Translation of the “Book of J” by David Rosenberg
Four sources of the Torah: J (the Yahwist), the Deuteronomist (D), the Elohist (E), and the Priestly source. There is a fifth, the Redactor (R) but he redacted / revised -- is not considered a source.
From wiki: The Elohist (or simply E) is identified through textual criticism as one of four sources of the Torah, together with the Yahwist, the Deuteronomist and the Priestly source. Its name comes from Elohim, the term used in the Hebrew and Canaanite languages for the Gods.
From the introduction:
“‘The Book of J’” is used here [in this book] as the title for what scholars agree is the oldest strand in the Pentateuch, probably composed at Jerusalem in the tenth century BCE [let us say, 900 BCE].
“J stands for the author, the Yahwist, named for Yahweh (Jahweh, in the German spelling; Jehovah, in a misspelling), God of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
The later strands in Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers are all revisions or censoring of J, and their authors are known as E, the Elohist, for ‘Elohim,’ the plural name used for Yahweh in that version (J always used ‘Elohim’ as a name for divine beings in general, and never as the name of God); P, for the Priestly Author or School that wrote nearly all of Leviticus; D, for the author or authors of Deuteronomy; and R, for the Redactor, who performed the final revision after the Return from Babylonian Exile.
[Harold Bloom states that ‘Elohim’ are angels.]
[If J considers ‘Elohim’ as divine beings, one could argue that she had not given up idea of more than one god; Harold Bloom, I believe, argues that J wrote of only one god, Yahweh.]
The name ‘Abram’ in J means ‘exalted father’; the now more familiar ‘Abraham,’ which means ‘father of a host of nations,’ was introduced by P.”
Introduction
Harold Bloom imagines two writers working closely together in the royal court. One writer was the royal scribe, responsible for court history, and the writer of 2 Samuel. [Samuel was one of the last Israelite judges before the kings of Israel; Samuel had been trained by Eli.] The royal scribe was undoubtedly a male.
Near him, perhaps in the royal court, but possibly elsewhere, was a woman, a writer, and friendly rival of the court historian. Harold Bloom argues that it was she who wrote the Book of J. I believe he would consider what she wrote to be prose poetry, not religious in nature, and every bit as good as Shakespeare. Indeed, Bloom states, just as Shakespeare’s Hamlet was a literary figure, for J, Yahweh was also a literary figure.
For brevity, we will call her ‘J’ for now.
Bloom suggests that Genesis, written by J, was a companion piece to 2 Samuel, written by the court historian. [Was the court historian tasked with writing on contemporary – or near contemporary – events, and J was commissioned to write the older history?]
J was an author at or near the court of King Rehoboam of Judah, who reigned in the early 900’s. [Conflicting dates: 922 – 915 BC or 931 – 913 BC] King Rehoboam was the son of Solomon, and was the first king of Judah. Solomon’s Kingdom fell apart under his less-than-adequate son Rehoboam after Solomon died in 922 BE. [Bloom is going to argue later on that J was protecting Solomon’s and David’s good names after Rehoboam’s disastrous rule.]
J’s original works have been lost. Scholars believe that fragments of her work exist in Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers – just three of the five Pentateuch books. These books are often referred to as the “Five Books of Moses” but Harold Bloom states unequivocally it is a fiction that Moses as the author.
Harold Bloom states that 2 Samuel and Genesis are companion books.
Among many themes, Bloom makes three points early on: 1) J was a female; 2) there are astonishing differences between J and all other Biblical writers; and 3) the concept of irony in the Bible is the concept that is most often and most weakly misread concept in the Bible.
Background
Bloom provides background on the authors of the Torah.
One train of thought:
Before
The Deuteronomist text (D) (centuries later than J)
The Priestly text (P)
The Redactor: Single Work
Jahwist text JE text
Elohist text
After the Babylonian Exile
JE
P rival histories, rival religious views
All had to be kept but differences had to be minimized
P
D rival law codes
Many think that the Torah Redactor was Ezra – a priestly scribe who is thought to have led 5,000 Israelite exiles in Babylon to their home in Jerusalem (459 BCE). History is found in Ezra and 1 Chronicles.
