The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible [Hardcover]

Harold Bloom (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 13, 2011

The King James Bible stands at "the sublime summit of literature in English," sharing the honor only with Shakespeare, Harold Bloom contends in the opening pages of this illuminating literary tour. Distilling the insights acquired from a significant portion of his career as a brilliant critic and teacher, he offers readers at last the book he has been writing "all my long life," a magisterial and intimately perceptive reading of the King James Bible as a literary masterpiece.

Bloom calls it an "inexplicable wonder" that a rather undistinguished group of writers could bring forth such a magnificent work of literature, and he credits William Tyndale as their fountainhead. Reading the King James Bible alongside Tyndale's Bible, the Geneva Bible, and the original Hebrew and Greek texts, Bloom highlights how the translators and editors improved upon—or, in some cases, diminished—the earlier versions. He invites readers to hear the baroque inventiveness in such sublime books as the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, and alerts us to the echoes of the King James Bible in works from the Romantic period to the present day. Throughout, Bloom makes an impassioned and convincing case for reading the King James Bible as literature, free from dogma and with an appreciation of its enduring aesthetic value.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A fascinating, intellectually nimble tour de force.”—Yvonne Zipp, Washington Post (Yvonne Zipp Washington Post )

Booklist, named A Top 10 Book in Religion and Spirituality, 11/15/2011

(Booklist )

 “Bloom yields to the KJB’s literary splendor—and invites readers to join in his surrender.”—Booklist, starred review

(Booklist )

“Just fascinating, brilliant, and reliably Bloomsian.”— Mark Sarvas, The Elegant Variation

(Elegant Variation )

"Bloom . . . has many arresting things to say and says them, often, with exquisite precision.  He is, by any reckoning, one of the most stimulating literary presences of the last half-century - and one of the most protean, a singular breed of scholar-teacher-critic-prose-poet-pamphleteer."—Sam Tanenhaus, New York Times Book Review

(Sam Tanenhaus New York Times Book Review 20110523)

“Bloom reveals his own magisterial, sometimes mischievous, self in his meditations on the masters with whom he connects.”—Iain Finlayson, The Times

(Iain Finlayson 20110523)

“Ah, then there’s Harold Bloom, America’s giant of a literary critic. . . . In The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life, Bloom pulls off a masterly connecting of the dots through the literary canon and his own life with his usual breathtaking eloquence.”—Publishers Weekly

(Publishers Weekly 20110523)

"Bloom’s erudite mix of acerbic judgments (e.g., the New Testament's literary ugliness) and awed delight ('the biblical David is an incarnate poem') offers readers a fresh take on an old book."—Publishers Weekly

(Publishers Weekly )

“The greatest strength of Bloom's volume comes in helping the reader navigate to, and through, the finest literary passages of the Bible; explaining how the ancient verses have influenced the past four centuries of Western literature.”—Deseret News

(Deseret News )

“Exhilarating, provocative. . . . Bloom [enriches] his remarks with lively associations and frequent references to his beloved Shakespeare (did you know that Hamlet's divided personality has much in common with King David's?). . . . When [Bloom] praises the English translators of John's Gospel, he calls their interpretation ‘dazzling in its audacity.’ The same, of course, can be said of this book.”—Nick Owchar, Los Angeles Times

(Nick Owchar Los Angeles Times )

“Bloom celebrates King James not for anything so pedestrian as ‘accuracy’ but for what he himself has championed during his long and distinguished career as a literary critic: creative misreading.”—Edward Alexander, Chicago Jewish Star (Edward Alexander Chicago Jewish Star )

From the Author

From the Introduction:

The largest aesthetic paradox of the KJB is its gorgeous exfoliation of the Hebrew original. Evidently the KJB men knew just enough Hebrew to catch the words but not the original music. Their relative ignorance transmuted into splendor because they shared a sense of literary decorum that all subsequent translators seem to lack. Miles Coverdale, bare both of Hebrew and of Greek, set a pattern that Miles Smith perfected. It is another of the many paradoxes of the KJB that its elaborate prose harmonies essentially were inaugurated by Coverdale’s intuitive journey into the poems and prophecies his master Tyndale did not live to translate. We have Tyndale’s Jonah and a medley of prophetic passages, eleven from Isaiah, in the Epistle Taken out of the Old Testament. How wonderful it would be to have Job, Ecclesiastes, and Jeremiah from the hand of Tyndale, though probably that would have prevented Coverdale’s astonishing flair for style and rhythm from manifesting itself. This flair was unsteady, yet at its best it gave us something of the sonority we associate with KJB.

Tyndale, Coverdale, and the Geneva translators (including their best Hebraist, Gilby) all possessed the gift of literary authority. Their revisionist, Miles Smith, explicitly displays his sense of style in the 1611 preface, “The Translators to the Reader,” and implicitly stands forth by his editorial responsibility for the ways in which the KJB men handle their inheritance from previous English Bibles. Again paradox intervenes: from Tyndale through KJB the quest is to get closer to the literal sense of the Hebrew, while the consequence is to increase a cognitive music farther and farther away in regard to the Hebrew Bible’s relative freedom from metaphors. Since all metaphor is a kind of mistake anyway, even the plain errors of the KJB sometimes add to the resultant splendor.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 13, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300166834
• ISBN-13: 978-0300166835
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.1 x 8.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #479,499 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Harold Bloom is a Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University and a former Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. His more than thirty books include The Best Poems of the English Language, The Art of Reading Poetry, and The Book of J. He is a MacArthur Prize Fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, including the Academy's Gold Medal for Belles Lettres and Criticism, the International Prize of Catalonia, and the Alfonso Reyes Prize of Mexico.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 58 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Thin book August 24, 2011

By Bardolph

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I've been reading through the whole KJB this year cover-to-cover, and when I learned that Bloom had a book on it forthcoming, I pre-ordered it. I should have just waited till I could get it from the library.

