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Genesis Is Good Literature — Harold Bloom’s Book of J
Bloom claims the writer of Genesis was an ironist and a woman
Although ostensibly a book of literary criticism, Bloom’s Book Of J, does more than stake out a claim for the J writer as one of the giants in Western literary history, he also uses his interpretation of the Book Of J to attack what he refers to as the “normative tradition” of Christianity and Judaism: the Yahweh depicted in the Book of J does not provide the foundation for the Judaeo-Christian ethic, nor for many other ideals that we associate with Christianity.
German high criticism of the Bible, beginning in the early 19th century, discovered that the Pentateuch (first five books of the Bible, commonly ascribed to Moses, except by scholars) was based primarily on earlier works, and had undergone centuries of revision[1]. The earliest source book of the Five Books, the work of the so-called “Yahwist” or “Jahwist” (J writer) predates the works of the P or Priestly writer, the E or Elohist writer, and the R writer, the Redactor, who is most responsible for the shape of the five books we have today, as well as for the Hebrew Bible. According to Bloom, the “normative” interpretation of the Pentateuch is due to subsequent revisions, and is wholly absent in the earliest writer, the J writer.
