The Book of J

Rating:
Summary: History or Poetry?
Review: Harold Bloom has never been shy of making bold assertions, and in his The Book of J we have the boldest - that is that the central core of the Pentateuch is the work of single writer - the J Writer - living during the Davidic or Solomonic dynasty. He speculates that the J Writer is probably of noble birth, of unparalleled education and literary talent and is probably a woman. In a later work (I think in his "The Western Canon"), he further speculates the J Writer to be Bathsheba, the fateful love of David's life. The implications, of course, are that the Books of Moses are of late origin and essentially a work of the imagination arising from the Shadowland of History.

This work must be taken for what it is - a patchwork translation of the Torah by a fine poet with an historical introduction written by a renowned literary critic and Shakespearean authority. I personally am a great admirer of the work of Professor Bloom, but here, I think, he strays into ground where he is (by his own admission) at best an amateur.

Some additional random thoughts:

1. There is considerable weight of authority on the side of Professor Bloom as to the stepwise redaction of the Tanakh by writers and editors in late Old Testament times, though scant authority for his imaginative view of the personal characteristics of the J Writer herself. However, the entire field of Biblical scholarship and criticism is so volatile and fluid at present, that any "authority" on the subject represents only one scholars private opinion at any given time.

2. The current popular view is that the Bible is essentially a profound literary creation assembled by the hands of some late master from early "primitive" narratives. A contrary view is that the Bible as we know it is essentially a "descent from glory" - a miniature and much garbled and mistranslated product which can only approximate a much clearer, earlier and larger corpus of sacred works.

3. Poets might very well make the best translators - though not the most accurate. David Rosenberg's translation I find to be fresh and compelling. Reading it gave me a flood of new insights into a text many of us associate most strongly with the language of the KJV.

4. Bloom's desire for certainty as to the character of the J Writer remind me of his equally vivid but somewhat stretched account of the creation of Hamlet in Bloom's "Shakespeare: the Invention of the Human."

Rating:
Summary: You can call me J...
Review: Harold Bloom's 'The Book of J' caused quite a stir when it first was published. The book contains both introductory essays on authorship, a discussion of the theory of different texts being used to make up the books of the Bible (the Documentary Hypothesis), some historical context, and translation notes.

The bulk of the book consists of David Rosenberg's new translation of the J text, that text having been separated and isolated from the other source texts of the Torah (first five books of the Bible).

The concluding section contains essays by Bloom on different characters and themes in the text, as well as some modern theoretical analysis of the text, isolated as it is in this volume from the greater mass of material in the Bible.

There is a brief appendix by Rosenberg with notes specifically geared toward translation issues and difficulties, as well as source materials.

First, for a little background: since the 1800's, much of Biblical textual scholarship and analysis has subscribed to the theory that most books were not first written as integrated wholes, but rather, consist of a library of amalgamated texts, largely put together by a person who goes by the title Redactor, or R, for short. This was (in terms of Hebrew Bible timelines) a relatively late occurrence. Prior to this, there were various sources, including the J (J for Jehovah, or Yahweh, which is what God is called in these texts), but also E (Elohist, which is what God is called in these texts), P (Priestly, which largely comprises Leviticus), and D (Deuteronomist). The separation of these strands is controversial, and will probably never cease to be. But with literary and linguistic analysis, certain traits can be discerned of each of the particular strands.

The most controversial conclusion which Bloom advances in this volume is that J is a woman, who lived in the courtly community of King David, and that her stories are not only a retelling of the ancient stories which would have been known commonly, but is also a satire and indictment of courtly life as she finds it.

'J was no theologian, and rather deliberately not a historian.... There is always another side of J: uncanny, tricky, sublime, ironic, a visionary of incommensurates, and so the direct ancestor of Kafka, and of any writer, Jewish or Gentile, condemned to work in Kafka's mode.'

Bloom's assertion that J is a woman consists of several 'telling' ideas, not least of which that the J text seems to have no heroes, only heroines.

'Sarai and Rachel are wholly admirable, and Tamar, in proportion to the narrative space she occupies, is very much the most vivid portrait in J. But Abram, Jacob, and Moses receive a remarkably mixed treatment from J.'

Also, on the basis of sensitivity to subject and social vision, Bloom argues for a female J. Of course, women in positions of authority (as any courtly author or historian would have to be) were very rare in ancient Middle Eastern culture, but not unheard of; of course, literacy rates for women were incredibly low, and there has always been the unspoken assumption that, naturally, the authors of all ancient texts are men.