Even more than usual, Bloom liberally pads this brief book with extensive excerpts. If they were removed, the book would be about half as long, if that. At least once, he gives the same multi-page passage in three different translations. He even gives a 2+ page passage from Thomas Mann's Joseph and his Brothers. He also provides us with quotes from Herbert Marks' commentary in the Norton English Bible, which has not even been released yet! In the section on the New Testament, more space is given to excerpts than Bloom - for example, five pages on 2nd Corinthians, perhaps one page of which is Bloom.

So what is there from Bloom in this book? We get his opinions on what are the most sublime moments in the KJB and what has little or no aesthetic value (i.e., legal codes, censuses, and all of Leviticus). We also get his unavoidable parenthetical short-lists of authors (Homer, Plato, Dante, Cervantes, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Milton) and (of course!) Shakespeare characters (Falstaff, Hamlet, Iago, Edgar, Cleopatra). I learned that I should not bother with the Lowe-Porter translation of Joseph and His Brothers that's been waiting for me on my bookshelf.

Presumably, most readers will have a copy of the KJB, though not Tyndale, Geneva, or the Anchor Bible, but what's the point in devoting so much space to excerpts if you're going to say so little about them? I don't need a book of highlights from the Bible. At the end of the book, Bloom says he has "been writing it all my long life." Odd that he should have so little to say.... But, hey, it's the 400th anniversary of the KJB, so if Harold Bloom puts out a book about it, it is pretty much guaranteed to make money. I'm sorry some of it had to be mine.

CODA: I have found a very good review of this book now on the Jewish Review of Books, entitled "King James: The Harold Bloom Version." I recommend it for anyone interested. Read more ›

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Harold Bloom the famous Yale literary scholar makes his sardonic and insightful comments on the King James Version of the Bible February 28, 2012

By C. M Mills TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

As I Presbyterian minister of many decades I continue to read in the field of biblical commentary. Dr. Harold Bloom the 80 year old brilliant literary scholar from Yale University is one of my favorite scholars. Bloom is a skeptical man who does not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and is also unafraid to criticize the Hebrew Scriptures. He does, however, appreciate the literary merit of the 1611 King James Version. In this short book he quotes extensively from the text of the King James Version comparing it with the translations of Tyndale and the Geneva Bible translation of 1560. He also examines the KJV's rendering of verses with those of the original Hebrew and koine Greek. Bloom also relies heavily on the translations of the various books found in the Anchor Bible Commentary series. Bloom usually favors the King James text for its beauty and literary excellence. He does find the KJV inferior in literary quality to the works of Shakespeare. Bloom also has high regard for John Milton and Dante. In his succinct commentary he quotes extensively from poets and biblical scholars through the centuries. Bloom is able to read biblical Hebrew and Greek with expertise and insight.
The Format of the book: Bloom makes brief comments on his favorite biblical passages,. His comments are on books in the Old Testament, Apocrypha and New Testament. His favorite book is Jonah. Bloom does not like Paul and considers the Gospel of John to be overtly antisemitic. The book is worth a read sage insights but it will not be everyone's cup of tea! This is hardly the commentary to be used for church Sunday School or bible study! Dr. Harold Bloom writes like a jaded old professor who is world weary. This little tome is sober reading!

4.0 out of 5 stars Bible as Literature October 16, 2012

By Autumnteton

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book gives the reader the opportunity to read a critic review on the KJB, and how it compares to other editions of the Bible. Very useful as additional material when partnered with the reading required in my "Bible as Literature" class. A bit pricy for the average student.

11 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A pleasant surprise October 4, 2011

By Landon Shultz

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I liked this more than I expected to. The extensive quotes initially put me off, but they have a purpose. The 1611 King James Bible (KJB) is a reworking of the 1560 Geneva Bible (standard at the time of Shakespeare), which was a revision of Wm. Tyndale's 1526 translation (the first translation of the New Testament into "modern" English). The quotes serve to illustrate the genius of Tyndale's original phrasings, and the places where the Geneva and KJB versions made improvements. Bloom reckons that Tyndale should be counted the great writers in English, in the same company with Shakespeare and Chaucer.
Since Dr. Bloom is an agnostic Jew, it is fascinating to see the places where his soul is touched by the literary power of the KJB. There are some places where, for all his erudition and insight, Dr. Bloom misreads the text. For example, he characterizes the gospel of John as "violently anti-Semitic." John's attack is not against the Jewish people, but rather is aimed at the social and religious elite among the Jewish people who co-opted the idea of God and used that idea as a vehicle to support their privileged lifestyles. The work of Jesus, and of John as his disciple, is intended to free the Jewish people, and all people, from the fear of a God who is rigid, judgmental, and dangerous to approach. Throughout history, down to this very day, the idea of God is used as a weapon to subdue the mass of humanity under the rule of men (and women, at times) who desire to accrue power and influence. When John attacks "the Jews," it is the religious elite with whom he is taking issue, not the Jewish people. It is because John loves the Jewish people that he is so upset by the abuse to which they are subjected at the hands of their religious elite....
Overall, this is an interesting and challenging book, well worth the purchase price. Read more ›