The Man Moses and the Monotheistic Religion

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Publisher's cover of the first edition in 1939

The man Moses and the monotheistic religion is a study by Sigmund Freud . It is his last work, which he published in 1939, the year of his death, at the age of 82 in his exile in London.

introduction

Freud introduces his work with a confession:

“Denying a nation the man whom it praises as the greatest among its sons is not something that one will gladly or lightly undertake, especially if one belongs to this nation. But you will not allow yourself to be moved by any example to lower the truth in favor of supposed national interests, and you can also expect a gain for our insight from the clarification of facts. "

In his further remarks, Freud relies on the then latest findings of the historians and Egyptologists James H. Breasted , Eduard Meyer and Ernst Sellin by calling the founder of the religion Moses not a Jew but an Egyptian, and develops the sensational theory that Moses, who is said to have lived during the reign of the reform pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenhotep, Ikhnaton), who “taught” the new Aton religion to the Semitic tribes who had worked as slaves in Egypt for centuries .

Akhenaten with family in adoration of Aten

Freud derived that Moses was an Egyptian, among other things, from the language problems described by Moses, who sometimes used his brother Aaron when he wanted to speak to the Israelites.

According to the report in the Bible Ex 2.1-10  EU , Moses parents are referred to as belonging to the tribe of Levi (Ex 2.1). The adoption by the Pharaoh's daughter and the apparent contradiction of ethnic affiliation (Egyptians / Hebrews) is interpreted by Sigmund Freud according to the concept of the family novel.

Akhenaten as the founder of monotheism

Freud also assumes in detail that until Akhenaten's reign (around 1350 BC) Egypt was dominated by an influential, conservative priesthood who adhered to the Amun cult of polytheism and belief in the afterlife (splendid burial sites, grave goods, cult of the dead, mummification) . Akhenaten recognized that all life was dependent on the "energy" of the sun (sun rays, sunlight), and is said to have developed the first monotheistic religion from this knowledge together with his wife Nefertiti , which for the first time knew morality, but no afterlife . In the new cult there was only the sun god Aton, represented by a solar disk.

The parricide of Moses

Similar to Breasted, Freud assumes that after Akhenaten's death the old system of priests regained power, abolished the Aton heresy and destroyed all symbols and structures that reminded of it. Moses, a follower, governor or priest of Akhenaten, internalized the new religion so much that he introduced it as a great idea to the Hebrew tribes, the "chosen people", and later fled with them from Egypt. They settled on the Sinai peninsula and mingled there with other Hebrew tribes, the Midianites . They worshiped the strict volcano god JHWH (Yahweh). Obviously, Freud speculates, a kind of “religious war” then broke out, in which Moses was murdered. His close confidants, the Levites , had, however, kept the Aton doctrine alive, and so over the course of generations "the bad conscience about parricide" had turned into a kind of trauma and a veneration of Moses, which in the Jewish scriptures - the Centuries later - found their mystified expression. Especially during the time of the Babylonian exile of the Jewish tribes, the prophets glorified "the old days of Moses" and kept faith in the Messiah (savior / liberator) alive. Freud writes:

“It seems that a growing sense of guilt had seized the Jewish people, perhaps the entire cultural world of that time, as a forerunner of the return of the repressed content. Until then, in the justification of a political-religious agitator, one of the Jewish people found the reason for a new, Christian religion to detach itself from Judaism. Paul, a Roman Jew from Tarsus, took up this sense of guilt and correctly traced it back to its prehistoric source. He called it 'original sin', it was a crime against God that could only be atoned for by death. With "original sin" death came into the world. But the murder was not remembered, but instead its atonement was fantasized, and that is why this fantasy could be welcomed as a message of redemption. A 'son of God' allowed himself to be killed as an innocent man and thus assumed the guilt of everyone. It had to be a son, because the father was murdered. Traditions from oriental and Greek mysteries probably had an influence on the development of the redemption phantasy. "

From Moses to Christ

Freud further suspects “that the repentance of the murder of Moses gave the impetus to the wishful fantasy of the Messiah, who is to return and bring his people the redemption and the promised 'world domination'. If Moses was this first Messiah, then Christ became his substitute and successor. "

In his summary of the emergence of monotheism, Freud writes that there is a strong need among the masses of people for an authority that one can admire, that one bows to, that one dominates, and may even be mistreated. This is the longing for the father that is inherent in everyone from childhood.

