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Harold Bloom

Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine Hardcover – October 6, 2005

by Harold Bloom (Author)

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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.

Print length

256 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Riverhead Hardcover
Publication date

October 6, 2005
Reading age

18 years and up
Dimensions

6.26 x 0.93 x 9.26 inches
ISBN-10

1573223220
ISBN-13

978-1573223225
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Blooms occasional forays into religious criticism are particularly interesting, given his lifelong passion for poetry and his contributions to the study of literature. And while discussions of religion itself are in play here, it is the characters of Jesus and Yahweh that inhabit the pages, and Blooms literary critic more than his moonlighting theologian examining them. And what of that analysis? Bloom has an obvious affinity for Yahweh over Jesus (even though Jesus gets first billing in the books title.) But to ascribe that preference to his Jewish roots is perhaps too easy. A close reading reveals more. Bloom finds that Yahweh, with his covenants, tempers, resolutions, and even occasional forays into the physical where he fights, eats and walks in the cool of the Garden presents a more interesting character than the rather enigmatic Jesus who only comes truly alive for him in Marks gospel, and even more so beyond the canonical scriptures in the Gospel of Thomas. And though in sensibility and identification Bloom hews closer to Yahweh, he acknowledges the place Jesus and his followers have made in the world, through an application of his own theory of the anxiety of influence, noting that "The New Testament frequently is a strong misreading of the Hebrew Bible, and certainly it has persuaded multitudes." Provocative statements like these abound, but Bloom is no provocateur. Whether one agrees or disagrees with his meditations on the names divine, it is hard not to respect his vigorous intellect and bracing candor as he explores their power.--Ed Dobeas

From Publishers Weekly

Prolific literary critic, Yale professor and professional provocateur Bloom (The Book of J) here tackles the characters of the Jewish and Christian gods: what god do we meet in Hebrew Scripture? Who is the Jesus of the New Testament, and does he bear any relation to the Jesus most Americans worship? Does, for that matter, the Hebrew Yahweh resemble the first person of contemporary Christians' Trinity? Bloom, as usual, skewers quite a few sacred cows—for example, he dismisses the quest for the historical Jesus as a waste of time, and says that Jewish-Christian dialogue is a "farce." But in fact Bloom's major points are somewhat commonplace, including his assertion that the Christian reading of Hebrew Scripture laid the groundwork for Christian anti-Semitism. A fair enough charge, but hardly a new one; theologians have observed, and debated, this point for centuries. Bloom's real brilliance lies in his smaller, subtler claims, such as his nuanced discussion of the different ways Matthew, Mark and Luke present Jesus, his assertion that Bible translator William Tyndale anticipated Shakespeare, and his observation that, contra Marx, religion is not the opiate of the people but their "poetry, both bad and good." The book is learned, even erudite, and sure to be controversial. (Oct. 6)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The most prolific American literary critic maintains a lesser career as a critic of the religious imagination. His most famous product in that capacity, The Book of J (1990), argued that a woman wrote the Torah. The American Religion (1992) descried a specifically American kind of religious creativity, of which the greatest expressions are American Baptism and Mormonism. This book is more personal than argumentative and more literary than religious criticism, unless Bloom's frequent exasperated disparagements of Christian theology are considered a form of the latter. It is an examination of Yahweh (whom Bloom discriminates from God the Father in the Christian Trinity) in the Hebrew Bible and of Yeshua or Jesus of Nazareth (whom Bloom discriminates from Jesus Christ) in Mark, the one Gospel Bloom finds compelling. Yahweh is an all-too-human deity, says Bloom, and Yeshua is entirely human. Moreover, the two are akin in irascibility, unpredictability, and a penchant for irony. While Yeshua could be Yahweh's son (but isn't), Jesus Christ, a creation of Paul, the Gospel of John, and the rest of the New Testament, except the epistles of James, bears no family resemblance Bloom can see. The interest of Bloom's analysis is undermined, especially for readers knowledgeable about Christian orthodoxy, by his anti-Trinitarian carping and his confused statements about the Incarnation and Atonement, which some may see as symptoms of willful ignorance or even anti-Christian prejudice. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

The author of twenty-seven books and the recipient of many honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship and the Gold Medal for Belles Lettres and Criticism from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Harold Bloom is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University and is a former Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. He is best known for his New York Times bestsellers Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human; The Western Canon; and The Book of J, as well as his early classic, The Anxiety of Influence.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Riverhead Hardcover; First Edition (October 6, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1573223220
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1573223225
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.26 x 0.93 x 9.26 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,241,256 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #627 in Jewish Theology
- #2,544 in Christology (Books)
- #2,809 in Religious Philosophy (Books)

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55 ratings

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Elderbear

Bloom's Enigma

Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2007

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What an interesting, puzzling book! Even with two years of biblical languages and two years of biblical studies, with auditing classes on the history and philosophy of religion, on philosophy, and on Plato, I still ended up not tracking the author all the way through.

