Biblical Literature in the Iron(ic) Age: Reflections on Literary-Historical Method

REVIEW ESSAYS BIBLICAL LITERATURE IN THE IRON(IC) AGE: REFLECTIONS ON LITERARY·HISTORICAL METHOD Alan Cooper Hebrew Union College Bernard R. Goldstein University of Pittsburgh A Review of The Book of J. Translated from the Hebrew by David Rosenberg and interpreted by Harold Bloom. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990. Cloth, $21.95. The publication of The Book ofJ in August, 1990 was inflated into a cultural "event." Now that the brouhaha attending the book's release has petered out, it may be appropriate to reflect on some of the issues that the work raises for biblical scholars. These issues pertain not only to the book's scholarly merit (or lack of it) but to basic questions of method and intellectual integrity as well.1 The Book ofJ is a collaboration between the poet David Rosenberg and the literary critic Harold Bloom, neither one of whom has any discernible credentials as a Hebraist or Biblicist. Relying on out-of-date scholarly sources and his own uninformed judgment,2 Rosenberg, with some assistance from Bloom (p. 328), culled the Torah in order to extract one of its purported sources: an old ludean document known as "I" because it tends to use the divine name Yahweh (German lahwe) in its version of Genesis. Rosenberg and Bloom undertook this task primarily for aesthetic reasons ,3 believing that the author of 1 was a literary genius whose voice had 1 The relatively long lead time that we were allotted for dlis review anicle has permitted us to sample die reviews that have appeared already in die popular and semi-popular press. We read and profited from die fonowing: Miles, "'Book ofJ' Lacks Nerve to Name J" (1990: kindly supplied to us by Richard Friedman): Alter, "Harold Bloom's 'J'" (1990); Banon, "It's a Girl!" (1990); Hirsch, "The Female Yahwist" (1991); Halpern, "[Review 01] The Book of J" (1991); Stem, "The Supreme Fictionalist" (1991); Ostriker, "Uberated Theology" (1991): Greenstein, "Doctored J" (1991); Friedman, "Is Everybody a Bible Expen? Not Ihe Audlors oflhe Book ofJ" (1991); and Josipovici, "By divers hands: The problems ofpan:elling out die Pentateuch" (1991). 2 Friedman's (1991) review is especially trenchant on dlis poinL 3 It should be noted that Bloom, at least, seems to have had a dleological stake as well. According to an interview published in die New York Times, October 24, 1990, "Mr. Bloom ...allows dlat his personal dleology has influenced him, that die God he sees in die J text is one he can believe in, even as he cannot believe in die God of what he calls 'normative Judaism.'" Stem (1991) picks up on dlis point, Observing Hebrew Studies 32 (1991) 46 Review Essays been muffled, but not silenced, by subsequent "nonnativizing" (p. 23) redactors. Rosenberg prepared a translation of the reclaimed document, and Bloom contributed both an introduction to the whole enterprise and a commentary on the translation. Bloom's contribution includes not only literary analysis, but also, perhaps surprisingly, an historical-critical discussion of the date, authorship, and setting of1's work. Rosenberg's translation, which may more accurately be termed a paraphrase , is a travesty, betraying its perpetrator's tin ear for both Hebrew and English. This is the same David Rosenberg, after all, who once translated Job 3:11 "why couldn't I have been a lucky abortion" (1977:6).4 (The poetic rendering of Job, incidentally, also provided an early demonstration of Rosenberg's critical acumen: it comprised chaps. 3-31, omitting the introduction, climax, and denouement of the book, and thus depriving it of any conceivable sense.) Rosenberg's characters speak in a fractured English that is reminiscent of the way the Indians talk in old cowboy movies. "It is no good the man be alone," says Yahweh in Oen 2:19 (p. 62);5 "I didn't know it is I that am my brother's watchman," says Cain, confronted by Ood in Oen 4:9 (p. 66); "Your seed I will sow beyond a man's eyes to count," the angel says to Hagar in Oen 16:10 (p. 80). Readers who are competent in Hebrew will have their own favorite howlers. The ignorant, however, may be...