Whether or not you subscribe to this (and I must confess, I am less than convinced, clever and interesting and thought-provoking as Bloom's essay may be), both on the person of the author of J, as well as many of his other equally unorthodox views, this text still provides much food for thought, and an interesting side text with which to read the accounts in Genesis and Exodus.

Reading Rosenberg's translation is, likewise, an interesting exercise. I would wish for footnote or some key to be able to follow along in the Bible, but Rosenberg's purpose was to let J stand as its own text, on its own merits, and thus, without interruption, he has done that here. A refreshing look at familiar texts, Rosenberg's new translation will give things to think and argue about for some time.

Rating:
Summary: translation nice but not Bloom's commentary
Review: I give 5 stars to Rosenberg's new translation. but 1 star to Bloom's commentary.

I agree with the other reviewer that Bloom seemed to have written it on the back of a napkin! also the other's hang-up that Bloom's not being a Biblical scholar yet make assertions that he didn't justfy.

I like "Hidden book of Bible" by Friedman better cause he gives reasons to the conclusions he draws.

Rating:
Summary: Scripture without reverence
Review: Irreverent, profound, and deeply disturbing, this (putative) Book of J will change one's view of the Tanakh and the Old Testament for good; For that alone David Rosenberg is to be commended, given how hard it is to approach the Bible afresh-- the weight of history, in the form of the King James Version (and others)has other ideas. Rosenberg's J is deeply ironic, and inclined to view YHWH and reader alike with bemusement: a symmetry that seems to me to be the source of much of the text's charisma. Bloom is, as always, a powerful(if perhaps overly-rhapsodic) commentator, and this is Yale's Grand Old Man at his rhetorical best (before the repetitive bug bit him in the Western Canon and Shakespeare: Invention of the Human). Some have complained about the wildly speculative nature of his theory: I can only conclude that they have missed the point; whether or not "J" really was Bathsheba (a hypothesis Bloom adopted subsequent to the book's publication) the flight of fancy whereby one identifies the two (or indeed even "reconstructs" the Book of J itself) is the best way to honor the imagined "Yahwist" author.

Rating:
Summary: A fresh view of an ancient text
Review: Modern biblical scholarship has established that the Old Testament is an amalgam of many sources composed over many centuries. Of the four primary texts thought to constitute the Pentateuch, or Torah, the J text (so-called for its reference to the name of God as Yahweh, or Jehovah) contains most of the best-known stories. In J, we find Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the bulk of Noah, Abraham, and Jacob, the adventures of Joseph, Moses' encounter with the burning bush, and the twelve plagues, among other arresting stories.

Naturally, we cannot be certain exactly which passages come from which sources, but stylistic similarities suggest with some reliability a common authorship behind all of these stories. Settling who this source is, and how it was composed, presents a much more complex set of problems, one which will most likely never be settled with any confidence. Harold Bloom offers us a compelling conjecture in this book, whose primary merit is to give us a fresh view of a great text.

Bloom argues that the J text was written by an aristocratic woman in the generation after King Solomon's death. The J author, Bloom claims, was one of the supreme ironists and psychologists of Western literature, and did not intend for her narrative to become a part of normative religion. Bloom attempts to dig J out from under the crushing weight of tradition and examine the text as the literary masterwork that it is. He readily acknowledges that this project verges on the impossible, since the J text has formed the center of a normative tradition that most of us have been familiar with since early childhood. Still, the effort is enough to jog us into reading these familiar stories with fresh eyes, and what emerges is truly miraculous.

The book consists in part of a translation of the J text by David Rosenberg and in part of commentary and interpretation by Harold Bloom. The Rosenberg translation does far more than just isolate the passages that can reasonably be attributed to J and detach them from the usual chapter and verse divisions that were added by later editors. More important, Rosenberg's translation consciously departs from the usual rhetorical styles of Biblical translation, which vary from the lofty to the scholarly literal. Instead, Rosenberg aims to capture the playful irony of the J text, and writes with the energy and sense of discovery we find in the best of children's literature.

I can't comment on the accuracy of the translation, but its readability is commendable. Rosenberg has approached the translation, in keeping with Bloom's mission, as a work of literature. As such, he conveys to the reader the immense literary virtuosity of the text, which is often lost in translations that try to render the Bible in a monotone of lofty sententiousness. Part of Bloom's thesis is that the Book of J defies genre categorization: the author draws on all the genres that Middle Eastern literature to that time had made available to her, as well as inventing some of her own. As such it should read more like a novel than an epic poem, and this is in part what Rosenberg achieves.

