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Moses and Monotheism

by: Sigmund Freud
en

0394700147  9780394700144 



Moses and Monotheism
By Sigmund Freud




Product Description:

Freud's speculations on various aspects of religion where he explains various characteristics of the Jews in their relations with the Christians.



Amazon.com:

"To deny a people the man whom it praises as the greatest of its sons is not a deed to be undertaken lightheartedly--especially by one belonging to that people," writes Sigmund Freud, as he prepares to pull the carpet out from under The Great Lawgiver in Moses and Monotheism. In this, his last book, Freud argues that Moses was an Egyptian nobleman and that the Jewish religion was in fact an Egyptian import to Palestine. Freud also writes that Moses was murdered in the wilderness, in a reenactment of the primal crime against the father. Lingering guilt for this crime, Freud says, is the reason Christians understand Jesus' death as sacrificial. "The 'redeemer' could be none other than the one chief culprit, the leader of the brother-band who had overpowered the father." Hence the basic difference between Judaism and Christianity: "Judaism had been a religion of the father, Christianity became a religion of the son." Freud's arguments are extremely imaginative, and his distinction between reality and fantasy, as always, is very loose. If only as a study of wrong-headedness, however, it's fascinating reading for those who want to explore the psychological impulses governing the historical relationship between Christians and Jews. --Michael Joseph Gross




Summary: Terrific Insights
Rating: 5

Like all of Freud's books, this one will change the way you look at things.

In the first part (written in Vienna as the Nazis approached), Freud essentially analyzed Judaism into 2 component parts.

First was the Moses religion--a strict monotheism deriving from Egypt (via Moses, who was an Egyptian) and Ikhnaton: this monotheism was universal, ethical, stripped of priestcraft and magic, retaining circumcision (an Egyptian custom).

Second was the tribal religion of Jahve (Yahweh)--a volcano god of one of the Canaanite tribes: not monotheistic, punitive, exclusivist, loaded with incessant in-group rules and rituals.

Naturally, these two don't fit together well, and this explains why the Old Testament presents such a crazy picture of God: sometimes impersonal and ethical and absolutely fair; most times homicidal (even genocidal), bad tempered, vindictive, given to human sacrifice, obsessed with punctilious rules.

In the second part of the book (written in Freud's last year--after he had escaped to England), Freud talks about the psychodynamics of such a religion, mainly in terms of father-murder.

While I don't agree with some of Freud's assumptions (particularly the idea that monotheism is an "advance" on polytheism), this is still brilliant work.

Reading Freud is always an education (he knows so much) and always a pleasure (he is a wonderful writer).

Can't go wrong on this one.



Summary: let my people go - all of them
Rating: 5

Reading through the many wonderful reviews here, one gets the picture of what it is with this book: love it or hate it, believer or skeptic, even telling people the gist of the thesis and the story (the book is magnificently both), this work never fails to evoke a strong reaction. Look at the reviews. What is evident is that the book is truly provocative - rare for any book - no less a slight, speculative work of less than 200 pages, written somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century. Who would really care? But as you can see from this representative sample, people do.

Despite the ongoing controversy regarding, increasing skepticism towards, and perhaps dismissal of his major ideas, Freud still engages us as one of the most influential thinkers of the past century, and this work, which, surprisingly, may come to be regarded as his masterpiece (it is a masterpiece - do not doubt that), written as he was dying of cancer of the jaw and fleeing from the Nazis (Freud was Jewish - and among all the things that it is, the book is his response to that singular experience), is his signal contribution to religious studies.

The story is that:

1) Moses was an Egyptian, likely of royal birth, that he learned monotheism from the renegade Egyptian monarch, Akenaton, who, during his brief and probably aborted reign, unsuccessfully attempted to displace the long-standing polytheism and its attendant institutions with a unitary sole deity - a sun god - not represented in any form or art .

2) - That he may have been the proprietor or governor of a fringe province, the Biblical "land of Goshen" with a population of Hebraic or Semitic descent, to whom he taught the new religion. At some point during the exodus, Moses was murdered by his followers. The new God was rejected in favor of a tribal deity, a bloodthirsty, local lunar God, Jahve. However, his immediate entourage, also of the Egyptian court or priesthood, were established as the Levites, or priestly caste, and their descendents eventually revived the ancient monotheism, which we know as the religion of the ancient Hebrews.

The thesis (more complex) quite briefly is:

Akenaton possibly adopted monotheism as adjunct to Egypt's imperialist expansion in the 18th century B.C. Circumcision, which first evolved among the Egyptians (there is the pictoral evidence, as far back as it goes), is rooted in the idea of prehistoric enforced fidelity to the clan father under threat of castration thus symbolized (the primal "covenant" between father and sons). Moses was murdered because he restricted access to the women of the tribe, in repetition of the totemic archetype. The Pentateuch is a palimpsest, references the original monotheistic religion inscribed under references to the later religion of Jahve, and then again, the revival, written over those references in the Levitical Law. The revival was spurred by long, pent up guilt over the collective memory of the death of Moses. And well, Papa don't take no mess! The religion of the Levites, developed during the Babylonian exile, represents a return to the Father dominance. The Messianic trend represents yet another turn away from this father dominance toward the Son, away from circumcision, and toward social decentralization, eventually a priesthood of all believers. There's a lot more to it - but these are the bare bones.