Yahweh as a literary figure for J: For Jews, Muslims, and Christians, Yahweh is the God of Abraham’s children, BUT in the Book of J, Yahweh is a literary figure – just as Hamlet is a literary figure.
Bloom: religion is the way people choose to worship based on poetic tales, yet we do NOT worship Hamlet, and yet we do worship Yahweh.
[As I write this, I wonder if there is an irony in this. For J, Yahweh is a literary figures – which people don’t worship – and yet people worship Yahweh. J created a literary figure we worship; Shakespeare created a literary figure (Hamlet) whom we study.]
Bloom’s anxiety is that J’s Yahweh is “human-way-too-human” and yet we worship him.
Bloom states that J is not of the same genre as Wordsworth, George Eliot, or Tolstoy, but rather of Kafka!
Only two (2) ways to get back to J:
The Israeli scholar of Kabbalah, Moshe Idel, or,
Only those areas of J that normative authors could accept
“What are we to do about J’s Yahweh, the uncanniest of all Western metaphors?" – p. 15
For believers, Yahweh is NOT personal like Christ for Christians, Muhammed for Muslims, Moser for Jews, or objectivity for secularists. But for J, Yahweh is very personal – “human-all-too-human.”
Harold Bloom unequivocally states that he has a myth of J – his myth – just as we all, including himself, have a myth of Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Freud. For Bloom, J is Gevurah (“great lady”).
The “great lady” wrote alongside her good friend, the court historian, for the post-Solomic court circles. She wrote “J”; he wrote 2 Samuel.
Deuteronomy was composed centuries later. “D” said Moses “wrote down a Torah” – a teaching, p. 20. [Did “D” not know about “J” or did the Redactor decide that it was better to have Moses write the JE text rather than a non-religious female author, who may not even have had formal education.]
Bloom is not the first to question Moses as the author of the Torah; there is a history of such questioning:
Thomas Hobbes was first
Spinoza
W.M. L. DeWette
Trio of 19th-century German Hegelians (anti-Semite):
Karl Heinrich Graf
Wilhelm Vatke
Wellhausen (d. 1918)
Another timeline:
J: finished writing about 915 BCE
E: did not exist as an individual; there was no author E; rather E was a revised or censored J with all consequential implications; and E doubtlessly added additional information
Therefore, by 850 BCE, about two generations later, J was reduced to a more normative writing (“normative”: prescribed rules of writing)
D: the Deuteronomists – focused on violent moment of King Josiah’s puritan reform, 621 BCE
P: a generation later. An alternative text: all of what is now Leviticus, and a larger store of what is now Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers; written after the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon, 587 BCE; continued deep into the Exile
R: the Redactor, about 458 BCE; of undoubted genius; thought by some to be Ezra the Scribe. Produced the Torah probably pretty much as we have it now.
For Bloom, the Redactor is a villain (smile) because he prevented us from seeing the fuller Book of J. It would be like a John Updike re-doing all of Shakespeare – p. 22.
Imaging the Author J – who was she; what was she; what was she trying to write?
J is Kafka’s direct predecessor, p. 25
J invented irony
Several meanings of irony; first three are given in the dictionary; a fourth will be added by Bloom.
First (not J): Socratic irony. Irony as first used by Socrates. “A feigned ignorance and humility designed to expose the inadequate assumptions of others, by way of skilled dialectical questioning”
Second: “Use of language to express something other than supposedly literal meaning, particularly the opposite of such meaning, and also the contrast or gap between expectation and fulfillment” [I think this could be consistent with J]
Third, closer to J: Dramatic irony and Tragic irony. “The incongruity between what develops on adjacent words and actions that are more fully apprehended by the audience or readers than by the characters.” J is a master of such irony.
Fourth, for J, her form of irony: This form was invented by her. Her irony was “the representation of what happens when altogether incommensurate realities juxtapose and clash?” For example, what happens when a god wrestles with a mortal (gross incommensurate beings). How can Abram haggle with Yahweh? How can Jacob wrestle with a nameless one among the Elohim (angels)? Also, p. 26, how can we find it persuasive that a manly rough hunter Esau would barter his birthright for that celebrated mess of pottage?
