Wrapping it up.

In The Story of J, my book that I’m reading, Harold Bloom sees J as a woman in the time of Solomon and now Rehoboam. Living in the court as a member of the royal family, she reveres David, perhaps her great-uncle, as almost divine in the golden age of his united kingdom, which was raised to near perfection under her nephew Solomon and is now disintegrating under Rehoboam, her incompetent cousin twice removed. J’s contemporary and perhaps writing associate, even accomplice and they read each other’s stories, is the Court Historian author of 2nd Kings. I'll explore that again, next.

In the book I’ve read Professor Bloom’s lengthy lead up to J, and David Rosenberg’s English translation of J from Hebrew. Currently I’m in the last third of the book reading Bloom’s fascinating character by character commentary, just finished Jacob and now about to start Tamar. 

Professor of Humanities at Yale and professor of English at New York University, Harold Bloom claims not to be a Bible scholar (though he certainly does a lot better than the likes of me), and technically I might have agreed until coming across his line (p.186) “J is not writing a moral tale but a children’s story that ends unhappily. This is how things got to be the way things are, she is saying, and the way they are is not good, whether for snakes, women, or men.” In his imaginative analysis of J and J’s writing, it was the first indication I saw of Bloom seeing anything etiological about the stories, so I was sold, he’s a Bible scholar too. More colorful than the usual, but nevertheless.

In reading the Gospels comparatively, and discussing with others the differences and seeming contradictions among their stories, I like to bear in mind that many historians wrote about George Washington and no two authors saw him just the same way, and their remembrances report what they found and read and heard and believed; and that Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and what Tom does and says and thinks and likes and hates; and who Tom is in love with at the moment, and is friends with and is leery of and is enemies with, is whatever Mark Twain says; so the story depends entirely on the author: what was said and done depends on whose story you are reading. Just so with the Gospel stories when discussed from various literary perspectives and not as modern historians might have told it. 

Albeit both, all, with stories to tell and books to sell.

In The Story of J then, as Bloom has it, here’s Yahweh in Eden, which He has made for no apparent reason but for Adam to enjoy, with no worries, innocent as a child in a child’s playground, and finally with Eve. And rather impishly (Bloom’s word), puts right in the middle of the garden the forbidden trees with the most luscious and tempting fruit, telling the children, “Now don’t you dare touch that,” while I’m gone, then leaves them alone. And the snake, a natural part of creation and the garden, just as innocent as the children if quite a smooth talker, walks by and gets into a chat with them. And it all goes downhill from there when Yahweh returns. What father treats his children that way. Either he was looking for an opportunity to scold them (just wait till your father gets home), or he was as innocent as they, with no idea of the inevitabilities when children are left alone with candy and toys. At all events, they are driven out of Paradise, which actually was the childlike and animal-like innocence of not knowing anything, it pays to be ignorant, including not knowing good from bad and not realizing that they one day will die. Now you know and now you realize, and nothing can ever be the same again. So Yahweh drives them out, not as punishment because they were naughty (he deals otherwise and harshly with that), but so they don’t eat from the other tree and become part of the elohim, the heavenly community. 

Bloom reckons that what we see as their punishment was way out of proportion to what they’ve done, what father would treat his children like that. Bad enough the man has to work as a farmer now, badder that the woman gets a really bad deal, what with childbirth and all; but the snake gets worse in that, although he may have walked innocently into the scene, he sure as aitch doesn’t walk out, and never will again. Yet, who comes out looking worst? Not the innocents, not the three children of man, woman and snake: it’s the impetuous parent. 

I’m not going there. What I am remembering yet one more time again is my brilliant HNES middle schoolers ten years ago, bright, fun, incisive and dearly beloved, asking, "Why did God put the tree in the middle of the garden in the first place?" And again, because there's no point going into etiologies in a classroom of children most of whom are not Episcopalians, the only correct, right and good answer is, "Exactly." 

Bloom does it again with Abram, later Abraham. Only a scuzzball says tell them you’re my beautiful sister so they take you away into the harem and pay me lots of gold and silver and livestock for you, don’t tell them you’re my wife or they’ll kill me and take you anyway; Bloom rescues Abram, but at what cost, whose expense? 

Abram is napping in the noonday heat when he looks up and standing there at the door of his tent are three elohim, one of whom he immediately recognizes as his old drinking buddy Yahweh. They (Xnty rather absurdly makes them trinitarian and equal) are on the way to destroy Sodom because the people there worship other gods. After the visit of feeding them a lunch which is so good and refreshing that Yahweh renews his now comical promise of a son for the old folks and the interplay with Sarai who retorts that she is too old now and besides Abram is shriveled, they head on off to do justice to Sodom; and Abram goes along, ostensibly to show them the way, but actually to try courageously and respectfully to talk Yahweh out of his outrageous intent. Obsequiously Abram talks Yahweh down to agreeing that just ten righteous men will save the day and the city. But even that fails, they can’t find even ten people in Sodom who are afraid of Yahweh. So the next day Abram looks at the mushroom cloud hanging in the sky and the radioactive fallout drifting away and the pitiful upturned faces of the Sodomites. So we look at the story and who comes out smelling like a rose? Sarai because she had the nerve to laugh at the joke even though she’d heard it many times before. Abram, who had the guts to try and talk them out of it, looks like a creature of merciful lovingkindness. But the pilot of the Enola Gay isn't looking so noble. 

Bloom finds constant tragi-comedy, irony in J’s writing, and stronger than simply impish in her main character. It’s a good book.

Taken my pills and going downstairs to the gym for a few minutes. Later we’re going back to see the baby again. She's tiny and adorable, watch it, GGP. Yesterday watching Ray do a masterful job of swaddling her, I asked, “Good job! Did Joy teach you that?” Chef Kelly says, “No, I learned this wrapping burritos” and hands her to me.  

Saturday dawning nicely from here.

TW+