The Iowa Review
Volume 21
Issue 3 Fall
1991
Some Notes of A on "The Book of J"
Alicia Ostriker
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Ostriker, Alicia. "Some Notes of A on "The Book of J"." The Iowa Review 21.3 (1991): 11-18. Web.
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Article 5
A Forum on The Book ofj
Some Notes of A on The Book ofj
Alicia Ostriker
toomust write Bibles,
We
to unite again the
world.
heavenly and the earthly
Ralph Waldo Emerson
wid us womenfolks
Sometimes God gits familiar
too, and talksHis
inside business.
Zora Neale Hurston
I
read exuberantly,
the text, to
yes. To de-institutionalize
personally,
to
new.
it naked and
To strip
make
lift it from its canonized
shackles,
To
glosses like tacky layers of varnish from its
crooked rough and living wood,
yes. To
the grip of "the rabbis, priests, ministers
and
of interpretive
to reveal the
original
three millennia
surface,
from
take the Book
away
their scholarly
gians, yes. To
show how
yes. To release it from
little it has in common
the systematizing
theolo
orthodox Judaism,
or Islam. To celebrate it as
that is story
narrative,
Christianity,
powerful
assert
To
that the height of its great argument by no means
telling, yes.
to men, but announces a
"is more
justifies the ways of God
Blessing which
more
a
of
into
and
time
the
without
boundaries"
life,
life,
yet
promise
to notice
to demonstrate
to examine
its
its characters;
its
humor;
(44);
to declare
text
all
above
of
the
is
that
J
thejahweh
earthy sexuality;
openly
no
servants,"
abstraction
pious
but
"an outrageous
with
(294). That
personality"
is the
project of The Book ofj.
And
critic,
on
to
lay one's cards
a secular Jew, a male.
Drawn
to
Hostile
to
advocate
Blake's
figures
of agon,
Fond
lines
in
of polemic
combat,
wrestling,
and weakness.
piety, orthodoxy,
of Romanticism
and William
another Man's.
Bloom
the table. Harold
Blake
reads as a literary
ashamed of it.
and not
human
Bloom
ought
and divine
writes
to. One
vitality.
as an ancient
remembers
a
or be enslav'd
"I must Create
System
by
Jerusalem:
/ Iwill not reason and compare. My business is to create."
11
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is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to
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®
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also as an Emersonian.
He writes
"Whoso
would
be aman must
be a non
Emerson
is admirably unafraid to represent
remarks. Bloom
conformist,"
not
to what
in the act of reading, of responding
passively
actively
it. Nor does he pre
he reads, of making
up his mind and even changing
to
tend
objectivity:
himself
As we
phor
create a fiction
read any author, we necessarily
of its author. That author is perhaps our myth,
or meta
but
the
of literature depends upon that myth. With
J, we
experience
a
to
I
have
choice of myths,
and boisterously
that of
prefer mine
the biblical scholars. (19)
For why
should a text that provokes
forceful
and contradictory
responses from one's whole being be read impersonally,
or historical
as a mere
puzzle?
philological
dispassionately,
a poet, another old Blakean,
as a
I
write
critic,
cards,
My
literary
briefly:
I consider
this wonderful.
a woman.
(not exactly
secular) Jew, and (to be sure)
must be a nonconformist.
I too am fond of
be a woman
a non-observant
Whoso
would
and "only connect"
argument and contention,
though also of conciliation,
I dislike hardening
is among my mottoes.
of the categories,
and prefer
to either/or. When
I read the Bible I read itwith
both/and
simultaneous
identification
and rejection.
love, pain, delight,
are
my people, for better and worse. The patriarchs
people of Israel
are my own ancestors. The God ismy God, whether
I like
and matriarchs
anger,
The
him or not;
of monotheistic
seems
to me
of the time I do not. The
and much
patriarchy
an intellectual
text records
the triumph
in a region formerly polytheistic;
monotheism
an intellec
and spiritual necessity,
patriarchy
Imust struggle
tual and spiritual abomination which
is coterminous with
the Creator of the Universe,
who
energy is eternal delight, who
never be
into moral
squeezed
Isaiah 45:7
create evil:
tsuris, but
prediction
the universe,
or
I adore
whose
and can
predication
in
the being who
systems:
theological
create
"I
I
form
and
the
darkness:
make
and
says,
peace,
light,
I the Lord do all these things." I love the God who has a picnic
in the shade with
God who
is beyond
to transform.
wrestles
Abraham,
with
also speaks
or
followed
by
the God
an ethical
bargaining
who
gives Moses
Jacob;
to him face to face, and repents
of his
session;
the
a lifetime
of
intention
to
destroy Israelwhen Moses rebukes him. The God who in the Book of Job
12
rejects and rewards the agonized
to learn that the name "Jahweh"
is
as I am
at
the
just
flowing,"
pleased
at one time have been
"Sarai" might
both
am
challenger of his justice. I
pleased
related to a Sanskrit term for "over
notion
Brahma
that the couple "Abram"
and Sarasvati.
and
The exclusionary
is another matter. Him
I desire to
tribal Noboddaddy
He is the Jealous One whom
overthrow.
