The Shadow of a Great Rock
eBook - PDF

The Shadow of a Great Rock

A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible

  1. 320 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Shadow of a Great Rock

A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible

About this book

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.

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Yes, you can access The Shadow of a Great Rock by Harold Bloom in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Theology & Religion & English Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Introduction
  3. The Hebrew Bible
  4. The Five Books of Moses
  5. Four Heroines
  6. David (1 and 2 Samuel to 1 Kings 2)
  7. The Prophets
  8. Psalms 1
  9. Psalms 2
  10. Proverbs
  11. Job
  12. Ecclesiastes
  13. The Song of Songs
  14. The Apocrypha
  15. The Hidden Books
  16. Esdras
  17. Tobit
  18. The Wisdom of Solomon
  19. Ecclesiasticus
  20. The History of Susanna
  21. The Greek New Testament
  22. The Literary Merit of the Greek New Testament
  23. Mark
  24. John
  25. The Writings of Paul
  26. Hebrews
  27. James
  28. Revelation
  29. Acknowledgments
  30. Index