I don't believe anyone would want to make absolute claims as to what went down thirty-eight centuries ago - but, all considered, Freud's thesis has its moment, and that moment is now. Could it be that the Jews and Arabs are one people - Semites - who have been divided over time by those with ulterior motives? Resoundingly, yes, the possibility must be considered. Freud wrote this remarkable text at a time when the Nazis were beginning to fund the Islamic Brotherhood (after they themselves had been funded by Prescott Bush and the Union Bank). Ironically, Freud's thesis suggests that the current situation in the Middle East has apparently brought this world to the edge of annihilation, may involve combatants who have no conception of their true origins or the basis of what they are fighting for, but, from the standpoint of carefully fostered illusions, merely believe, in an all too human way, that they do. Freud argues closely and pervasively enough to raise and honest doubt in our minds. Well worth the read.




Summary: Freud's Last Act
Rating: 5

Freud's Last Act

Who founded Judaism and monotheism is indeed a tricky but nevertheless intriguing question? Tom Cahill, in his wonderful and lyrical piece "The Gift of the Jews," lists monotheism as an important Jewish contribution to civilization. On the other hand, Dr. Frances Cress Welsin, in the Isis Papers, and others of her Africanist cohorts, suggest that Judaism -- as well as Christianity -- are but off-shoots of well-established Egyptian myths, rituals and religions.

While it is one thing for free-lance interlopers on either side of this issue to speculate on these matters, it is quite another when the father of modern psychology himself, Sigmund Freud, does so -- even if it is done as his last professional act.

Using his earlier work, Totem and Taboo as the psychological foundation and backdrop, Freud in his final book, spins out a not altogether unconvincing tale that Moses was an Egyptian Prince who was killed by his sons, and that monotheism was the necessary cultural invention and outcome that ultimately prevented the cycle of fratricide from continuing.

It is a fascinating read even if not up to Freud's normal high standards of analytical rigor. Despite its speculative nature, this thesis has global implications for contemporary religion, the Western worldview, and for how our current structure of morality was established and continues to work. Five stars



Summary: Kemet-Moses & Akhenatens religion
Rating: 4

Kemet-Moses:
Who founded Judaism is a tricky question. More tricky is, who founded Monotheism, Moses or Akhen-Atun? There are several people who were essential to the creation of Judaism, Egypt served as a womb, in a nascent stage, where the Jewish people were formed as a nation, within four centuries of their soujourn in the land of Goshen (North-eastern Egyptian province), by training in civilized traditions and worthy articrafts.
The Bible shows Moses as the founder of the faith, while Abraham was the root of the nation. Moses, the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, has protected the Jews from the wrath of God, and negotiated with God on their behalf, according to the Torah, is an Egyptian Princely sage, according to Sigmund Freud.

Philo to Assmann's Moses:
Philo Judeas of Alexandria mentioned that some Jews doubted the historical reliability of their scriptures and considered part of their content as myth. Aristobulus, Philo's Alexandrian predecessor moved beyond the literal to the hidden meaning, allegorical and philosophic, similar to the treatment of texts of classical mythology, as was the tradition in their megalopolis (Great City).
Origen, who wrote Contra Celsius, refuted Celsius argument that the Mosaic book of Genesis was based on borrowed sources like the Ducalion narrative for the flood story, known as such to the Greeks.
Assmann starts with the definition of Egyptian thought construction as Mnemo-history, a 'Suppressed history of Repressed memory' of Akhenaten in Moses conscience. His ultimate thesis, srarting from Spencer's findings as 'before the Law,' is based on his analytical review of eighteenth century historical discourse on Moses. Freud shows up in his spear headed psychological idea; 'the Return of the repressed.' The roots of Egyptian monotheism of the enlightened elite, was conceived in the 'One,' Amon-Ra'e, and Aten, consecutive masters of Theban and Heliopolitan Pantheons, which echoes in Psalm 82, Concluding into what JH Breasted elaborated eighty years ago. freud followed him in abolishing Mosaic primacy of monotheistic revelation.


Revelation to Akhen-Atun:
Freud is drawn to confirms his discovery of Moses origin and role, in the Jewish traditions, preserved in the Pseudo epigraphic writings, that Moses was murdered by Joshua, who buried him in the wilderness*. "The 'redeemer' could be none other than the one chief culprit, the leader of the brother-band who had overpowered the father." Concluding thatl; "Judaism had been a religion of the father, Christianity became a religion of the son."
The Jewish inter-testiment writing, on the occasion of Moses' impending death, by the rebelling congregation (Numbers 14), and doubting exodus generation with calmination into the revolt of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram (numbers 16), support the same concept of authority rejection of a non-Hebraic Moses.
* The Assumption of Moses: Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha



Summary: Freud's Moses & Moses Monolatry
Rating: 5


"One will not easily decide to deny a nation its greatest son because of the meaning of a name," (Moses is an Egyptian name) Sigmund Freud's original draft

Moses & Monotheism:
* Moses of Exodus 2:10, is presented as a derivation from the Hebrew Mashah (to draw) is implied, while Josephus and Church Fathers assign the Coptic mo (water) and uses (saved) as the constituent parts of the name. Contemporary views widely patronized by Egyptologists, tracing the name back to the Egyptian mesh (child), is dominating but nothing could be established as decisive.
*Monotheism:(Gk. monon: single, Theos: Deity.) the belief in a single, an all-encompassing universal, deity.
*Monolatry: The worship of only one god, while admitting the existence of other gods.

