Babel (was Re: Dutch Treat (1885))

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 11/07/2002 2:32:26 PM Eastern Standard Time,
laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:

> Ah, Jim is a (Harold) Bloomian!  I wonder how many others he's
>  convinced about J's true identity.

Only you, so far.

Are you interested in my theory that J and CH were the same person, namely
King David's first wife Michal?

Seriously:

Richard Elliott Friedman _Who Wrote the Bible?_ New York: Harper and Row,
1987, ISBN 0-06-097214-9.

page 86: "...the J stories are, on the whole, much more concerned with women
and much more sensitive to women than are the E stories.  There really is
nothing in E to compare with the J story of Tamar in Genesis 38.  It is not
just that the woman Tamar figures in an important way in the story.  It is
that the story is sympathetic to a wrong done to this woman...This does not
make [J] a woman.  But it does mean that we cannot by any means be quick to
think of [J] as a man."

Note that Friedman wrote this ten years before Bloom's "The Book of J" was
published.  I have never read Bloom and I have no idea whether Bloom got the
idea from Friedman.  In fact, it is not possible to tell whether Friedman had
the idea on his own or was citing an idea that had been around for a while.

     - Jim Landau