Sunday, September 13, 2009

Undermining assumptions is very difficult.

We must not be logical when reading since we are not logical.

Re Abstraction, Intellect, and Cerebral

  • who gets around the limitations of words?
  • shema - open up - hear - obey
  • not just 'see' though the eyes be open
  • not just use words cleverly - fun though it is.

Harold Bloom, in Jesus and Yahweh, is clever, funny, and filled with his (like Frye's) playful erudition.
YHWH declares his unknowability. Jesus Christ is totally smothered beneath the massive superstructure of historical theology and of Yeshua all we can rightly say is that he is a concave mirror where what we see are all the distortions each of us has become. (Page 8-9)
In one or two words: YHWH is a mad moralist, Jesus Christ a theological labyrinth, Yeshua forlorn and solitary.

Bloom has a point - become solitary - see your reflection - become known.

How can we respond to his 8 reflections?
  1. The belated covenant. All Western irony - Hamlet, Kirkegaard, Kafka is in the wake of Jesus' riddles amalgam with Socrates.
  2. Shakespearean "self-overhearing" derives from Chaucer (?) and Tyndale's Jesus in the Geneva Bible. Internalization derives from Jesus through Augustine. Reflected in Hamlet / Falstaff. (My question - is this all there is to hear?)
  3. Marcan Jesus - as primitive. (Bloom assumes Marcan priority.) Luke's Jesus darker. Matthew's softer. (Really?)
  4.  HJ to Gallup, Allegory and Reality, TNK vs NT. (Impossible for me to understand my own notes!) Frye makes the NT swallow TNK. "No Jew known at all to History can be regarded as more loyal to the Covenant as Jesus of Nazareth. That makes it the irony of ironies that his followers employed him to replace the YHWH covenant with their New Covenant." (page 12)
  5. Gospels as conversionary inspiration (similar to the Hebrew Bible).
  6. Quests for HJ has failed. "The Hebrew God cannot be said to select Jesus except as another prophet." (page 13) "Son of Man fathers himself - or is the Father his own Son?" pragmatically.
  7. Eros and authority - central to Jesus, Paul, Freud. Crucial in Moses, Socrates, Lear, Henry IV, Hamlet, 12th Night. Jesus embraces both love and Torah (Bloom has heard). James the Just is his authentic disciple. In James we hear the voice of the prophets in the wilderness, of Elijah, and John the Baptist, and the voice of Jesus himself, for once abandoning his formidable irony.
  8. Torah (like the Qur'an) is God whereas the entire argument of the Belated Testament is that man has replaced Scripture. (man or 'a man'?)
A very curious set of reflections. I had to leave the book in the library on board ship. It was a pleasant surprise to see it. I will put some more quotations from it in a later post.

3 comments:

elderchild said...

"Pure And Undefiled Religion"

"Pure religion and undefiled before G-D The Father is this, to visit the fatherless (those children who know not their Father, HE WHO is The Only True G-D, Father{Creator} of ALL) and widows(those who have not "experienced The Messiah and The Power{Our Father} that raised Him from among the dead") in their affliction and to keep oneself uncontaminated by the world......." (James 1:27)

Simply, all other religion is impure and defiled.......

And notice that "pure and undefiled" religion is "oneself(individual)", a Brother or Sister doing The Will of Our Father, led of The Holy, Set Apart, Spirit.......

Simply, corporate "religion" is pagan and of this wicked world.......

And "Brothers and Sisters" is not "religion", for what are Brothers and Sisters if not Family? Would not The Family of The Only True G-D, Father(Creator) of ALL, "The Body of The Messiah", be much closer than a natural, fleshly family?

What is declared to be "religion" today is truly the devil's playground.......

Simply, Faith will not create a system of religion.......

Hope is there would be those who take heed unto The Call of The Only True G-D to "Come Out of her, MY people"!

For they will "Come Out" of this wicked world(babylon) and it's systems of religion, and enter into "the Liberty that is glorious for The Children of The Only True G-D".

And so it is that they will no longer be of those who are destroying the earth(land, air, water, vegetation, creatures)" and perverting that which is Spirit(Light, Truth, Life, Love, Peace, Hope, Faith, Mercy, Grace, Miracles, etc.).......

Peace, in spite of the dis-ease(no-peace) that is of this world and it's systems of religion, for "the WHOLE(not just a portion) world is under the control of the evil one" (1John5:19) indeed and Truth.......

Truth is never ending.......

Bob MacDonald said...

I am aware of all these verses. If you want to converse, pleased be versed in your own words. I do not need to be bombarded. Have you read any of what I have written that you feel the need to bombard me with words. Jesus doesn't work that way.

elderchild said...

"Your own words" that's a major problem.......

The Messiah testified, "the words I speak are not My words they are the words of The Father WHO sent Me".......

"Your own words" have their portion with "confusion and every evil work" ;-(

The enlightened realize that words which describe that which has been experienced or received, are gendered by the experience or that which was received, not "your own words" but a "sharing of that which one has seen(experienced) and heard(received)".......