I have recently received and dug into "Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine" by literary critic Harold Bloom. I read Bloom's interviews on this book before purchasing it. I have found what I expected to, which I will list in the following comments:
1. Bloom's assumptions are purely secular. His treatment of the Bible, and assumptions about its text are all founded on secular constructs based on assumptions that are unproven. He is a thorough adherent of the JPED theory of OT construction.
2. Bloom clearly argues as a Jew protecting his Hassidic-Jewish heritage. He mentions anti-semitism among Christians often, and affirms his Jewishness constantly. The book says (my paraphrase) that "Christians are guilty of misreading the OT," but Bloom supplies his own reading based on very little if any evidence.
Bloom's "evidence" for denying the Trinity is taken from various liberal Catholic and Jewish scholars that hold to the JPED construct. If Bloom's reader is not conversant with all the scholarly literature on church history, theology, and source criticism that Bloom is, the reader receives only Bloom's opinion that the Bible cannot be true (because he draws his conclusions immediately with no argument at all).
3. Bloom is a poor exegete of Scripture because he does not take it as a whole and denies its historical unity. He nullifies parts of the NT and OT without any reason besides "they are polemical in nature" and denies the validity of intra-Scriptural statements which affirm the inter-connectedness of the Bible Story.
4. Bloom's book seems to have received small popularity (except among literary circles) and he has not submitted a work into the mainstream of Christian debate whence it could be evaluated by all parties involved, both liberal and conservative. This book is pure secular dogma so far.
More later.
Greg
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