[An aside. In the movie, “Once Upon a Time in Mexico,” the events between Johnny Depp and an unnamed boy may be examples of both the third and the fourth types of irony. As an example of the third definition of irony: when Johnny Depp said he didn’t want to see the boy again, and later in the movie when they cross paths, Depp has been blinded and cannot see the boy. The same event can represent the fourth definition of irony: an unnamed, untrained boy saves the life of a trained killer.]
Of the three (actually four) definitions of irony above, Bloom says J has her own form – invented by her and unique to her.
J is economical: she leaves things out; the reader needs to pay attention,
J is elliptical: she is aware of the reader’s preconceived notions and she evades them (one technique: wordplay, puns)
J: “If one could imagine a Jewish Chaucer writing with uncanny ironies of Kafka, Isaak Babel, and Nathaniel West, but also with the high naturalistic wisdom of Tolstoy and Wordsworth, then one would approach the high humor of J, ultimate ancestor of The Canterbury Tales, as well as of Tolstoy’s fictions and Kafka’s parables.
27: “Monism is one of J’s inventions.”
p. 33: J: another literary originality – fusing history and myth, now a Western tradition. Her result: a new kind of narrative, closer to Tolstoy than to Homer
p. 33: where did J’s Yahweh come from? For Bloom, probably a combination of all three:
a) her people’s past
b) contemporary beliefs of these people
c) from her own humorous and subtle imagination
For Bloom, p. 34, why did Yahweh
almost kill Moses?
prevent Moses from entering Canaan?
bury him in a secret location
These all suggest a possessiveness of a young child – think of a child that almost kills a pet goldfish, and then when it does die, buries it in a hidden location.
p. 37, for Bloom:
J – a member of the royal family
Court historian: a scribe, but not of the royal family
p. 41, David, NOT Moses, is the HERO of the Hebrew Bible – so, think about this – the Redactor wanted MOSES, not David to be the hero of the Hebrew Bible. Why?
“Yahweh is in love with David (a king) and not with Moses (a prophet)
This says volumes about J – especially if J was a royal! And especially if David was her grandfather!
David: a literary figure – we know little of the historical figure, p. 42
Too much to write on David, but important to read!! – p. 42 and following
p. 44, for J, David is precisely what Abram, Jacob, Tamar and others strive toward becoming. David is Shakespearean for J, p. 46 – 47.
Wow! You can almost hear Bloom shouting, “I want the varnish off [I want to discover the real] J because [she] is a writer of the eminence of Shakespeare or Dante, and such a writer is worth more than many creeds, many churches, many scholarly certainties.” Wow, p. 48.
Translating J: The Book of J as translated by Rosenberg
Commentary on the translation
p. 176: Monism was J’s invention; the creation story was not her invention. Many creation stories by this time
J never mentions David – but probably saw David as “god-like” – and the real “first” man, and Adam as a secondary man.
p. 177, Bloom is unaware of any precedent for an Eve.
p. 177, for Bloom, for J, Eden is an “era” – not a locale. Eden: a “time” – never to return
p. 178: the Tree of Knowing Good and Bad is J’s invention; other myths included a Tree of Life.
p. 179: issue of “help met”
p. 179:
God made man out of inanimate object – clay (mud); and had to breathe life into “it”
However, God made woman out of living flesh, and thus did not need to breathe life into her – in other words, he got it (life) right the second time around [Bloom is suggesting that God could have made man from pre-existing life forms – but wow – that would have been interesting. [Others could argue, however, that God’s breath of life was what made man’s life different from other life forms] [It begs the question, from what did God make the other life forms and how did they take their first breath? Or is that too literal?]
Also J devotes six (6) times as much space to woman’s creation as to man’s creation! p. 180
p. 181: Homeric culture: culture of shame
Christian culture: culture of guilt
Solomonic culture (J’s culture): neither shame nor guilt
p. 182: again, the irony for G is the clash between incommensurates
p. 187: J argues that there is very little difference between man and angels – only difference is immortality (Adam and Eve had eaten of the Tree of Knowledge [good and bad], but not of the Tree of Life [immortality])
p. 195, “Moses, despite Freud’s assertions, did not invent monotheism, Abraham did, and the promise of Canaan. Therefore the promise was made to Abraham, and only secondarily to Moses, who in any case was banned from going there.”
