Yahweh and nihilism. Nothing like a nice flood or some other event to wipe the slate clean and make a fresh start. Turning the mattress over. Putting the world through the deep scrub dishwasher cycle.Clearly, Harold Bloom and his Yahweh meets nihilism makes one size fits all gnosticism is a kind of exotic interpretation; kicking the Platonic, normative comprehension of the Almighty as benevolent and merciful down the road and into the scrap heap of pious observance that in sum, promised more than it delivered, at least according to the learned professor of Yale who with almost anarchic glee dismembers the foundation of Western civilization with his Yahweh indifferent between the sacred and profane and the righteous and the ….
Lucas Cranach The Elder. The Ten Commandments---But nevertheless, that is the name, and the name seems to have been inaugurated by the J writer or the Yahwist, when Moses is going to be going down into Egypt rather reluctantly and says, "They'll laugh at me. Who shall I say has sent me?" and gets the massive punning answer, "Say that ehyeh asher ehyeh has sent you," which is invariably translated as "I am that I am" but actually means "I will be that I will be"--or to put this into English so it is coherent, "I will be present wherever and whenever I choose to be present." And as I grimly keep repeating throughout the book quite deliberately, that necessarily also means, "And I will be absent wherever and whenever I choose to be absent." And there's a lot more evidence in the last 2,000 years for the absence of this personage than the presence. Read more: http://www.beliefnet.com/Entertainment/Books/2005/12/Cons-Who-Rule-A-Ruined-World.aspx?p=2#ixzz1lt2Z7oVc
HB: Oh sure. Oh sure, I mean Yeshua, if he was crucified, was one of hundreds of thousands of Jews who were being crucified by the Romans in those days. And the biggest single holocaust of Jews took place after Rabbi Akiba proclaimed Simon bar Kosba, Simon bar Kochba or son of the star and said he was the Messiah, ben Joseph, that is to say, not the Messiah ben David but the Messiah ben Joseph, the warrior who comes first. And that led all of the Jews in the world into a terrific rebellion against Hadrian, and millions of Jews were eventually slaughtered and Akiba tortured to death at the age of 95; Bar Kochba went down heroically, taking legions of Romans with him. At one point in the book I have a sentence that Jeanne, my wife, reading it, said “Harold, it shouldn’t be there; it will get you into trouble.” But I’m glad it’s there, because you know the great phrase about Yahweh in the Psalms and elsewhere is that Yahweh is a man of war, and I think his most memorable single appearance, and I talk about it, in the Bible, in Tanakh, is in the Book of Joshua, where at one point Joshua—you know it is after the death of Moses and Joshua is in command of the Israelites and they conquered Canaan, and before a crucial battle near Jericho he notices an armed warrior. He doesn’t recognize him, and he boldly goes up to him, and he says, “Are you one of us or one of them.” And the fellow replies, “The ground upon which you stand is holy. Take off your sandals.”…
---Inspired by Italian and Flemish art of the Renaissance era, the Sodom and Gomorrah series evokes the frightening religious imagery of Hieronymus Bosch. Bavari pairs the digital works with verses from the Bible, including the Epistle of Jude: “Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example, in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.”--- Read More:http://weburbanist.com/2010/02/20/sodom-gomorrah-dark-digital-art-by-alessandro-bavari/?ref=search
…At which Joshua takes off his sandals and abases himself because he recognizes that it is Yahweh a man of war come to fight in the battle of Jericho, which he does, as he also fights, you know, with the tribes that came to the battle in the first Hebrew poem that we have, the song of Deborah and Barak in Judges 5. So I have this sentence in the book: “If Yahweh is a man of war, then Allah is a suicide bomber.” I think they are all bad news, Judaism and Christianity and Islam. But I wanted to make clear in the book that there is no such thing as a Judeo-Christian tradition. That is absolutely ridiculous. And fascinatingly enough there are two things that I’ve said throughout my life when I’ve addressed Jewish audiences, say at the Jewish Theological Seminary or such places, and they always get furious at me. But they’re both true. One is that nowhere in the whole of the Tanakh does it say that a whole people can make themselves holy through study of texts. That’s a purely Platonic idea, and comes out of Plato’s Laws. That simply shows how thoroughly Platonized the rabbis of the second century were. The other one, which I say in this book and it has already given some offense, is that in fact not only is Judaism, which is a product of the second century of the common era—and it’s worked out by people like you know Akiba and his friends and opponents like Ishmael and Tarphon and the others, is a younger religion than Christianity is. Christianity in some form exists in the first century of the common era. What we now call Judaism comes along in the second century of the common era. Christianity is actually the older religion, though it infuriates Jews when you say that to them.
---Geddes:In fact, David is perhaps the formative influence on the J writer. David represented human grandeur, a poet and a warrior, representing the highpoint of Israel's history. David was charismatic and enthusiastic; full of elan and moxie. According to Bloom, the entire point of the Book of J is to sketch a background of David's ancestors, for Yahweh's love of David is the most important thing about him (Yahweh). That Yahweh showered favor on David is most clear, and to a Solomonic litterateur like J, that is far more important than the Exodus. --- Diane Arbus photograph. Image:http://www.flickr.com/photos/likeabalalaika/4416948102/
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