Plath
"Herr
calls
God."
Sylvia
He has defeated the mother,
he is aMan ofWar preoccupied with his own
He sponsors paranoid rigidity within
and righteousness.
the com
and the self, and hatred and fear of the Other. Conquest
is his meat
munity
and drink. I recognize with deep grief his historical necessity,
for he is also
glory
the self-protection
would
be neither
without
which
Judaism,
nor
no
people
survives. Without
Christianity,
nor
him
there
Islam.
II
it and turn it," the rabbis
"Turn
Including
contradiction
?which
"for everything
say of Torah,
is as it should be. The Bible
is in it."
is an end
text, held together by the force-field
endlessly multiple
lessly provocative,
asRobert Alter observes,
its portions are often in tremen
of monotheism;
dous covert war with each other, for the redactors were more interested in
the literary and spiritual vigor
of the text than its consistency.1
Among
the
wonderful qualities of the Biblical God is the quality of overwhelming
creative
and destructive
This
never-to-be-tamed.
never-to-be-grasped,
an insistence on a love relation
with
marvelously,
is a transcendant divinity who nonetheless
Yah weh
energy,
energy coexists,
a
toward
people.
ship
behaves intimately and uncannily
sons in response. As Bloom puts
like a person, demanding
that we be per
is
"a
he
both
father and a
it,
mothering
yet his "essence is
vengeful judge" capable of "shocking
harshness"(185),
in
the
That
inheres
later layers of
text;
J
surprise" (227).
paradox already
seems
to
me
text elaborate
it. For this and other reasons, it
self-evident
that
the J text
through
is a composite work
tracts of time, though a single
like the rest of the Bible
retellings
over
vast
developed
aristocratic
hand may have performed the final polishing.
For Bloom,
it is self-evident
that J is a single author, awriter of individ
to
ual genius comparable
Shakespeare and Chaucer. He derides the notion
an oral tradition."
of "that curious
scholarly fiction,
(18) Yet he also
13
in J an ever early freshness,
all the other
long preceding
an off-moment
in the Pentatech"
allows that the figure
(22), and in
asserts
"I hear
voices
of Yahweh in J is probably composite:
to us. We
is all but totally unknown
Judaism
the rabbinical Judaism that has been dominant
Archaic
know
since the second
. . What
.
we do not know is the Judaism that was
century c.E.
or
available to the Yahwist,
and the history,
of
mythology,
can
see
is that the Yahweh
that Judaism. All that I
of the Yah
wist has very little to do with the God of Ezra or the God of
Akiba.
see whether
I cannot
came
her Yahweh
to her from her
or their beliefs in her own
or from her own
people's past
day,
an
humorous
and subtle imagination. Most
likely,
amalgam of
us
the three formed in her work,
and remains with
still, despite
the revisionary
labors of normative
Judaism.
(33-34)
Why
"
"despite? Why
not "with the help of?
never have
"
Surely the J text would
a
an
an institutional
survived without
priesthood,
orthodoxy,
to revelation,
ized religion?which
did what orthodoxy
does
tamed
always
it. But the main point which
and stabilized
Bloom here almost inadver
an
is
artist's
voice
is
that
tantly suggests
always in part the voice of an
it not
in the romantic
concept of the
the
between
the Yahwist's
genius,
surely recognize
kinship
common
to
and the narrative forms
cul
style of narration
pre-literature
tures. The vigor, humor,
of
the
sexual
absence
the
compression,
prudery,
?
men
as
of both
and gods
trickster figures
all these quali
representation
text are also present in, for
ties which
he acutely recovers in the Biblical
ethos. Were
Bloom
example,
for his
investment
would
Native
American
storytelling.2
Ill
We
come now
to the vexed
the author. Was
evidence
exists
text contains
14
that of
question of gender. That of the work,
no historical
The idea is charming,
although
J awoman?
one way or another.
forceful
and fascinating
Bloom
female
thinks
she was
characters;
but
because
the J
then perhaps
the creator
was
awoman
not
of As You Like It, Antony
the writers
too, along with
to mention
the inventor of
Bovary,
thinks J was awoman
of Achilles,
then, was
evident
detachment
cut close
tone
J's
her male
because
awoman?