Abraham: abrupt disaffection with idolatry – we don’t know why – but J noted it, and it is the norm for all prophets since
Too much to write on Abraham, p. 197 and following.
p. 198, Bloom would say this: “In a way, J was the father of Yahweh (God).” J is substituted for Abraham by Bloom, just as Moses was substituted for J by the Redactor.”
J did not invent Yahweh, just as Shakespeare did not invent Hamlet.
p. 199, J’s attitude toward the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) and towards Yahweh. Abram first calls upon Yahweh by name (Gen. 12:8)
p. 199, the great cycle of J – to Egypt and back to Canaan. Abraham went to Egypt, as did his son Isaac and grandson Jacob. Jacob and Rachel Joseph Egypt.
J is NOT judgmental, even less so than Shakespeare.
Why does J tell such unfavorable stories of these patriarchs – [even more interesting, why did the Redactor and other revisionists NOT edit those unfavorable stories?]
p. 204: sin is NOT one of J’s concepts, contempt is. Sodom is not destroyed because of its sin but because of its contempt; for Yahweh, for strangers, for women, for Lot, for all who are not Sodomites.
p-. 206: Bloom’s thought on Abraham test to sacrifice his son Isaac – Bloom feels J did not write this story.
Jacob
p. 209. Initially Bloom thought J was Jacob, until he “realized” J was a woman.
In this chapter, Bloom discusses the Blessing – to extend one’s name; Jacob becomes Israel.
Too much to write, p. 209 and following.
Tamar
Earlier, Bloom lists the heroines, p. 216, “commencing with Sarai and Rebecca, to culminate in Tamar.”
p. 220: Bloom considers Tamar the most memorable character in the Book of J – despite her brief appearance in Genesis 38.
Tamar: lineage of Jesus. P. 220
J makes clear that her centering on Tamar means her allusions to David – her real hero.
Genealogy
- Tamar (Tamara) and Judah
- Zerah and Peretz. Peretz, "grandfather" [actually great-great-etc-grandfather] of David. [David's father was Jess, son Obed, son of Obaz and the tribe of Judah and Ruth the Moabite -- website; "Pharez" heads the line -- is Judah's son. This makes Peretz a great-great-etc-grandfather of David.
- Peretz
- Hezron
- Aram
- Amminadab
- Nahshon
- Salmon
- Boaz
- Obed
- Jesse
- David
For J, Tamar ensured the Blessing continued to David.
p. 223: Tamar does NOT give up. Her will does NOT give up. Her will becomes the will of Yahweh, and ten (10) generations later leads to David, of all humans the most favored by Yahweh.
Joseph
Why did J write so much about Joseph, when Abraham, Jacob and Moses so much more important to the traditions of the Hebrews? P. 224
Again, too much to write, p. 224 and following.
With Joseph, J’s principal contribution is what we now call the art of prose fiction.
Family diagram: Jacob and Rachel had 12 children. The first three, Reuben, Simeon, and Levi did not get the Blessing. The Blessing went to the fourth son, Judah. The 11th child was Joseph (the coat of many colors) and the youngest son was Benjamin.
p. 227. J’s personages much like Shakespeare’s because Shakespeare drew from J. “The perpetually changing consciousness of J’s beings is very different from the Homeric state of mind, and…”
In Shakespeare, “characters change by brooding.”
p. 233. Re: Joseph, “J’s greatest literary gift, like Shakespeare’s or Montaigne’s, or Freud’s, may be an original master of moral and visionary psychology.
p. 234 – particularly interesting
Joseph is for J, as David is for the author of 2 Samuel. [need to think about that; for J, Joseph was a secondary character, not as important as David; David was her hero; For 2 Samuel’s author, if David was a secondary character, who was the primary? Solomon and the Royal House of Solomon?]
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