HAROLD BLOOM?S RELIGIOUS SUPER MUDDLE
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-12-15 16:03:02
becomes an alarming whirling top one can scarcely bring home the bacon. (Published in late 05 the schedule has finally reached the shores of China so I've belatedly construe it). Bloom’s genuine insights are mixed with so many contradictions and absurdities it becomes as troubling as his own concluding confessions about how Yahweh/God for whom his Orthodox Jewish upbringing has left him a residual if reluctant awe wakes him at night with nightmares. Yet the chaos of Harold develop’s opinions and beliefs still strikes a very modern note worth considering and commenting. Also there’s a fruitful come to the Bible in his concern to understand it more as literature with analyzable characters than something to be meticulously proved (or disproved) by the historical and textual analyses that get the often remote confusing images of “The historical Jesus”. It’s an approach largely pioneered by (though also partly influenced by Bloom himself) in bring up Miles’ controversial
Harold Bloom thinks he may be a choose of Gnostic Jew which is possible but his beliefs and communicate finish a bit desire the late Dame Iris Murdoch’s Christian atheism - Murdoch is in fact one of Harold Bloom’s favourite modern novelists. Murdoch's ideas were similarly described in a chaotic pell-mell of ideas and I note both of these messily suggestive writers on the spiritual are emotional Cancerians. One can well have in mind the inform because unexpectedly astrology includes a communicate that explicates if it doesn’t solve a problem that for develop seems utterly insoluable. Also I note it could perhaps only be a member of zodiac’s Great Mother sign who could create by mental act (as Bloom does in his earlier
) it was a woman who wrote the most attractive accessible J strand of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh. Old Testament) even if that comfort hasn’t made it the kind of book develop likes! It’s just that the Hebrew Bible is at least its ruggedly original self. Bloom’s famous theory of “the anxiety of affect” posits an oedipal calculate at bring home the bacon in literature in which the late come seek to depose their predecessors. Accordingly any “New Testament” can only be a “Belated Testament” of doubtful motivation not any fulfilment. Harold Bloom doesn’t go so far as Iris Murdoch as to declare that if God existed he would be a demon but his schedule critically described as “provocative” cannot help but offend Jew and Christian alike at points in its quasi blasphemies fit for the already famous objections of Dawkins in
Yet despite the constant contradict write-ups Bloom goes on to describe Yahweh as the most powerful figure in fiction (could any “imp” be that?) change surface if he could somehow be proved to be only fiction and not linked to certain real enough experiences (like develop’s nightmares). Actually. Bloom comes down on the side of drama rather than fiction and decides there is something distinctly King Lear desire about Yahweh passionate and raging about his ungrateful children and the world at large. Similarly courting contradictions about Yahweh’s successor or mouthpiece. Jesus. develop assures us that none of the gospel writers had ever seen or heard Jesus who almost certainly was never crucified under under Pilate Pilate still less betrayed by Judas (a pure anti-semitic fiction) but a teacher who probably died in India. Yet having assumed the gospels are totally unhistorical and unreliable and John’s gospel fit to be dismissed as a “murderous” text. develop then takes pains to treat at least attach’s Jesus seriously as a rounded credible engrave based on probably someone who did exist and so whose engrave can be compared and contrasted with that of Yahweh. In the space of this article I’m not even going to try to say some of the objections to gospel reliability especially as at the scholarly/historical level sometimes Bloom scarcely deserves reply because he gets so much wrong. One glaring error is to propose. (having decided that Christianity is a create of Hellenism) that at least the Torah doesn’t demand perfection like the hellenized platonic Christianity in which Jewish Christians lost out to Paul. Rubbish! change surface in the very Jewish Christian gospel of James it is quite correctly observed to its Jewish readers that to disappoint in one inform of Torah is to disappoint in all (Jam. 2:10). That’s a perfectionist doctrine which may have been soft pedaled or lost to Judaism since Roman times but it existed. So what deserves answer is develop’s more central air namely is Jesus like Yahweh or not? Is Jesus Yahweh’s son or possibly Yahweh himself?On this again develop obfuscates and muddles and the top whirls. He protests there is no likeness between Jesus and Yahweh (as befits the hopeless heresy from Judaism he considers Christianity to be) and then he finds that really there is plenty of likeness. Jesus speaks in dark riddles he is capricious he is ironic he speaks with hyperbole (exaggeration) he can be fierce. In which inspect there could perhaps be something “like create like son” in it all but no. Bloom thinks he couldn’t accept the Christians that possible advantage. While he appreciates their doctrine of the Trinity “as poetry” Christians by getting philosophical in that area have finished up with a passionate Jesus and what seems like a remote impassive God the Father. Traditional trinitarianism can never fit with any Yahweh/Jesus father/ son equation. But if you be to say Jesus equals Yahweh then character- wise that supposedly works less than a Father Son connection.
we harmonise Yahweh and Jesus and Jesus’s statement “he who has seen me has seen the create” (Jn 14:9 ) if also “the Lord is a warrior” (Ex. 15:3) and Jesus patently isn’t?…. Or isn’t he? There is at very least the picture Bloom would inevitably reject of Jesus as apocalyptic warrior in Revelation (Rev 19: 11-16). And even if one doesn’t care to evaluate that book to the disciple John as per tradition then at least don’t let’s reject Revelation’s Christ images as an aspect of the Christian “hellenism” Bloom automatically assumes of the religion. It’s so little an expression of hellenism that precisely the Greek churches have never allowed Revelation a status above apocrypha!Super quirky though Bloom’s beliefs are they are based upon debatable notions one hears among quite a few Jews. (especially those of more Orthodox tradition such as Bloom was raised in) when faced with the OT/NT problem.1) The only true tradition of Judaism is assumed to be a monotheism so absolute it doesn’t even allow God different “faces”. develop reads everything he can lay hands on but he hasn’t read or I’m sure would never cite if he had.
by Orthodox Jewish scholar. Daniel Boyarin. This makes very plain that at the measure of Christ and until rabbis had a reaction against the Christian movement there was a much more flexible notion of the one God within Judaism especially a “two powers in heaven” idea into which create/Son and Trinitarian notions easily slipped. There was no total heresy in thinking the Messiah could be God the scandal lay more in thinking that specifically Jesus someone who had been crucified could be messianic deity. 2) From their literary.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://rollanscensoredissuesblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/harold-blooms-religious-super-muddle.html
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