Criticism of belief in God and explanation of anti-Semitism

Freud sums up his remarks with a fundamental criticism of belief in God:

“How enviable seem to us - the poor in faith - those researchers who are convinced of the existence of a higher being! The world has no problem for this great spirit because he himself created all its institutions. We understand that the primitive needs a God as a creator of the world, a tribal head, a personal carer. This god has his place behind the deceased fathers, of whom tradition still has something to say. Man of later times, our time, behaves in the same way. He too remains infantile and in need of protection - even as an adult. "

Freud sees in Jewish monotheism a "progress in spirituality" compared to the pictorial religions. The decisive rationalistic impulse lies in the prohibition of images (in the Ten Commandments ). Monotheism, with its prohibition of images, the rejection of the magical ceremonial and the emphasis on the ethical requirement of the law, founded an "existential alienation to the world" and thus "the gradual disentanglement of man from the constraints of idolatry" (the worship of idolatry) that captured his spirit hold. In anti-Semitism , Freud can then see a reaction against the spirit, an anti-intellectualism. "Anti-Semitism is antimonotheism [sic!] And thus anti-intellectualism." He sees anti-Semitism as a rebellion against the monotheistic religion that demands the renunciation of instincts :

“Under a thin layer of Christianity they have remained what their ancestors were, who worshiped a barbaric polytheism. They have not overcome their resentment against the new religion that has been forced upon them, but they have shifted it to the source from which Christianity came to them. (...) Your hatred of Jews is basically hatred of Christians. "

Freud's statements about the origin of his writing

For a long time Freud was very dissatisfied with the current state of his study. He addresses this in several places in his correspondence with Arnold Zweig . He mentions the new text for the first time on September 30, 1934: “In a time of relative vacations, out of perplexity about what to do with the surplus of leisure, I wrote something myself, and that, contrary to my original intention, took up everything else did not occur. Well don't rejoice because I bet you won't get it to read. But let us explain to you how this is done [...] "

“In view of the new persecutions” [of the Jews by the Nazis in Germany] “one wonders again how the Jew became and why he incurred this immortal hatred. I soon got the formula. Moses created the Jew, and my work was given the title: The Man Moses, a historical novel [...] "

“The stuff is divided into three sections, the first interesting in the manner of a novel, the second arduous and lengthy, the third content and demanding. The company failed because of the third, because it brought up a theory of religion, nothing new for me after> Totem and Taboo <, but something new and fundamental for strangers. "

Then Freud explains why he does not want to publish this text at this point in time. In the “strict Catholic faith” of Austria at that time, he fears that this “attack” on the Christian religion would prohibit the practice of psychoanalysis in Vienna and that all psychoanalysts would be unemployed.

“And behind this is that my work neither seems so secure nor I like it very much. So it is not the right occasion for martyrdom. End for now! "

Zweig then suggested to Freud that the text should appear in Jerusalem as a small private print and only for 'initiated' people, something which Freud did not get involved in.

On December 16, 1934, Freud wrote: “With Moses, leave me alone. I am sufficiently depressed that what is probably the last attempt to create something has failed. Not that I got away from it. The man, and what I wanted to do with him, is constantly following me. But it does not work, the external dangers and internal concerns do not allow any other outcome of the attempt. "

On February 13, 1935, he wrote to Arnold Zweig, who was then living in Haifa: “My own Moses cannot be helped. If you ever come to Vienna again, you are welcome to read this sheltered manuscript to confirm my judgment. "

Zweig informed Freud from Israel about a few books that might help him on the Moses topic. Thereupon Freud wrote on March 14, 1935: “This is the disappointment. My judgment was reinforced about the weakness of my historical construction, which rightly prevented me from publishing the work. The rest is really silence. "

