Moses and Monotheism - Softcover

Freud, Sigmund

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1909735183 ISBN 13: 9781909735187

Publisher: Aziloth Books, 2013

Synopsis

In 1938 the 'father of Psychoanalysis' Sigmund Freud found himself an exile in London, a victim of Nazi persecution. But Britain's religious freedom at last gave Freud the opportunity to complete a work he had withheld from the public during his time in Catholic Vienna - a study on the biblical Moses and the origins of Judaism. 'Moses and Monotheism' was published in August 1938 to a storm of criticism. Freud announced that Moses, the man who led the Israelites out of Egypt, was not a Hebrew, but instead an Egyptian Prince and a follower of Akhenaten - the 'Heretic Pharaoh' who had tried and failed to force upon the Egyptians his own form of Monotheism. Freud claimed that, angered by the strict laws Moses tried to impose, the Hebrews had eventually murdered their Egyptian saviour. But 'Moses and Monotheism' is much more than an early example of 'alternative history'. Freud saw Moses' insistence on an invisible God as a defining moment in history, freeing mankind from the world of matter. It meant that "sensory perception was given second place to what may be called an abstract idea - a triumph of intellectuality over sensuality", an intellectual emancipation that allowed for a flowering of human potential in both the arts and science.

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Review:

"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

From the Back Cover:

This volume contains Freud's speculations on various aspects of religion, on the basis of which he explains certain characteristics of the Jewish people in their relations with the Christians. From an intensive study of Moses legend, Freud comes to the startling conclusion that Moses himself was an Egyptian who brought from his native country the religion he gave to the Jews.

About this edition

• Publisher: Aziloth Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1909735183
• ISBN 13: 9781909735187
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 126