Bloom also says, "When I read through the Psalms, I struggle to discover whether ancient Hebrew thinking is at all available to us anymore. The Psalms, like much else in Tanakh, work at making praise, gratitude, supplication, and even despair modes of cognition. The God of the Psalms has comforted multitudes, whether in the valley of decision, or in the valley of the shadow of death. He does not comfort me because I do not know how to think in a realm of gratitude" (page 170).
Hmm. We noted above that Bloom works with the idea of Blessing, meaning more life. For the sake of discussion, let us assume that Bloom has been the recipient of Blessing through his long professional life devoted to literature, because for him literature is a way of life. But he says here "I do not know how to think in the realm of gratitude." If I were to take this as an honest and candid statement, I might say, "That's your fault. You do not know how to be grateful for the Blessing that has come your way."
He might say, "Yes, literature is a way of life for me, and I have received Blessing. But Blessing is its own reward, not something to be grateful for."
I might say, "Ah, yes, virtue is its own reward, its own source of satisfaction. To be sure, I am the primary agent of my own choices and my acts of virtue. Therefore, I am the primary benefactor of my own acts of virtue. Moreover, as a proper expression of my own proper self-love, I should be grateful to myself for taking the initiative to enact my own acts of virtue. However, when I reflect of how I came to learn how to discern what possible acts of mine might possibly be acts of virtue on my part, then I have occasion to reflect of all the significant teachers I have had in my life. And I should give thanks to them and be grateful to them for what they contributed to my well being by helping me to make good choices."
When Bloom turns his attention to the Greek New Testament, he discusses the Gospel of Mark. Critical biblical scholars take the Gospel of Mark to be the first of the four canonical gospels to have been written, probably around the year 70, and they consider the author to be anonymous to us.
Bloom repeats an observation and an inference that he made in an earlier book. His observation centers of how devils are portrayed in the Gospel of Mark as knowing Jesus. From this observation, Bloom makes that point that only the devil in us can know Jesus. Bloom allows that this is a wild surmise. I would agree with that much. However, I wish that Bloom had pursued the idea by examining what his own expression might be understood to mean. In short, what is the devil in us?
I would take this expression to mean that we are not 100 per cent good and that we usually understand this, even if we feel uncomfortable about acknowledging it even to ourselves. But what would it then mean to suggest that the devil in us (i.e., our understanding how we are not 100 per cent good) can recognize Jesus? In this context, what does recognizing Jesus mean? Does it mean recognizing Jesus as the son of God, as the devils are portrayed as saying in the Gospel of Mark? Or as the one come from God as the messiah?
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