Wei,

You write:
> Thank you for your remark.  I was aware that the Old Testament refers to
the
> Hebrew scriptures “subsumed into the Christian Bible.”

I added that disclaimer to show that I had no intention to offend anyone. On
another academic list I frequent, to refer to the hebrew scriptures as the
"Old Testament" is politically incorrect.


 > But what is it
> exactly you are saying happened to Pound when he read the Bible.  Are you
> saying he “read them infernally” as Blake did?  Or did he just reject them
> outright?

I was picking up on your remark about the nature of "vehemence":

You had written:

" ...  my personal conclusion would be that the stated
goals of the Cantos and of Pound’s political philosophy imply,
BY THEIR VERY VEHEMENCE, their exact opposites."
[emphasis supplied]

I was suggesting that the very vehemence of the Old Testament seems to have
caused Pound's reaction to the god of the OT -- Pound called Jehovah  a
"maniac god ".

>Blake loved to read the Bible, and said that it had to be read
> inside out, or by inverting the traditional interpretations, or  even by
> inverting the sense of the orginal passages.
>  Are you saying Pound was doing
> this too?   I was saying we should invert the ordinary interpretation of
> Pound’s words, as Blake did when he read Milton and the Bible.

No. I don't think Pound would have found this sort of paradoxical mode of
interpretation amenable. The conclusion he reached was not that the authors
of the OT were a bunch of  weily sophisticates, but that the hebrew
scriptures are the record of a semi-barbaric tribe of herdsmen.

Tim Romano

P.S. Please correct my typo in the last sentence. "weily" should read
"wily".