A Yahwist's Manifesto

No doubt we get into trouble with anthropomorphisms in our God-talk. I rather like Harold Bloom's way of skirting that problem by doing two things. First, he looks at Yahweh as a, borrowing the expression from Nietzsche, "human-all-too-human" literary character and the J author as the first superb literary writer in our tradition (encompassing even Shakespeare -- and for Bloom, that is reluctant praise beyond praise). The J text, if read properly, is blasphemy, says Bloom. One of the great ironies is that it has been absorbed by normative Judaism and Christianity. Of course, I would add that if we have been students of religion for any amount of time at all, ironies of this kind will cease to amaze us -- though perhaps not to amuse.

Secondly, he reverses the adjective. Yahweh is not "anthropomorphic," but the exceptional human characters in the J tradition -- including the great king David who, though he didn't make it into J's text, may have been on the fringes of J's writing, inspiring her (yes, Bloom says, her) work -- are theomorphic. The humans who approximate the greatness of Yahweh's "uncanny" and delightfully "ironic" personality receive this mark of high praise from Bloom, e.g., Rebekah, Jacob, Tamar. (I cannot recommend highly enough Bloom's Book of J and Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine. Those books inspired me in a way I'm sure Bloom would not have anticipated -- he sticks to literary criticism -- but they've encouraged me to say what others don't often don't and what I've long suspected: there is a real personality difference between Yahweh and God the Father. Give me Yahweh for my money to the vitiated "God the Father" of our pulpits.)

Well, why should Bloom's idea of God factor into religious reflection? Pretty dangerous, if not stupid, don'tcha think, to include literary criticism into the concrete from which is poured one's theological foundation? Maybe, but Christianity as I have come to know it has left me with little choice. A "human-all-too-human" God isn't limited to the J text, I think, though Bloom prefers that strand of literature in the Hebrew Bible to anything else. But the passional nature of God -- like the kind we see in Numbers -- and the sometimes cruel sense of irony that he has -- which we see in, say, Babel -- is given free rein in the rhetoric of the prophets. These men step onto the theater of human events with very real senses of indignation for the shit that people pull. I love Abraham J. Heschel's discussion of this matter in The Prophets. I cannot top his discussion, so I'll just refer you to him, especially since you're getting a kick out of Judaica lately. He tackles this issue of anthropomorphism in an interesting way, too.

I rather like that Mormons say that God is an embodied being. I like that for the same reason that I like Bloom's reading of the J text. If God, he says in another book, is embodied, then he is necessarily conditioned, and as such he is limited and therefore passionate. Only the beatified in the ethereal realms of Nirvana have no complaints. The wheel turns. Fortune spins her wheel, if you will. Those sitting on the hub are not moved, like the Greek's unmoved mover. But, Yahweh is on the wheel, not because he didn't spin it -- he did, according to the Hebrew Bible -- but because he is bound by affection and possessive love to be affected by what human beings do. "He who angers you controls you," might be the bit of pop wisdom we'd hurl at God. God, quite simply, doesn't give a shit. He will be affected. He simply prefers it that way. It doesn't much matter whether you take the "embodied being" literally, as long as you take it seriously.

I remember sitting with a friend at Whitworth University who was studying for her final exam in one of her courses. She was reviewing different kinds of love, like agape and storge and phileo and these others. One was new to me. It was called "mania," that is, the kind of love in which the lover is elated in the presence of his beloved, but wildly dejected when the beloved is absent or has spurned the offered love. "Oh, you mean Yahwistic love," I offered. After a moment, the fellow studying with her said, "Yeah." I don't know how exactly how to reconcile a passionate God with the expanse of the universe. But the Hebrew Bible plainly sets forth that kind of prima facie contradiction: Yahweh is in the heavens, yet he regards the children of Adam. Your email is but one example that the contradiction is one we are rather uncomfortable with.

Is anthropomorphism in the Bible a problem? Sure. But the way is surely not that of Augustine, who said these events of a passionate or ignorant God -- God has to be talked down by Moses or has to "learn" whether the reports he has heard about Sodom's wickedness are true -- are merely instructional fictions for us. God's only putting on a show for our benefit. Like a good Jew, I have to put that in the category of "hogwash." Something perhaps more along the lines of "open theism," though I don't much care for the term itself, might be what I lean to. Again, I take the implications of God's persuadability and his pathos (I might've made that word up, for all I know) seriously.