from official
to the bone
and The Winter's
and Cleopatra,
of Anna Karenina
of Bath.
the Wife
characters
are childish.
andMadame
he
Further,
The creator
Most
Bloom argues that J's
interestingly,
Israelite cult seems female to him. We
the feminine "irony"
although
from the clash of that tone with
here,
derive
might
invented centuries
Tale
later. An
Bloom
hears
in
and
ideologies
and wilful
God
anthropomorphic
dogmas
or Solomonic
would
have been no scandal in the time of the Davidic
mon
nor would
the lively vagaries of patriarchal personality have troubled
archy,
in the rabbinic period does it become necessary for
the sons of Israel. Only
the chosen ancestors to have been models of virtuous behavior. Only
then,
and not earlier,
is God
recast as "a kind of
heavenly
university
president"
(281).
ifwe
assume
the J text to include truly archaic material,
other issues
and Eve encodes
emerge. The story of Adam
(among other things) the
defeat of a great goddess who once presided in her garden ?accompanied
and her snake?when
monotheism
defeated
by her tree, her animals,
But
Canaanite
Several other of J's stories similarly encode female
polytheism.3
women
are
inwhich
So recurrent is this pattern,
initially powerful
from the plot, and/or killed off before an epi
eliminated
disempowered,
defeat.
as to convince
one that the J subtext
an
is, precisely,
closure,
of the slow downfall of divine and human female authority coinci
of a male covenant. Or, yet more radically,
dent with
the establishment
one
text
say that the J
repeats the erasure of a mother
might
obsessively
sode's
account
who
to remain quite erased. Eve, as Bloom
is a
correctly observes,
more
is
is
vital figure than Adam;
that why
she
severely punished
refuses
more
than he? Sarah, a powerful
and commanding
after
figure, dies immediately
?an
Isaac
the Binding
of
dramatizes
the death of mother
episode which
ensures that Jacob obtains the
Rebecca
and continues
the
right.
blessing
lineage
Rachel
future
her own kinsfolk,
then vanishes
from the narrative.
through
and Leah, whose
sexual rivalry provides
the future Israel with
its
twelve tribes, disappear from the Jacob cycle after the birth of the
last son. Potiphar's
aggressive wife
which
concludes
the Book of Genesis
disappears
early. The Joseph cycle
contains in fact almost no women,
15
the early part of Genesis
is full of vivid females. The Exodus
saga
a similar
a set of
women
At
its
start,
transgressive
design.
virtually
across class and ethnic lines, in violation
to
of Pharaonic decree,
whereas
follows
collude
refuse to kill Hebrew
babies,
preserve the life of the hero. The midwives
in
Moses' mother
him
the
basket
the
bulrushes
of
the
Nile,
among
places
the daughter of Pharaoh adopts the baby she knows to be Hebrew,
and the
own mother
to be his wetnurse.
sister of Moses
A
cleverly fetches Moses'
saves him from Jahweh's
at
wife
later, Moses' Midianite
night-attack
the inn on the way to Egypt. Of Zipporah we hear no more until we learn
in Exodus
18:12 that Moses
has "sent her away." The Exodus proper, and
bit
the forty-year
includes no material
sojourn in the wilderness,
featuring
save
at
Miriam's
the
female characters,
Red Sea and her humiliation
song
at God's
lenging
woman's
hands, where
Moses'
she (but not Aaron)
authority;
shortly
of view,
the Exodus
is struck with
Miriam
afterward,
is like a second
leprosy
dies.
for chal
From
a
Fall.
point
as
a
or
conscious
semiconscious
Should we then read the J text
narrative
so well
to
of female disempowerment,
veiled
that it becomes
possible
unveil it only three thousand years later? Should we see it as undermining
to
it purports
the masculine
accept?
privilege
invites consideration.
Bloom does not mention
Still another perspective
it, though
as familial
he comes
close when
or
on "J's vision of human
reality
It is this: the J text is familial
(32).
he remarks
rather than royal
priestly"
For me the astonishment
rather than royal or priestly or
lies here.
military.
text
constitutes
of the Hebrew
Bible
The J
perhaps the only national,
epic
inworld
scale myth
literature whose heroes are not warriors.
the
Compare
The
males in The Iliad, The
Odyssey, Gilgamesh,
Mahabarata,zn?Ramayana}
The three patriarchs are
with Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses.
their dramas are essentially
domestic.
shepherds and family men;
Joseph
as a
as a
a national
minister.
Moses
ends
and
leads
prime
begins
shepherd
as
liberation movement.
None of them engages inwar.4 All are portrayed
conflict-avoiders,
as
in situations
all are depicted
initiating
negotiation
so that conflict
to
is deflected.
