He ought to have his head examined, you might say; ‘Nuts’ says one book review!
Who would have thought the founding father of psychoanalysis, Austrian neurologist of Jewish descent—Sigmund Freud— would write a book claiming Moses was not an Israelite but an Egyptian? Well, that is exactly what he did in his book:
Moses And Monotheism [Freud,Sigmund. : Free Download. archive.org › Ebook and Texts Archive › Universal Library]
One of the his reasons for claiming so is the point that Moses is an Egyptian name, something we have pointed out ourselves in our discussions on the book of Exodus. But why indeed should Moses not bear an Egyptian name? Was he not adopted by the Pharaoh’s daughter? Was he not raised as a prince of Egypt? Had his life not taken a different path because of a crime he had committed against an Egyptian taskmaster, might he not have lived and died as an Egyptian? Ah, but as the Exodus story recounts, the Hebrew-Egyptian circumstances prepared Moses who was ‘handpicked’ for a divine purpose.
Before you read your downloaded book, read through the editorial reviews provided by amazon.com; often, reviews are just as interesting as books, you get educated besides meeting some interesting people with whom you might agree, or not.
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Amazon.com Review
From the Inside Flap
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.
Arwi Muslim says:I still don’t know how I could have finished reading the book after the part or theory where the sons kill and eat the father of the tribe, and then wanting to relate this, psychologically, to Judaism and Christianity, which I find it pretty absurd. The whole book is based on the author theories and unfounded ideas, or founded on his new discovered ideas, and few times trying to back up himself and his ideas with other writings. Is as if the author is in free writing for the whole process of the book; without even bothering to make a brainstorm or something, and just leaving the grammar to an editor. In conclusion, all I could say about the book is that I perceive as if the author was in a neurotic state on his whole writing. Who knows, he might had been, as he was having real bad personal experiences in the course of his writing. 0 stars was not an option.
An intriguing premise, Freud uses his theory about the origin of Judaism as a way of showing how his conception of the consciousness can be transferred to humanity, writ large. Historically, it seems far fetched (which he openly acknowledges), but what Freud really succeeds at here is showing how any attempt to really examine the history of a major abrahamic religious figure means reassessing a great deal of what we think about how monotheistic religion works and how its developed since it first came about. I was confused by some of his terminology, but overall, I found it to be a fairly easy read.
The writer, Sigmund Freud, is a household word. This author is never trivial and, although sometimes controversial in his thinking, it is because he is so original and outside the box that most of us feel so comfortable being locked in.
His hypothesis about the origins of Moses, whose teachings go without being fully tapped to this very day, are well supported by as much evidence as was humanly possible to dig up at the time of Freud’s writing, in the late 1930’s, the first copyright being 1939.
The Torah, or Pentateuch as it is often referred to, has been authored by Moses, although many modern academics claim it was written by multiple authors, because of the several styles of writing one might identify in the work — this gets a bit lost in translations, the most commonly found at this time being in the King James version of the Bible. It is not uncommon to look for multiple authorship when it comes to works so profound that it makes even the most erudite among us pale with the discomfort of inadequacy — consider, for example, similar allegations regarding the works of Shakespeare, again vastly above the highest ambitions of most mere mortals.
Given this unique standing of the work (the five books known as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy), the origin of its purported or fictional author is of great interest, since it bears directly on the development of human thought and human civilization.
To make a long story short, the Torah writing states that Moses was a Jew, son of slaves fated for execution as a newborn, who was circumstantially brought up as a prince of Egypt, educated as a prince of Egypt, who then left his princedom when he discovered the suffering of the Hebrew slaves and became their leader who, with the help of the Almighty, led them to freedom and responsibility into the promised land three and a half thousand years ago, of which today’s State of Israel is but a small fraction.
In antithesis to the preceding paragraph, Freud’s thesis is that, in fact Moses was an Egyptian who became a monotheist in the midst of and in spite of the powerful Egyptian polytheism and emphasis on the hereafter, in which cult the afterlife took on a central role and major preoccupation in this life. The Egyptian Moses, in Freud’s hypothesis, then found himself a people, the Hebrews, who could follow his monotheistic teachings, a teaching totally devoid of any mention of afterlife, a teaching totally focused on this life — this teaching attributed to Moses is not to be confused with common practices of Judaism, even though the Torah remains the major rallying point of Judaism.
While surprisingly few people are conversant with the five books of Moses, even fewer people are familiar with the Egyptian culture that has given human civilization so much. It is this culture that is revealed in modern terms by Freud, in a way that is unique to Freud in its clarity and cogency. Whether Moses was born a Hebrew or an Egyptian is not really the relevant issue; the relevant issue is to see how the father of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud, delves into the available evidence for monotheism and the departure from Osiris, the god of the after-world, in the history of Egyptian civilization.
True to Freud, the educational, thought providing and informational value of this book is second to none.
