eyeh

Interesting and affirming to find the J writer’s Yahweh whom I finally met in Harold Bloom’s The Story of J has indeed been with me all my life. Nearly eight decades have I known this storied companion with whom I am, as Bloom says, incommensurate. He likes that word, incommensurate, Bloom does; and its what, corollary?, commensurate. And normative, Bloom likes that word also. That is to say, he likes the word he uses to speak of religion as humans have evolved it; religion beginning with J and ultimately delivered to us in scripture by R: faith of our fathers, holy faith of Jesus under which umbrella St. Paul summons us to huddle as we await the imminent coming of God’s reign on earth.

Earthy and ironic, playing in the mud he finds on the surface of this world, J’s Yahweh fashions, for no apparent reason, perhaps coincidentally, a mud doll. Blowing into it, he fills it with being; including somewhat regrettably a mind and will of its own. Nevertheless, befriends it. Makes a garden for it to live in and care for, and puts it in charge. Walks there and chats with it, unlike the vaporous spirit of P, E, D and eventually R. Teases it (sometimes a more apt word is torments it), cuts it in two to create for it companionship of its own kind. Plants fruit trees, tells Hava and Adam not to eat the most delicious and beautiful fruit. When in conversation with a fabulous talking animal they eat anyway, impetuously and inexplicably punishes them all out of proportion to their curiosity; and seems impishly to relish doing so. But in self-contradictory irony, sews clothes for them before sending them off. 

Seems to want them to emulate him but when they try, thwarts them out of what, insecurity? Reluctance to have them join the heavenly company of Elohim? -- who later meet Abram outside his tent and, after a hospitable dinner under the shadetree, tolerate Abram’s company and presumptuousness on their walk to Sodom. But destroy Sodom anyway, why? Because its residents are inhospitable? 

Extracted as best possible from the normative pottage that R has stirred of J, P, E, D and parts-is-parts, J’s Yahweh is, so Bloom finds, an impish, self-contradictory, impetuous human-all-too-human character of enigmatic irony. Who by the end of J’s story, has created an unmanageable self-destructive nightmare. Rather tired of them, and with other and better things to do than be our constant keeper at any event, leaves us to manage as best we can and withdraws into the company of the Elohim who, like he himself, wonder why he did this in the first place.

Fog this morning: are You there, eyeh, is that You?

W