Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine

by Harold Bloom

Hardcover, 2005

Call number

232.9 BLO

Collection

Nonfiction

Genres

Religion & Spirituality

General Nonfiction

History

Publication

Riverhead Hardcover (2005), Edition: 1st, 256 pages

Description

There is very little evidence of the historical Jesus--who he was, what he said. As Bloom writes, "There is not a sentence concerning Jesus in the entire New Testament composed by anyone who ever had met the unwilling King of the Jews." Bloom has used his unsurpassed skills as a literary critic to examine the character of Jesus, noting the inconsistencies, contradictions, and logical flaws throughout the Gospels. He also examines the character of Yahweh, who he finds has more in common with Mark's Jesus than he does with God the Father of the Christian and later rabbinic Jewish traditions. At a time when religion has come to take center stage in our political arena, Bloom's shocking conclusion, that there is no Judeo-Christian tradition--that the two histories, Gods, and even Bibles, are not compatible--may make readers rethink everything we take for granted about what we believed was a shared heritage.--From publisher description.… (more)

Subjects

Christianity and other religions Judaism

God (Judaism) History of doctrines

Jesus Christ History of doctrines

Judaism Christianity

Judaism Relations Christianity

Media reviews

Claremont Review of Books

There is not a sentence concerning Jesus in the entire New Testament composed by anyone who ever had met the unwilling King of the Jews." This did not prevent Christians from turning him into a theological entity: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is according to Bloom "totally smothered beneath the

massive superstructure of historical theology."

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New York Times

For Bloom, Jesus and Jesus Christ are two entirely unrelated figures, and Bloom spends the first half of the book exploring their incompatibility. Jesus is the Jew Yeshua about whom no verifiable facts are knowable. What we do know, aside from a few scraps from Josephus ("wonderful writer and

non-stop liar"), is contained in unreliable works written "almost entirely by Jews in flight from themselves, and desperate to ingratiate themselves with their Roman overlords and exploiters." By this Bloom means the New Testament, which he also refers to as "the Belated Testament."

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User reviews

LibraryThing member dlovins

Jonathan Rosen writes in his 11/27/05 NYTBR piece: "this is not a big book, but it is bursting with ideas and contradictions, discussions (and dismissals) of New Testament scholarship, accounts of Lurianic kabbalah, gnomic Nietzschean utterances and brilliant asides about the essence of American

religion ... Bloom writes as if all Western literature were his private Talmud, turning and turning it to reveal hidden meaning, and taking the whole of it personally: the author of the gospel of John 'hates me and I respond in kind.'"

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LibraryThing member vpfluke

This a provocative book. Bloom wants to look at Jesus and Yahweh, as lieterature personalities of the New and Old Testaments. The results are inconsistnt, but worth reading to see a different cast on the divine. Bloom is not sure of many theologians, but does quote extensively from some of them. He

does dismiss Northrop Frye, who also took on a literary analysis in a typological way. But he admires the "biographies" of God and Jesus done by Jack Miles. He admires the Gospel of John, but is angry with the anti-semticism of The Gospel of John. He admires the inscrutability and personality of the Hebrew Scripture Yahweh, who is primarily the J God. So, this is a book to tackle with reservations.

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LibraryThing member vpoore01

I am a big fan of Harold Bloom's 'Book of J' in addition to this book 'Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine'. I find it fascinating when the sacred writings of the three monotheistic religions are analyzed as works of literature. Some of Bloom's conclusions regarding the Christian Bible (e.g. Yahweh

is essentially a literary Man-God who had to be redacted; Jesus and Jesus Christ are two different literary characters) must be reconciled with the doctrine of biblical inerrancy, in my opinion. Throughout this book, Bloom honestly presents his beliefs and biases so that the reader may deduce the effects of these biases on his conclusions. It is somehow reassuring to this Protestant that Bloom's favorite literary characters are Yahweh, Jesus, and Hamlet.

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