“I have tried to strengthen by a new argument the suggestion that the man Moses, the liberator and lawgiver of the Jewish people, was not a Jew, but an Egyptian… I added to this consideration the further one that the interpretation of the exposure myth attaching to Moses necessitated the conclusion that he was an Egyptian whom a people needed to make into a Jew.”
This translation of a classic publication of Freud offers timeless observations and theories as to the origins of religion, specifically, monotheism. Students of comparative religion will find this a thought-provoking treatise. As an erstwhile “Bible Scholar” I find “Moses and Monotheism” fascinating, reminding me to examine the writings of the Hebrew prophets.
Some of Freud’s hypotheses are a product of his generation, following his contemporaries’ theories on Biblical Criticism, yet his musings based on his arena of psychoanalysis still ring true. This little tome is well worth your time to read.
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).
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
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
“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.”
Freud engages here in an act of self- denial similar to the one which led him to so worship one student of his , the sole Gentile Jung who later betrayed him. Perhaps it was difficult for Freud in his old age and dying at the time that his own people were helpless before the Nazi murderers to see power and potency in his own people. Moses is of course a symbol of Law and Might and Justice and for the Jews direct contact with God in a way no other human being will ever have. Freud finds a way to deny Moses’ Jewishness perhaps as a way of suggesting that if real salvation is to come real power to enter the world it must come through other human beings, not Jews.
In any case I see no real evidence for Freud’s fiction. The Tannakh the Hebrew Bible certainly clearly and definitely states who Moses and Aharon and Miriam’s parents were. It gives their line of descent also as princes of the Tribe of Levi. To deny all this and simply invent an Egyptian prince tale seems to me the height or perhaps depth of historical responsibility. This is a last word of Freud and unfortunately far from a credible one.
My title sums up my feelings about this book. I’ve read a bit of Freud, but this book, so far, is the most interesting, engaging, and engrossing of the lot. Perhaps this is because Freud occasionally acknowledges the tenuous nature of his argument. What is that argument? I wish not to give away the entire book, but its crux is that Freud begins with the proposition that Moses was an Egyption, a follower of Aton religion, and when that religion vanished after the reign of one king, he passed it on to the Jews. It must first be said that Freud is not the only one to claim that Hebraism/Judaism developed monotheism out of the Egyptian milieu. The most interesting thing is that Freud claims to find this, psychoanalyticaly, in the very myth of Moses’ birth, which he argues in an archetypal heroic one. Be that as it may, I cannot give this book 5 stars because the last chapter, though he introduces, quite lucidly, the ideas of the Ego, Superego, and the Id, I came away feeling that the argument could have been made in half the space. Nevertheless, a hearty recommendation.
This is the last book written by Freud. Moses and Monotheism was published in totum in 1939, the year Freud died in London, where he got residence along with his family to scape the Nazi persecution against Jews in Austria, where he thought he was safe.The hypotheses raised in the book are polemical, and this seems to be a kind of a Freudian trademark, and they are nothing less than:
1- Moses was in fact Egyptian and worked as a general in the staff of the Egyptian pharaoh Ikhenaton, who urged the untill then polytheists Egyptians to adore Aton as only God and to adopt monotheism. When the pharaoh died, Moses tried to convince the Jews working at the northeast region of Egypt that they were the chosen people and to follow him. Many of the theories present in this book are in fact development of a hypothesis already raised by Freud in his earlier book “Totem and Taboo” and represents a serious attempt at demolishing the foundations of both the Mosaic religion as Christianity. The idea is that a band of brothers opressed by the father in fact killed him, and out of a guilty feeling payed tribute to him in a series of disguised primitive rituals to honor him in group.
2 – The circuncisiom was already practise at Egypt and was not something invented by Jeovah as a sign of the alliance (covenant)between Him and the Jewish people. Also, in Freud’s hypothesis, Jeovah was a demi-god of the Volcanoes and many of his later carachteristics were later adoptions of Egyptian religious tendencies by means of the Levites, who, again in Freud’s view, were not the son of Levi (one of the ten tribes of Israel) but rather were also of Egyptian origin and followers of Moses, who in fact was killed by the Egyptian jews, etc…
If you think this is all the book portrays, you are pretty much wrong. There are still a lot of pretty much original and polemical hypotheses raised by Freud which would astound anyone unprepared for such a reading, specially the Jewish and Catholic community . One has to remember also, that Freud was of Jewish origin, and this, to say the least, adds salt to the whole story.
The book follows Freud trademark, not exactly a surprise for the man who said that he was “to disturb the nights of the humankind.” Good reading.
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The origin of society begins with a tribe in which the dominant male gets all the women, including his sisters and Mommy.
His sons are understandably upset at being left out of the fun and complain, so Dad kills or castrates them. Or makes the mistake of being lenient and simply drives them off.
The sons, unable to find females of their own, band together go back and murder dad. Then, of course, they eat his body.
