Jesus and Yahweh, by Harold Bloom, is an analysis of the three characters Yeshua of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ, and Yahweh from a literary perspective intermixed with Bloom's doubtful gnostic Jewishness.#

Although peppered with one-line references to Mormons, I was primarily interested in this book due to my high regard for Bloom and in particular, his book The Book of J.#

Bloom's opener:#

This book centers upon three figures: a more-or-less historical person, Yeshua of Nazareth; a theological God, Jesus Christ; and a human, all-too-human God, Yahweh. That opening sentence cannot avoid sounding polemical, and yet I hope only to clarify (if I can) and not to give offense. [p. 1]

The reason I like Bloom so much is entirely apparent in this single paragraph:#

Shakespearean "self-overhearing" has one source in Chaucer, but perhaps the primary Shakespearean precursor is William Tyndale's Jesus in the Geneva Bible. Internalization in Shakespeare gets beyond Jesus', though Jesus inaugurated the ever-growing inner self, developed by St. Augustine, and which Shakespeare perfected in Hamlet, after reinventing it in Falstaff. [p. 10]

On the authenticity of the accounts in the New Testament:#

The New Testament is myth and faith, not a factual chronicale, and the writings of the untrustworthy Josephus have been falsified by Christian redactors. Jesus lacks both history and biography, and which of his sayings and teachings are authentic cannot be known. If you accept the Incarnation, none of this matters. Judaism after all is equally unreliable: did the Exodus actually happen? Christ's miracles, like Yahweh's, persuade only the persuaded. [p. 43]

On the anti-Pharisee sentiment in the New Testament:#

I guess, with Akenson, that Yeshua was a Pharisee, since ironically that accounts for the anti-Pharisaic fury of the New Testament, which needs to distinguish the particular Pharisee from all the others. Except for that, I have no other surmise. [p. 44]

A Bloomism: "I am inclined to believe that the best poetry, whatever its intentions, is a kind of theology, while theology generally is bad poetry." (p. 98)#

Bloom is very Mormoon in his emphasis that God is not anthropomorphic, but that men are theomorphic. (p. 119, and throughout)#

A quote from Donald Akenson: "I cannot believe that any sane person has ever liked Yahweh." (p. 174)#

Does Yahweh need us? (Brother Brigham says no.)#

If Yahweh needed the Jews, or the Christians, or the Muslims, or the Zoroastrians, Hundus, Buddhists, Confucians, Taoists, and all the others, it appears he required feeding through sacrifices, and wanted also endless barrages of praise, prayers, hymns of gratitude, and immense love, unceasing love. Is Yahweh simply a cosmological and timeless King Lear, patriarch-of-patriarchs? [p. 175]