Promised Land (another instance of Yahweh's thwartations). Yahweh, for Bloom, is a very
complex character, and there is no allegorical signified for which he stands.
Yahweh, is a life-force, Yahweh is reality itself, especially in its relation
to man, Yahweh represents limitations (in regard to man) and the breaking of
limitations. Hence his Blessing, which
the patriarchs covet and wrangle for, is very much a Mixed Blessing. Jacob
spends much of life trying to secure it, from clutching Esau's heel at birth,
to trading Esau a pot of porridge for it, to wresting one of the Elohim (or
Yahweh himself) for it in a nighttime wrestling match. And once he gets it, he
still suffers. The Blessing gets passed down to Judah, the fourth son, because
of the inadequacy of the elder brothers; but it seems to be Joseph, who really
has the blessing, whose character it would be most accurate to say of, that
Yahweh was with him. The power of Yahweh is charisma, vitality, and even good
fortune, rather than righteousness, a quality that never concerns J or her
Yahweh. A prohibitive problem for
interpreting the book of J, according to Bloom, is peeling off the varnish of
centuries of misreadings, because of the book's redaction and incorporation
into a very normative text, the Hebrew Bible. Because we always tend to read
Genesis and Exodus with the advent of Christ in mind, and the attached
normative tradition of morality, we find it difficult to realize just how
impish and capricious J's Yahweh was. Yet the power of J's writing was such
that so much of her work survives the numerous revisions and deletions of P, E,
and the dreaded Redactor. If undermining the
foundations of the entire Western spiritual tradition wasn't enough for Bloom,
he also asserts the somewhat startling thesis that the J writer was a woman.
This part of his argument is not entirely convincing, despite his always
referring to J as 'she'. It's not that it is so inconceivable; it is just there
is no extra-textual evidence that identifies J's gender, age, era, or anything
else about this writer. Bloom relies on textual indications, such as the fact
that the women in J--Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and especially Tamar--are given
kinder depictions than many of the men. Yet Bloom is not tentative
at all about offering guesses. According to Bloom, the Book of J was probably
written in the generation after Solomon (c. 9th Century B.C.E.), as Jeroboam
and Rehoboam were dividing the grand Israelite empire of David and Solomon. J
was probably a woman of the Solomonic court, well versed in literature, and,
along with the writer of 2 Samuel, one of the chief representatives of what the
German scholar Rad has called the "Solomonic Enlightenment." In fact, David is perhaps
the formative influence on the J writer. David represented human grandeur, a
poet and a warrior, representing the highpoint of Israel's history. David was
charismatic and enthusiastic; full of elan and moxie. According to Bloom, the
entire point of the Book of J is to sketch a background of David's ancestors,
for Yahweh's love of David is the most important thing about him (Yahweh). That
Yahweh showered favor on David is most clear, and to a Solomonic litterateur
like J, that is far more important than the Exodus. But despite all the
theological ramifications of the Book of J (and Bloom seems to cheerfully and
nonchalantly treat the "normative tradition" as completely
misguided), The Book Of J is
primarily a book of literary criticism. The book moves from an explanation of
what the Book Of J is in terms of the textual history of the Bible, to an
admonishment that the reader will not see J as a great ironic writer unless he
can rid himself of "normative" presuppositions; then we are given
Rosenberg's new translation of The Book Of J (a little over one hundred pages
of text); then Bloom applies his formidable critical powers to the text, and
finally we are given a sense of J's place in literary history. Based
on Rosenberg's translation, Yahweh bears little resemblance to the God we
usually imagine. And
this is not just in J. The God of Genesis and Exodus does strike us as
"mythological," especially compared to the unseen God of the New
Testament. God walks the earth, talks in person to Adam, Noah, Abram, Moses,
etc.. Both the serpent and Balaam's can ass talk. Genesis does seem like the
"sophisticated children's literature" Bloom calls it. Bloom's interpretation is
that the Book of J is not primarily "religious" writing, and that the
Yahweh depicted in it says more about humanity and its limitations than the
nature of the divine, whatever that is. Also, Yahweh doesn't seem to have much
in the way of "normative" concerns, especially considering that the
Ten Commandments of The Bible do not appear in J. These points are Bloom's
primary agenda. On other parts, Bloom is
attempting to place J in the literary pantheon, and precisely because of how
J's work has come down to us, it is difficult to evaluate "her"
rightful place. The stories are extraordinarily vivid, perhaps because she
employs almost no visual imagery. We are simply given characters and action,
over a vast expanse of time. The actions define the characters, and we are left
to imagine the settings and the visual world. There is a greater reliance on
hearing than seeing, which is refreshing compared to the visual orientation of
contemporary authors. Bloom's interpretation that
Yahweh serves primarily to reminds us of our feebleness (as well as informs our
grandeur) is striking, but will probably not convince many. Some of his
interpretative leaps are too great, such as that Yahweh is the primary
influence on Shakespeare's Lear, and on Freud's Superego. Bloom states himself
that J "demands strong interpretation," as it is just this
interpretation that Bloom intends to provide. In the final analysis,
despite the unsupported claims (which by necessity must be unsupported because
of the dearth of evidence about the author), this is a brilliant and enjoyable
book. Bloom is shrewd, and about as creative a critic as one can be. Bloom is
right: The power of the stories earns the J writer a place among the handful of
literary giants. Daniel W. Geddes ©1995 Appendix - Book of J ChronologyB.C.E.
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