There being too many sons (and feeling repressed guilt at killing their old man) they make taboos against incest thus establishing the rule of law.
(Bet you didn’t know this was the origin of Magna Carta, et al).
This keeps the gene pool safe from inbreeding but leads to all sorts of guilt feelings which get acted out politically– not the least of which is a worshipping of Mommy, which leads to LHM -a Literal Historical Matriarchy.
(And to think feminists dislike Freud)
Next, they get fed up with being bossed about by Mom (and who wouldn’t?) so they re-establish the patriarchy; only this time they stick to the rule of law, because they can’t afford further fraticidal bloodshed and they invent polytheism to boot.
But deeply repressed father hatred looms within, which leads to the final step: monotheism, in which God is an avenging Father who must be appeased before he starts castrating again. .
(Naturally there are sub-plots–Christianity belongs to the religion of The Son who becomes more important than The Father, Islam is a attempt to restore The Father, etc.)
I forget what all this has to do with Moses, and halfway through the book, so does Freud who goes off on a tangent about how the Catholic church failed to protect him in Vienna against the Nazis, so he was forced to flee to England, where things are now better, and though he thought of destroying the manuscript he figured he was old, so what the hell, might as well publish it.
Freud refuses to use the ‘s’ word –speculate–Or rather he waffles. At one point he admits that all he’s writing is conjecture and the reader should know that and not force him to repeat it in every paragraph. But a couple of paragraphs later, he appeals to his clinical material (his patients and his own fantasies) and his deductive powers in a manner that could only be described as objective–or, to be less kind, dogmatic. Will the real S.G please stand up?
In any case, the speculations/objective deductions regarding Akhnaten, the case for there being 2 Moses’s -one got murdered and presumably eaten by his children. The myth ‘in reverse’ of the childhood of Moses (don’t ask) and what it all REALLY means make for fascinating and compelling reading.
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An outstanding and audacious book.
Not to many people have knowledge of this subject on Freud’s writings.It is amazing to notice the author’s courage exposing thesis where he attempt to prove or at least to demonstrate that Moses was an Egyptian and not a Jew.
The argument of the existence of two Moses the one from Egypt and the other from Midia, a Medianite, is also surprising although in any way fanciful.
In some bookstores this book is incorrectly classified in the psych area. This is truly a Bible history research, of course using an approach that places, in his words, religion phenomena as a model of neurotic symptoms of the individual.
As I mentioned in other book comment, this kind of study always carries some dose of speculation. Freud was not an exception but without lost of plausibility.
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I feel this short book is well worth reading. Freud, at the time, was debating whether to leave Nazi-occupied Austria and was deeply afraid that the public would misinterpret him. He accepts that Moses was a composite character and that Jewish history was compressed for the sake of clarity and on this premise he explores the psychological underpinnings of the religious story. He does link Moses and Judaism with Akhenaten’s religion and he does it in a believeable way that should stand up against modern criticism. All in all, this is a very valuable book.
Freud speculated two Moses: an Egyptian nobleman who lived near the time of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaton, the founder of the world’s first monotheism, who gave the Hebrews a modified version of that religion and was killed by them as a result; and a Midianite who resurrected this religion, modified it still further, and coupled it with the Egyptian rite of circumcision, thereby setting the Hebrews apart as a chosen people.Sounds weird, doesn’t it? It is.
Freud has an uncanny habit of failing to interpret the symbolism of his own theoretical work. The split Moses, based on the primal father (see Totem and Taboo) killed and eaten by rebellious sons: what more accurate picture could the reader want of the fate of Freud’s Wednesday Psychological Society and its rebellious offspring?
Stylistically, however, Freud reads a bit like Conan Doyle, and the interest he creates with his detective-story reasoning is matched only by his immense lucidity and command of the written word.
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I’d prefer you read Freud’s “The Question of Lay Analysis” (a lucid and engaging account of the basic tenets of psychoanalysis), his “Civilization and its Discontents”, and his “The Future of an Illusion”. (And while I’m recommending things, there is also, for musicians, “Pentatonic Scales for the Jazz Rock Keyboardist” by Jeff Burns.
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This is one of the best books I have ever read. It’s a page turner — a brilliant uncovering of the historical Moses. This book is also so affecting because Freud wrote it right before and during the holocaust. The background that he is writing from is part of the drama of the book. Read this book!
Reading Freud is always a pleasure, especially his essays on Religion and Culture. His style is so refined and clear, that I have often wondered if it wasn’t one of the reasons for the wide approval he received. The strange thing in reading about the origin of a religion is that it confuses and forces you to start from ‘tabula rasa’. Being raised a Catholic, I can’t help but ‘subconciously believing’ Jewish religion older than Moses, whereas Freud claims that he started it. But the confusion is very enlightening and intellectually tantalizing. Although much of his views on the Egyptian origin of the name ‘Moses’ have been scientifically doubted, the book is still powerful enough to make you think. And that, I believe, is a rare quality.
