The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible - Hardcover

"A fascinating, intellectually nimble tour de force."-Yvonne Zipp, Washington Post -- Yvonne Zipp Washington Post Booklist, named A Top 10 Book in Religion and Spirituality, 11/15/2011 Booklist "Bloom yields to the KJB's literary splendor-and invites readers to join in his surrender."-Booklist, starred review Booklist "Just fascinating, brilliant, and reliably Bloomsian."- Mark Sarvas, The Elegant Variation Elegant Variation "Bloom ... has many arresting things to say and says them, often, with exquisite precision. He is, by any reckoning, one of the most stimulating literary presences of the last half-century - and one of the most protean, a singular breed of scholar-teacher-critic-prose-poet-pamphleteer."-Sam Tanenhaus, New York Times Book Review -- Sam Tanenhaus New York Times Book Review "Bloom reveals his own magisterial, sometimes mischievous, self in his meditations on the masters with whom he connects."-Iain Finlayson, The Times -- Iain Finlayson "Ah, then there's Harold Bloom, America's giant of a literary critic... In The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life, Bloom pulls off a masterly connecting of the dots through the literary canon and his own life with his usual breathtaking eloquence."-Publishers Weekly -- Publishers Weekly "Bloom's erudite mix of acerbic judgments (e.g., the New Testament's literary ugliness) and awed delight ('the biblical David is an incarnate poem') offers readers a fresh take on an old book."-Publishers Weekly -- Publishers Weekly "The greatest strength of Bloom's volume comes in helping the reader navigate to, and through, the finest literary passages of the Bible; explaining how the ancient verses have influenced the past four centuries of Western literature."-Deseret News Deseret News "Exhilarating, provocative... Bloom [enriches] his remarks with lively associations and frequent references to his beloved Shakespeare (did you know that Hamlet's divided personality has much in common with King David's?)... When [Bloom] praises the English translators of John's Gospel, he calls their interpretation 'dazzling in its audacity.' The same, of course, can be said of this book."-Nick Owchar, Los Angeles Times -- Nick Owchar Los Angeles Times "Bloom celebrates King James not for anything so pedestrian as 'accuracy' but for what he himself has championed during his long and distinguished career as a literary critic: creative misreading."-Edward Alexander, Chicago Jewish Star -- Edward Alexander Chicago Jewish Star "Distilling the insights acquired from his long career as a brilliant critic and teacher, Harold Bloom offers ... a magisterial and intimately perceptive reading of the King James Bible as a literary masterpiece."-Bible Review Journal Bible Review Journal

The King James Bible stands at "the sublime summit of literature in English," sharing the honor only with Shakespeare, Harold Bloom contends in the opening pages of this illuminating literary tour. Distilling the insights acquired from a significant portion of his career as a brilliant critic and teacher, he offers readers at last the book he has been writing "all my long life," a magisterial and intimately perceptive reading of the King James Bible as a literary masterpiece. Bloom calls it an "inexplicable wonder" that a rather undistinguished group of writers could bring forth such a magnificent work of literature, and he credits William Tyndale as their fountainhead. Reading the King James Bible alongside Tyndale's Bible, the Geneva Bible, and the original Hebrew and Greek texts, Bloom highlights how the translators and editors improved upon-or, in some cases, diminished-the earlier versions. He invites readers to hear the baroque inventiveness in such sublime books as the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, and alerts us to the echoes of the King James Bible in works from the Romantic period to the present day. Throughout, Bloom makes an impassioned and convincing case for reading the King James Bible as literature, free from dogma and with an appreciation of its enduring aesthetic value.