If anyone wants
potential,
with
violent
make
a case for the survival of a female
perspective
within
the overwhelm
ingly patriarchal ethos of the Hebrew Bible, that iswhere it should be
made.
16
IV
to liberate
the J text from its pietistic interpreters colludes
of us, I suspect, retain amoral subtext which may or may
not be relevant. Bloom cares
that the J text should be read as
profoundly
to retrieve it for secular
literature and not as Scripture, because he wants
Bloom's
with
desire
mine.
Both
purposes:
Bible is a holy book. The
archs, of Joseph, of Moses,
all. . . .The fountainhead
simply
When
as the notion that the
to
dislodge
stories of the Creation,
of the Patri
were not for her
not at
holy tales,
of Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam
ideas are as difficult
Few fixed
was
not
a
religious
script becomes
woman.
Scripture,
(31)
is numbed
reading
by
taboo
and inhibition. (35)
I do not
political.
or
either theological
that J's interests were
or
now call imaginative
were what we would
They
and concerned
the elite image of the individual
life,
believe
literary,
rather than the relation between
But do these distinctions
human
culture
make
that
Yahweh
and the Israelites.
It is only recently
divides
itself from
sense?
imagination
of culture are periods
(46)
in the
history of
The
spirituality.
are not
in which
founding periods
they
separated.
are
Great writers
is alive. Homer,
for
writers
whom
religion
typically
so are
and Blake are examples;
and Dos
Virgil, Dante, Milton,
Tolstoy
a
So
is
the
is
form
sacred
toward
still
of awe.
whose
Kafka,
irony
toevsky.
Even
in so secular
with
a writer
as
the human drama resonates
Shakespeare,
cosmic
To secularize
and
is
mystery.
preternatural,
an
art
be
decadence. A wholly
secularized art would
supernatural,
to
always
approach
to the so-called "individual
an art confined
trivialized?as
would
wholly
to define "lit
the matrices
of politics and history. Attempting
life" minus
in a vacuum
erature"
of religion,
chamber purified of the defilements
Bloom has re-invented
of art for art's sake.
the seductive half-truth
The
absence
of politics
from Bloom's
own
repudiation of religion. My
are
tutional swaddlings
political.
desires
ofj is as striking as his
to release the Bible from its insti
account
For religious
authority
like all authority
17
the God who
and ignores
than inquiry,
rather
obedience
requires
rewards
rebels; but theGod inwhom Ibelieve is indifferent toworship and in love
of
life is extended.
the transgressors
Second, upholders
by whom
we
to
institutions
need is already
that all the truth
need
believe
religious
with
to
and bloodshed,
Certitude,
always available
justify oppression
me.
as a
toward violence,
Humanity
species is inclined
frankly repels
We
of
invent our
of
control
others.
the
control
dominance,
earth,
in part to justify our desires; we claim God is on our side. To me
religions
a fleck
cosmic history,
of an eyeblink within
the idea that we ?creatures
is the
cosmic
within
know the ultimate will of our creator,
space?can
known.
high road to evil. Finally, only by ignoring official religion, which remains
awoman
to recover
I hope
texts
androcentric,
may
disastrously
the Biblical
female power which
and human
the divine
or not J
erase. Whether
imperfectly
like Harold Bloom,
I hear something
guess. Yet,
or
I hope others
its
in that text, between
lines, which
through
womanly
I hear is sacred.
will come to apprehend with me. For what
was
I cannot
Notes
1. See Robert
Alter
Alter, "Introduction,"
to the Bible (Cambridge: Harvard
ary Guide
2. We
do well
to remember
figures
Merlin
cultures
artist's
as the artist's
and social or political need, as well
It is not difficult to imag
it new" through free invention.
at work
in the production
of Biblical
narrative.
of the goddess
of the priority and characteristics
see
Patai's The Hebrew Goddess,
Raphael
religion,
Gerda Lerner's The Creation of
God Was a Woman,
discussion
prior
Stone's When
economic
4. Genesis
in ancient Near
Goddesses
they also represent
etc.
prosperity,
14, in which
is Exodus
Eastern religions
law and learning, make
Abraham
32:25-29,
briefly goes
in which Moses
who had worshiped the Golden Calf.
18
today.
adaptation
to Israelite
Patriarchy.
trixes; but
neither
1987).
far from being a schol
Leslie Silko in Storytelling
to
of traditional material
audience
to "make
ability
ine these processes
3. For detailed
Press,
University
that the oral tradition,
is alive in many
arly myth,
stresses the Native American
an immediate
eds., The Liter
and Kermode,
to war,
orders
are of course
crea
war,
preside
over
is not
in the J text;
of those
a massacre