Then an unexpected archaeological discovery comes to the aid of Freud. He wrote to Zweig on May 2, 1935: “In a report on Tell el-Amarna, which has not yet been half excavated, I read a remark about a Prince Thotmes of whom nothing else is known. If I were a pound millionaire, I would finance the continuation of the dig. This Thotmes could be my Moses, and I can boast that I have guessed him. "

After Freud moved to London in 1938, the tone of his comments on his book of Moses changed. He no longer has to take into account the situation in Vienna and is more relaxed about the publication of his last book. From London on June 28, 1938 he wrote to Zweig: “I am writing here with pleasure on the third part of Moses. Just half an hour ago the post brought me a letter from a young Jewish American in which I was asked not to rob the poor, unhappy national comrades of the only consolation that remained in their misery. The letter was nice and well-meaning, but what an overestimation! Is it really to be believed that my dry treatise will disturb the faith of even one believer through heredity and upbringing, even if it reaches him? "

reception

For a long time Freud's 'historical novel' was not very convincing. In the more recent discussion , which was largely initiated by the study of Yerushalmi and Derrida's examination of it, Freud's services to the understanding of tradition and cultural memory are recognized. Bernstein interpreted the Moses study as the answer to a question Freud asked himself in 1930 in his foreword to the Hebrew edition of Totem and Tabu : "If you asked him [the author of Totem and Tabu , Freud himself] what Is it still Jewish about you when you have given up all these things you have in common with your fellow citizens? He would answer: A lot more, probably the main thing . But at present he could not express this essential point in clear words. It will certainly be accessible to scientific insight later be."

expenditure

Secondary literature

  • Jan Assmann : Moses the Egyptian: deciphering a memory trace. Fischer, Frankfurt 2004
  • Jan Assmann: Freud's construction of Judaism. In Zs. Psyche , February 2002
  • Richard J. Bernstein: Freud and the Legacy of Moses. Philo, Vienna 2003
  • Jacques Derrida : Dedicated to the archive. A Freudian impression. Brinkmann and Bose, Berlin 1997.
  • Ilse Grubrich-Simitis : Freud's Moses Study as a Daydream. A biographical essay. Fischer, Frankfurt 1994
  • Wolfgang Hegener: Ways out of fatherless psychoanalysis. Four treatises on Freud's "Mann Moses". Edition diskord, Tübingen 2001
  • Eveline List (Ed.): The Man Moses and the Voice of the Intellect. History, law and thought in Sigmund Freud's historical novel. Studienverlag , Innsbruck 2007
  • Franz Maciejewski : The Moses of Sigmund Freud. A creepy brother. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-525-45374-2
  • Peter Schäfer: The triumph of pure spirituality. Sigmund Freud's "The Man Moses and the Monotheistic Religion". Philo, Vienna 2003
  • Thomas Schmidinger: Moses, anti-Semitism and the return of the repressed, in " Transversal. Journal for Jewish Studies " 13th vol. H. 2, Studienverlag, Graz 2012 ISSN  1607-629X pp. 101–130
  • Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi : Freud's Moses. Finite and Infinite Judaism. Wagenbach, Berlin 1992.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sigmund Freud: The man Moses and the monotheistic religion . (1939) Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2010; ISBN 978-3-15-018721-0 ; on “Family novel” see p. 14 * 35; (Page * line)
  2. ^ Günter Schulte: Freud's “Moses and Monotheism” on www.guenter-schulte.de
  3. ^ Sigmund Freud / Arnold Zweig: Correspondence. Frankfurt 1968, p. 102
  4. ^ Sigmund Freud / Arnold Zweig: Correspondence. Frankfurt 1968, p. 102
  5. ^ Sigmund Freud / Arnold Zweig: Correspondence. Frankfurt 1968, pp. 108-109
  6. ^ Sigmund Freud / Arnold Zweig: Correspondence. Frankfurt 1968, p. 112
  7. ^ Sigmund Freud / Arnold Zweig: Correspondence. Frankfurt 1968, pp. 114-115
  8. ^ Sigmund Freud / Arnold Zweig: Correspondence. Frankfurt 1968, p. 117
  9. ^ Sigmund Freud / Arnold Zweig: Correspondence. Frankfurt 1968, p. 172
  10. ↑ quoted from Bernstein 2003: 13