What is Your Name?
There are many Jews & Christians alike, who are upset by Martin Buber's interpretation of Moses inquiring from YAHWEH, as showing the influence of the Egyptian 'name magic.' This may have been the reason beyond the strange inquiry of the learned Moses, who may have asked the encountered God of the 'Unconsumed Bush' for His identifying name, and the Lord's mysterious answer, explained in 'The Egyptian Book of the Dead in which (?)-Moses could have been initiated into by the priests of the solar cult of Heliopolis, whose predominant cosmological world view, Moses has presented in the book of Genesis, describes multiple names for Atum, Master of its divine Pantheon, and creator deity, "whose name has been variously interpreted as meaning 'the Completed One,' 'He Who is Entirity,'...or 'The Undifferentiated One.' the last rendering seems the most probable.., i.e., an undifferentiated unity," (The Book of Going Forth by Day, translation by Dr. Raymond Faulklner, with introduction & commentaries by Dr. Ogden Goelet)

Freud's Moses:
In his last written book, completed just before the holocaust, Freud was not the first to argue that Moses was an Egyptian Prince, and that the Hebrew religion that developed into monotheistic Judaism was but an adapted Egyptian thought carried back into Palestine. Freud confirms Jewish traditions found in the Pseudo epigraphic writings (The Assumption of Moses, which echoes in New Testament writings) that Moses was murdered by Joshua who buried him in the wilderness.
Sigmund Freud's controversial and ingenious multi leveled psychological treatise, on the Egyptian roots its and relation with Akhenaten's monotheistic, short lived revelation and Akhetaten's revolution against Amun's polytheistic representation of the Loving and sociable Deity, there overshadows a typically complicated Freudian thesis which endeavored to explain a multi purpose and very complex theory of every thing: all human atrocities and Jewish calamities.
For those who want to explore the psychological impulses governing the historical relationship between Christians and Jews. "The Christ whom Moses foreshadowed seemed eclipsed by him in the minds of the learned. It was, humanly speaking, an indispensable providence that represented him in the Transfiguration, side by side with Elias, and quite inferior to the incomparable Antitype whose coming he had predicted." New Advent

Assmann's Moses:
Assmann starts with a parapsychological definition of Egyptian thought construction as Mnemo-history, advancing into Suppressed history of Repressed memory of Akhenaten in Moses conscience, proceeding to Spencer's findings as 'before the Law.' The crux of his advancement to his ultimate thesis lies in a historical review of eighteenth century discourse on Moses. Freud shows up in a psychological spear head idea; 'the Return of the repressed,' the roots of Egyptian monotheistic theology of the elite was conceived in the 'One,' the master of Egyptian Pantheons, Aten, or Amon-Ra'e. Concluding into what breasted initiated eighty years ago: abolishing the Mosaic monopoly of revelation. Marvelous!

Moses Reinterpreted:
"interpretation and critique of 'Moses and Monotheism' are wide and varied," from Jan Assmann to Yosef Yerushalmi, in 1986 Columbia University Lectures.
Yerushalmi argues forcefully and almost convincingly that "Moses and Monotheism is 'a work neither of negation nor degradation but affirmation and pride in belonging to a people from whom, there rose again and again men who lent new color to the fading tradition, renewed the admonishments and demands of Moses, and did not rest until the lost cause was once more regained."

Anti-Semitism Psychosis:
Freud's analysis is amazingly original though extremely imaginative, and his distinction between reality and fantasy, defies his psychological conclusion, and common sense logic. However, his theory is fascinating, and converts this subject to a 'DaVinci Code' type of reading, 50 years ahead of his time.
Freud's genius has failed him in his thesis of what he presented as a discovery of Hebrew Christian evolution as an analogy with the primitive father/son tribal succession rather than an advancement in Cosmic consciousness from Egyptian liturgical (People Worship) to Hebrew Temple sacrificial Worship. That Rabbinical post Temple Judaism transformed into Messianic Judaism which is Christianity.
Those which emigrated into Arabia developed an Ebiobnite Judaism which reflected a deformed disbelief in Israel's hope in a Davidic kingdom rather than a Kingdom of God that no doubt prevailed, a Kingdom of the Loving Lord.
The undying guilt for Moses killing, proposes Freud, is the basis of Christians conception for Jesus' death as a sacrifice to the Father, Thus the fundamental difference between Judaism and Christianity becomes; "Judaism had been a religion of the father, Christianity became a religion of the son."