Critics of this book find deep fault with Bloom's grasp of Biblical history, research, archaeology, and biblical scholasticism in general. Bloom's mission here it seems to me is to apply critical thinking to the writings of the Christian New Testament. Bloom airs his own ideas in a kind of poetic, Joycean stream, and at the same time, points out the very many contraditions and oddities that the various authors of the books of the bible indulge in. Bloom is the anti-Sunday school teacher--as children we are taught to simply accept Biblical teachings without thought or critical thinking. As educated adults, Bloom leads us on a field trip through the Bible, focusing on Yahweh, Jesus, and bringing in his old favorite, Hamlet, as a talking point--Bloom's wide, deep and ferocious grasp of western civilization, literature, and critical thinking inspire the reader to question, argue, and re-think his or her fondly held beliefs regarding the Jesus of the gospels. An invaluable work.
I don't expect anyone to find my review helpful, but I must go on record saying what a terribly disappointing book this is. I have never been a Harold Bloom fan--I find that he is a pretentious windbag--but I was so intrigued by the topic of this book that I bought it anyway. Yet the man seems constitutionally incapable of making one paragraph follow meaningfully on another. The book is more than digressive, more than desultory; at times, it is downright stream-of-consciousness. If that were not bad enough, Bloom makes several historical blunders only a few pages into the book. Throughout the book they are so numerous and so egregious that they distract from any worthwhile literary observations that he profers. At times he mistakes New Testament midrash for historical fact; thus as "the firstborn of his Davidic parents, Jesus qualified for elmination by the Herodians and their Roman overlords" (p. 18). Ridiculous. At other times, he abandons any pretense to history and resorts to his own fantasy: "I suspect that, as lore has it, [Jesus] had the wisdom to escape execution, and then make his way to Hellenistic northern India . . . " (p. 18). Unbelievable. Not even the testimony of a cultured despiser of Christianity like Tacitus counts for Bloom. Bloom thinks the Gospel of Thomas more credible a source for Jesus' sayings than any New Testament gospel. Why? "[B]ecaucse the Gnostic sayings of Jesus in [it] ring more authentically to me than the entire range of utterances attributed to him in the Synoptic Gospels and in the very late Gospel of John" (pp. 18-19). Never mind that most scholars date the Gospel of John to ca. 90 C.E. and the final form of Thomas to ca. 120-150 C.E., or that the very Gnostic character of Thomas which so appeals to Bloom is precisely what disqualifies it as an reliable repository for sayings of Jesus. These three blunders occur on a single page. It doesn't occur to Bloom that whereas literary critics are allowed aesthetic preferences, historians are not. And this nonsense comes in a book that aspires to historically informed criticism. Further, when Bloom is not busy uttering idiocies, he delights in banalities. There is hardly a new or original idea in the entire book. The dustjacket informs the reader of Bloom's "disturbing" conclusion, to wit, "that the Hebrew Bible of the Jews and the Christian Old Testament are very different books with very different purposes." Yawn. It comes as no surprise that the back of the dustjacket sports no publicity blurbs from established authors. I doubt very much that this is because Bloom needs no endorsements; I suspect that it owes to the publisher's failure to find anyone willing to do the job. Bloom is quite obviously far into his dotage. It is time for him to lay down his pen and spare the reading public yet another labored exercise in the solipsism at which he has become so prolific. It's all about him. When will people stop fawning over this literary Emperor's new clothes when the old fart is so obviously naked?
