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2008-02-08, 13:03
Freud writes a letter to his friend giving a brief explanation of his recent book, Moses and Monotheism.
Lest anybody start whining that Freud was picking on the Jews, Freud himself was jewish. He was also an ardent egyptologist, which explains his interest in the subject of Moses and the origins of the Jewish faith, and his capability to do the research in that area.
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To: Lou Andreas-Salome
June 1, 1935
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
My dear Lou
... What you have heard about my last piece of work I can now explain in greater detail. it started out from the question as to what has really created the particular character of the Jew, and came to the conclusion that the Jew is the creation of the man Moses. Who was this Moses and what did he bring about? The answer to this question was given in a kind of historical novel. Moses was not a Jew, but a well-born Egyptian, a high official, a priest, perhaps a prince of the royal dynasty, and a zealous supporter of the monotheistic faith, which the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV had made the dominant religion round about 1350 BC. With the collapse of the new religion and the extinction of the 18th dynasty after the Pharaoh's death this ambitious and aspiring man had lost all his hopes and had decided to leave his fatherland and create a new nation which he proposed to bring up in the imposing religion of his master. He resorted to the Semitic tribe which had been dwelling in the land since Hyksos period, placed himself at their head, led them out of bondage into freedom, gave them the spiritualized religion of Aten and as an expression of consecration as well as a means of setting them apart introduced circumcision, which was a native custom among the Egyptians and only among them. What the Jews later boasted of their God Jahve, that he had made them his Chosen People and delivered them from Egypt, was literally true- but of Moses. By this act of choice and the gift of the new religion he created the Jew.
These Jews were as little able to tolerate the exacting faith of the religion of Aten as the Egyptians before them. A non-Jewish scholar, Sellin, has shown that Moses was probably killed a few decades later in a popular uprising and his teachings abandoned. It seems certain that the tribe which returned from Egypt later united with other kindred tribes which dwelt in the land of Midian (between Palestine and the west coast of Arabia) and which had adopted the worship of a volcano god living on Mount Sinai. This primitive god Jahve became the national god of the Jewish people. But the religion of Moses had not been extinguished. A dim memory of it and its founder had remained. Tradition fused the god of Moses with Jahve, ascribed to him the deliverance from Egypt and identified Moses with priests of Jahve from Midian, who had introduced the worship of this latter god into Israel.
In reality Moses had never heard of the name Jahve, and the Jews had never passed through the Red Sea, nor had they been at Sinai. Jahve had to pay dearly for having thus usurped the god of Moses. The older god was always at his back, and in the course of six to eight centuries Jahve had been changed into the likeness of the god of Moses. As a half-extinguished tradition the religion of Moses had finally triumphed. This process is typical of the way a religion is created and was only the repitition of an earlier process. Religions owe their compulsive power to the return of the repressed; they are reawakened memories of very ancient, forgotten, highly emotional episodes of human history. I have already said this in Totem and Taboo; I express it now in the formula: the strength of religion lies not in its material, but in its historical truth.
And now you see, Lou, this formula, which holds so great a fascination for me, cannot publicly be expressed in Austria today, without bringing down upon us a state prohibition of analysis on the part of the ruling Catholic authority. And it is only this Catholicism which protects us from the Nazis. And furthermore the historical foundations of the Moses story are not solid enough to serve as a basis for these invaluable conclusions of mine. And so I remain silent. It suffices me that I myself can believe in the solution of the problem. It has pursued me throughout the whole of my life.
Forgive me, and with cordial greetings from your
Freud
Lest anybody start whining that Freud was picking on the Jews, Freud himself was jewish. He was also an ardent egyptologist, which explains his interest in the subject of Moses and the origins of the Jewish faith, and his capability to do the research in that area.
************************************************** *********
To: Lou Andreas-Salome
June 1, 1935
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
My dear Lou
... What you have heard about my last piece of work I can now explain in greater detail. it started out from the question as to what has really created the particular character of the Jew, and came to the conclusion that the Jew is the creation of the man Moses. Who was this Moses and what did he bring about? The answer to this question was given in a kind of historical novel. Moses was not a Jew, but a well-born Egyptian, a high official, a priest, perhaps a prince of the royal dynasty, and a zealous supporter of the monotheistic faith, which the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV had made the dominant religion round about 1350 BC. With the collapse of the new religion and the extinction of the 18th dynasty after the Pharaoh's death this ambitious and aspiring man had lost all his hopes and had decided to leave his fatherland and create a new nation which he proposed to bring up in the imposing religion of his master. He resorted to the Semitic tribe which had been dwelling in the land since Hyksos period, placed himself at their head, led them out of bondage into freedom, gave them the spiritualized religion of Aten and as an expression of consecration as well as a means of setting them apart introduced circumcision, which was a native custom among the Egyptians and only among them. What the Jews later boasted of their God Jahve, that he had made them his Chosen People and delivered them from Egypt, was literally true- but of Moses. By this act of choice and the gift of the new religion he created the Jew.
These Jews were as little able to tolerate the exacting faith of the religion of Aten as the Egyptians before them. A non-Jewish scholar, Sellin, has shown that Moses was probably killed a few decades later in a popular uprising and his teachings abandoned. It seems certain that the tribe which returned from Egypt later united with other kindred tribes which dwelt in the land of Midian (between Palestine and the west coast of Arabia) and which had adopted the worship of a volcano god living on Mount Sinai. This primitive god Jahve became the national god of the Jewish people. But the religion of Moses had not been extinguished. A dim memory of it and its founder had remained. Tradition fused the god of Moses with Jahve, ascribed to him the deliverance from Egypt and identified Moses with priests of Jahve from Midian, who had introduced the worship of this latter god into Israel.
In reality Moses had never heard of the name Jahve, and the Jews had never passed through the Red Sea, nor had they been at Sinai. Jahve had to pay dearly for having thus usurped the god of Moses. The older god was always at his back, and in the course of six to eight centuries Jahve had been changed into the likeness of the god of Moses. As a half-extinguished tradition the religion of Moses had finally triumphed. This process is typical of the way a religion is created and was only the repitition of an earlier process. Religions owe their compulsive power to the return of the repressed; they are reawakened memories of very ancient, forgotten, highly emotional episodes of human history. I have already said this in Totem and Taboo; I express it now in the formula: the strength of religion lies not in its material, but in its historical truth.
And now you see, Lou, this formula, which holds so great a fascination for me, cannot publicly be expressed in Austria today, without bringing down upon us a state prohibition of analysis on the part of the ruling Catholic authority. And it is only this Catholicism which protects us from the Nazis. And furthermore the historical foundations of the Moses story are not solid enough to serve as a basis for these invaluable conclusions of mine. And so I remain silent. It suffices me that I myself can believe in the solution of the problem. It has pursued me throughout the whole of my life.
Forgive me, and with cordial greetings from your
Freud