The combined effect of Rosenberg's translation and Bloom's commentary is to give us a piece of literature, divorced as possible from normative religion. As a result, the text's literary merits shine through in unexpected ways. I found myself experiencing simultaneously the thrill of reading something great for the first time and the thrill of discovering fresh insights in a text that's already very familiar. I felt I was seeing something amazing for the first time, even though it had always been right there in front of me.

The main trouble I have with Bloom's writing here, as elsewhere, is that he never really makes arguments. He makes assertions and insinuations, usually with enough force and enthusiasm to make them plausible, but he never provides anything to convince us if we're inclined to disagree. I don't find a sustained argument as to why Bloom should think that the author of the J text was an aristocratic woman in post-Solomonic Judah. He makes this claim a number of times, and occasionally alludes to reasons to believe it, but not with the detail of evidence and refuted counter-arguments that constitute proper rigor. Each mention he makes of J's identity leaves me with a feeling that he's just alluding to a point he's going to come to later, but he never actually comes to that point. I finished the book feeling tantalized but unsatisfied. The book is engaging and exciting and I really want to be convinced, but I'm not.

I could say the same for much of Bloom's commentary as well. One of the themes he draws from J is her disappointment with King Rehoboam and her nostalgia for David. Bloom identifies a number of wicked puns on Rehoboam's name, but his reading falls far short of convincing me that David, in his absence, is really the central figure of the J text. I found myself wondering whether Bloom found David's absence in the text first, or J's identity, and whether reading David into the text would hold up if it turned out that the J author is someone altogether different from whom Bloom claims she is.

Bloom does a better job of picking apart the complex and delightful character of Yahweh, but even here, the grand claims he makes for the subtlety and expansiveness of this literary creation always stretch a fair bit beyond what he successfully shows in his analysis of the text.

These are no small faults, but I don't mind them so much in this book because of its outstanding merits. Rosenberg and Bloom set themselves a very ambitious goal, and they meet with enough success to reinvent one of the most familiar texts in the Western canon.

Rating:
Summary: Rosenberg's translations are fresh and exciting
Review: Now, I don't pretend to be a scholar, let alone a biblicalscholar. And I can not say that I am particularly religious, but Ihave found "The Book of J" to be particularly fresh and intriguing.

I have read Tanakh, the Jewish Publication Society's 1985 translation of the Torah, and have dipped into both its earlier 1917 version and the King James version. I have fought my way through Jonathon Kirsch's "Moses, A Life" and have delighted in reading and rereading Thomas Cahill's "The Gifts of the Jews"; and while I have enjoyed them, I've never really thought about the authors of the Old Testament. But David Rosenberg's translation of J's work, and Harold Bloom's wonderful commentary have brought a new sense of wonder towards my reading of these sacred works and has made them fresh and new to me.

I look forward to furthering my own study into my religion and my spirituality and would recommend highly to anybody who is interested in reviving their interest in the Torah to read "The Book of J" and take a new look at an old text.

Rating:
Summary: Author, Please
Review: The Bible was written by men (or in this case, women) who had something to say. None of the writers had any idea their history or poetry or advice or simply, their tale, would one day be revered as the "Word of God". Bloom feels this is particularly true for the Book of J, the underpinnings of much of the Torah.

He surmises - in a wild burst of conjecture - that a Hebrew woman (slightly over 40, mind you) penned much of the Torah, drawing together stories and generational sagas while adding her own peculiar twist to them. Of course, all he can offer is circumstantial evidence - style of writing, oddity of current scripture, the particularly stunning biographies of the various characters, especially the vivid accounts of the many women... Tamar, Zipporah, Sarai, her famous handmaiden, and that woman of woman, Eve.

The text is beautifully translated from the Hebrew by David Rosenberg who captures the essential poetry of the words that are inevitably lost in the English translation (although the King James version does its best to imbue the lines with an appropriate stateliness).

This is a book on two levels. The first is the text itself and by this I mean both the text that has become known as the Torah and the various bits and pieces he selects as having come from a single transcriber/collector/author. Just reading the words inspires allows us to wonder as we wander with this ancient band of people who had the imagination, faith and yes, audacity, to claim a special place in the heart of the creator of the Universe. The second level is the story itself, the hunt for the clues, the interpretation and the startling thought humorous conclusion.

Rating:
Summary: Author, Please
Review: The Bible was written by men (or in this case, women) who had something to say. None of the writers had any idea their history or poetry or advice or simply, their tale, would one day be revered as the "Word of God". Bloom feels this is particularly true for the Book of J, the underpinnings of much of the Torah.