That's unusual for me. I feel as if I got anywhere for 35 to 80 percent of what the author alludes to, with many parenthetical excursions, depending on which part of the book I was reading. And he alludes far more than he states. This book is one of the few where I consistently had to go back and reread sentences ... due to Bloom's frequent use of tangential parenthetical phrases.

This is part journal, part meta-literature, and part puzzle. Anybody who has read The Book of J will feel both at home and alienated from this tour de force. Bloom assumes the readers' familiarity with themes in his previous works, with Biblical scholarship, with historical criticism, with Shakespeare, Plato, Nietzsche, Kafka, and Freud.

And he mostly pulls it off - this book is at least as impactful as Carl Jung's Answer to Job .

Bloom missed one theme that naturally follows from the themes he does explore - that of the vulnerability of YHWH. While he doesn't mind looking at YHWH's "capricious" behavior, he doesn't look beyond to the clear vulnerability of YHWH found in the J-source.

Nevertheless, this was an incredible and thought provoking book, a masterpiece of theological, philosophical, literary, and personal intrigue, which never truly resolves and leaves the reader puzzling through the enigmas with which Bloom has heroically wrestled.

6 people found this helpful

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Steve

Mainly for Bloom Fans

Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2008

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I really only recommend for those who have found Bloom's previous work rewarding. The book is his rumination on the "characters" of Jesus and Yahweh from a literary, cultural and religious perspective. The main reason for my caveat is that this book seemed sloppily tossed off in stream of consciousness mode. This made it a somewhat exasperating read for me even though I find Bloom to be an insightful thinker.

For those that don't know, Bloom is a prominent literary critic with a fairly unique perspective. His initial renown was for his Anxiety of Influence, which outlined his approach to criticism. I particularly enjoyed his take on The Western Canon in a subsequent book. He has expanded his attention to wider cultural and religious criticism in other books, and indeed it rings true that he would have long been ruminating on the relationship between Christianity and Judaism as the ultimate example of the "Anxiety" (fyi, Bloom is writing from a culturally but not particularly religious Jewish point of view). I was interested to find from this book that Bloom finds the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark in particular to be a compellingly "uncanny" character to rival the Yahweh of the "J" thread of what Christians call the "Old Testament".

8 people found this helpful

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Carl R. Weis

Surprises abound--Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine

Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2009

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Harold Bloom, renowned and influential literary critic, has written a very personal exploration and exposition of the conflict in theology between Christianity and Judaism. We discover the topic is a life-long fascination; the author still possesses and treasures after a fashion a volume presented him on his doorstep at age ten by an itinerant missionary: The "New Testament" in Yiddish, a language he grew up with in the '30s of the Bronx.

Bloom completely smashes the PC (he avoids this rubric) notion of a "Judeo-Christian heritage." Instead, he argues persuasively, early Christians, including the writers of the four Gospels and Paul, the true founder of the faith, so distorted the Judaic "Tanakh" that the Christian version of the "Old Testament" is in reality a real and calculated misrepresentation (and a gross distortion) of the collected Judaic writings. Among the more surprising assertions--with arguments impressive--is that Christianity is the OLDER of the two religions!

Bloom's subtitle is "The Names Divine" and he uses the D word as both noun and verb. "God the Father" of the Christian New Testament is hardly even a shadow of the mercurial and often [in]conveniently absent Yahweh. Without an index or end notes, the work might give the impression of not being scholarly, but Bloom shows on every page that he is steeped in the literature, a life-long passion, and he amply quotes the leading (and some more obscure but pithy) scholars, most of them Christian theologians and biblical students.

And of course Bloom is very immersed in the literature that any Bible is and Shakespeare is a frequent visitor in Bloom's pages for comparisons of literary power. This book will likely raise hackles among the more conventionally religious (both Christians and Jews), but it will not be read by any intelligent reader without some gasps and takings away of the breath that, on balance, effectively challenge so much "common wisdom."

4 people found this helpful

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