I am no Christian. (Thank God.) I am a Yahwist. In many respects, my sect of one -- or, if you like, my heresy -- is the mirror image of Marcionism. Marcion wanted the Tanakh thrown out along with all those "Old Testament-like" passages of vengeance in the NT. He kept Paul and some of Luke (I likes me some Prodigal Son story, please). Unlike Marcion, I keep the NT more or less intact, but I use it selectively. But the real, foundational difference is I read the NT in light of the Tanakh, not the "Old Testament" in light of the NT.

"Tanakh" is a Jewish term. "Old Testament" is a Christian term. Harold Bloom said that Christian history has seen the "textual slavery" of the Hebrew Bible. I thought so, too, but he puts it way better than I could, so all that was left for me to do when reading that was to applaud him. I would say that calling the Hebrew Bible or the Tanakh the "Old Testament" is like calling a black person a "nigger" or a woman a "cunt." (You wanna see huge power dynamics embedded in a single term? Consider those three.)

There is an arguably real personality difference between Yahweh and God the Father. As functions of theological discourse, they result in different approaches to prayer, Bible-reading, commentary and, of course, action. I invite you to examine your prayers. How angry are you really allowed to be? How disappointed? Besides the "negative" emotions, what do you do with the "positive" ones? How many of your earthly affections are you continually reminded by your "God" to regard as rivals to his rightful rule? Could Elisabeth Elliot -- or a Christian minister you can think of, for that matter -- ever have written the Song of Solomon? (The answer is "no.") What is the emotional response of your God to your various states of mind? How is he appeased? How easily does he become displeased? How is your sense of guilt and fear of his passional nature diverted or repressed in your appeals to priestly blessings of forgiviness "in the name of Christ"? Are your prayers palliatives, or are they real places of rhetorical engagement with a deity who may or may not be persuaded (cf. Abraham and Yahweh, Gen. 18; Moses and Yahweh, Exodus 32)? Some people believe that "God exists, and he is in control" is proper piety -- for a Christian, maybe. For a Yahwist, that is pagan, abject fatalism.

Compare two translations of the same "verse." Which is Yahwistic, and which Christian?

1. O Lord, by your hand save me from such men, from men of this world whose reward is in this life. --Psalm 17.14, NIV, my emphasis
2. By your hand, [Yahweh], save me from such men, from whose share in this life is fleeting. --ibid. JPS, my emphasis

See the difference? The Christian "translation" reduces wicked people to those who desire the good of this life. The implication is that "heaven" awaits those who trust in God.

Now see the other. Wicked people are those who, in the psalmist's hope, won't enjoy this life for very long but who will not live out the whole of their days. The hope of the just is a longer life. Blessing is, as Bloom poetically says, "more life, into a time without boundaries"; for the Christian, that hope is heaven, and all of this life, and all we hope for in it, is denigrated with theological sanction. (But we still want what this life has: those torn between this theological this-life denigration and yet who desire this earth all the same are, consequently, neurotic. Case in point: Elisabeth Elliot.)

The Tanakh makes no sense if you are a Christian hoping for heaven. Heaven may exist, but for a Yahwist (such as myself), it is icing on the cake. What we Yahwists desire is the Blessing, that which Jacob fought God for, and which he won. It may not work out the way we desire -- reasons for which Job and Ecclesiastes were written -- but we hope all the same. Notice how the NT rewrites the blessing of Abraham into "Christ" in Galatians; what Abraham wanted in a child is transformed into something completely different, all through turning the Bible into a legal will and reading it with an unbending literalism ("seed," as any Tanakh-reading Jew would know, meant "descendants" -- plural). Paul should be tarred and feathered for this carelessness with scripture, no matter what passes for sound hermeneutics in those times. Hang your midrashes and typological readings. It is no wonder many people who actually knew what the Bible said didn't listen to him. I don't know if I would were he to speak with me.