But would appreciating Bloom's book contribute to advancing bottom-up change. Perhaps it wouldn't. But it could, and it might. It is accessible.
Regarding the Hebrew Bible, Bloom holds to the so-called documentary theory regarding the composition of the so-called five Books of Moses. For an accessible explanation of the documentary theory see Richard Elliott Friedman's WHO WROTE THE BIBLE? (1997).
Following the detective work in the documentary theory, Bloom refers to the anonymous author of the famous strand of text referred to as J, as the Yahwist, meaning the author who originally composed the strand of text in which the deity is referred to as YHWH (Englished as Yahweh).
Now, what does Bloom mean when he says that he is writing a literary appreciation of the KJB? Among other things, it means that Bloom sees the deity YHWH as a literary character, a literary construct constructed as a person or person-like character with a personality, constructed by the anonymous author known as the Yahwist.
But hold on. This is not the only literary construct in the Hebrew Bible to refer to the deity. According to the documentary theory, another strand of text in the Hebrew Bible is referred to as E, because the plural term Elohim is used to refer to the deity.
My, oh my, how are religious Jews and Christians going to understand apparently competing conceptual constructs being used to refer to the deity?
As a matter of fact, Bloom reports that he has lost his trust in the God of the Hebrew Bible. He was brought up to trust in the deity of the Hebrew Bible, but he no longer puts his trust in the deity of the Hebrew Bible. As a result, he describes himself today as a Gnostic.
So perhaps people of religious Jews and Christians today should be forewarned about reading Bloom's book: If they read it, they will be reading a protracted commentary on the Hebrew Bible, the Apocrypha, and the Greek New Testament by a secularist literary critic who happens to know ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek and the early translations of the Bible into English and Shakespeare and the rest of the Western canon of literature, but who has lost his trust in God.
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