He surmises - in a wild burst of conjecture - that a Hebrew woman (slightly over 40, mind you) penned much of the Torah, drawing together stories and generational sagas while adding her own peculiar twist to them. Of course, all he can offer is circumstantial evidence - style of writing, oddity of current scripture, the particularly stunning biographies of the various characters, especially the vivid accounts of the many women... Tamar, Zipporah, Sarai, her famous handmaiden, and that woman of woman, Eve.

The text is beautifully translated from the Hebrew by David Rosenberg who captures the essential poetry of the words that are inevitably lost in the English translation (although the King James version does its best to imbue the lines with an appropriate stateliness).

This is a book on two levels. The first is the text itself and by this I mean both the text that has become known as the Torah and the various bits and pieces he selects as having come from a single transcriber/collector/author. Just reading the words inspires allows us to wonder as we wander with this ancient band of people who had the imagination, faith and yes, audacity, to claim a special place in the heart of the creator of the Universe. The second level is the story itself, the hunt for the clues, the interpretation and the startling thought humorous conclusion.

Rating:
Summary: Thinking Outside the Box
Review: The Book of J is simultaneously enlightening and threatening. As expressed in some of the reviews on Amazon, the idea that a woman could author this work runs contrary to traditional religious ideas that women are the lesser of the sexes. Travis from Canada notes, after all, that "a women caused the fall." This is just one of many limited interpretations of the Bible that our religious traditions have taught us over time. Bloom's commentary suggests that we reconsider our notions of Biblical heros and heroines, most of whom were tricksters who achieved their purpose (and God's) through cunning or outright criminal behavior (Jacob was a thief). They were "Godly," however, because the God presented in the Book of J and the, KJV in general, is a moody, Zeus-like God who punishes and doles out favor at questionable moments and behaves like a petulant child. To be open minded enough to reconsider everything western religion has taught us is the prerequisite for getting the most out of this book and Bloom's commentary. My conclusion after reading: I suspect the primary theme of the Old Testament is akin to eastern concepts of positive/negative, good/evil. Big picture thought is necessary.

Rating:
Summary: I just don't buy it
Review: The most interesting part of this work is that the book of J exists at all. I like the idea that reminence of an original author or authors still remains in the bible. Unfortunately, Bloom doesn't touch on the separation of the book of J from the rest of the bible or how we should even believe that the book can be separated.

My biggest hang-up with this entire book is the lack of scholarship. Bloom isn't a biblical scholar and can't reason his way out of wet paper bag. Almost all his reasons as to why J is a certain person (or even female at all) are so vague and ambiguous as to be useless. He claims that females are treated differently in this book that in E, P and D's sections of the first 5 books. Excuse me, but Eve caused the fall of man, Lot's daughters' got Lot drunk and slept with him to get pregnant (an act which went unpunished by the way) and the list goes on. I don't see women as any kind of heroes in the book at all. I think that Bloom picks a female because it is more controvertial ... period. It's a bold step, I'll give him that, but can't be justified, at least with any of Blooms arguments.

My second hang-up with "The Book of J" is the translation by Rosenberg and Bloom's treatment of that translation. My first clue was Bloom pounding on the ideas of barriers being a central theme of J. The barrier between snake and other animals after the fall, the barrier between people after Bable etc... I started looking into this idea, since the King James version didn't touch on this theme at all. I looked at no less than 5 other translations of various passages and the idea of barriers never came up. Young's literal translation was the most interesting, since he basically covers literal words used from ancient Hebrew translated to English. While there are words like "separate" and "separated", there is no mention of a barrier. The barriers as a theme seems to be an artifact of the translation, not "a restoration of the theme of barriers" as mentioned by Bloom. As I became aware of this, the translation seemed to harp on barriers more and more, quite akwardly in some places. This was true of almost all the themes that Bloom touched on. I became quite unimpressed with Rosenberg's translation and think that it was done deliberately. A translator injecting a theme is no theme at all.

Despite these problems, I found Rosenberg's translation told the story quite well and was fun to read. Analysing it literarily probably won't give anything to you about the original themes unless Rosenberg's guesses are somehow correct. That would be a fluke of hundreds of unlikely situations that makes the translation no better than anything else out there.

The problems with the translation mirror the problems with Blooms logic throughout. Bloom disagrees that J was multiple authors. He thinks that J was one person. The style for authors at the time was to write one type of work, while the book of J covers prophecies, epics, a flood disaster etc... all very different types of works. This seems to point to the idea that J was many authors. Blooms disagrees, saying that many authors who are great do things differently from their contemporaries and from people who came before. And that's it! Nothing more substantial. This is tenuous in the exterme and typical of Bloom throughout the book.

I'm still holding out for "The Hidden Book in the Bible" by Richard Friedman, hopefully it will be a little more reasonable.