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'''''Moses and [[Monotheism]]''''' is a book by [[Sigmund Freud]]. It was first published in 1939. In it, [[Freud ]] argues that [[Moses]] was actually an [[Ancient Egypt]]ian, and in some way related to [[Akhenaten]], an ancient Egyptian [[monotheism|monotheist]]. The book was written in [[three ]] parts, and was a departure from the rest of Freud's [[work ]] on [[psychoanalytic theory]]. The book does contain [[discussion ]] of Freud's [[psychoanalytic ]] [[thinking]], but was intended as a work of [[history]].

In ''Moses and Monotheism'', Freud contradicts the [[Bible|Biblical]] story of Moses with his own retelling of events claiming that Moses only led his close followers into [[freedom]], and that they subsequently killed Moses in rebellion either to his strong [[faith ]] or to circumcision. Freud explains that years after the [[murder ]] of Moses the rebels formed a religion which promoted Moses as the Saviour of the [[Israelites]]. Freud said that the [[guilt]] from the murder of Moses is inherited through the generations; this guilt then [[drives ]] the [[Jews ]] to [[religion]] to make [[them ]] feel better.

Begun in 1934, and rewritten in 1936, Freud's Moses and Monotheism appeared in an abridged [[form ]] in the review [[Imago ]] (the first two essays), and the final version was published in 1939. It also appeared in the [[Standard Edition ]] edited by [[James ]] Strachey (1964).Upon first examination the work seems somewhat disordered, and contains repetitions and inconsistencies. The [[writing ]] appears to reflect the movement of Freud's [[thought]], his doubts and [[hesitation]], his concern regarding the [[scientific ]] [[nature ]] of the information he...

Upon first examination the work seems somewhat disordered, and contains repetitions and inconsistencies. The writing appears to reflect the movement of Freud's thought, his doubts and hesitation, his concern regarding the scientific nature of the information he provides, and his fears concerning the way the [[text ]] might be received among Viennese Catholics and by the [[Jewish ]] [[community]].

The work contains three essays of unequal length, "Moses an Egyptian," "If Moses Was an Egyptian," and "Moses, His [[People]], and [[Monotheistic ]] Religion." The last essay includes prefatory [[notes ]] written at different [[times]], one in [[Vienna ]] before Freud's departure for Great [[Britain]], the [[other ]] in [[London]], which partly contradicts the first. Finally, part two of the [[third ]] essay is preceded by a "[[Summary]]" in which he reevaluates much of the information in the first essays.

Moses and Monotheism can be approached in several different ways. First, it is a biography of Moses, the "historical novel" whose scientific nature Freud wanted to establish. Freud claims that Moses was not Jewish but Egyptian and bases this [[claim ]] on the fact that the [[name ]] "Moses" was Egyptian, as well as on certain considerations [[about ]] the [[family ]] origin of heroes, based on Otto Rank's [[Myth ]] of the [[Birth ]] of the Hero (1909).

In the second essay Freud tries to [[understand ]] the reasons that would have led Moses to assume the leadership of the minority people who were to become Jews and impose a new religion upon them. He then comes up with the [[idea ]] that what would become Mosaic religion originated in the cult of Aton practiced by the pharaoh Amenotep IV. Moses, as a devoted believer, is said to have adopted the new religion as his own. After the [[revolt ]] that followed the [[death ]] of the pharaoh, Moses [[chose ]] exile and the creation of a people upon whom he was able to impose his [[religious ]] beliefs, together with the (Egyptian) [[practice ]] of circumcision. These are the people he led out of slavery. The cult of Aton and following Mosaic faith brought to religion, for the first [[time ]] in history, the monotheistic [[notion ]] of a unique and [[universal ]] god. Because of his tyrannical and domineering [[character]], and his [[desire ]] to impose a monotheistic religion upon all Jews, Moses is said to have been assassinated during a revolt of the Jews against his [[authority]].

Freud meets the criticism that situates the exodus one or two centuries after the reign of Akhenaton by advancing the idea that Moses did not draw his religious beliefs directly from the pharaoh but from priests who had been devotees of the cult of Aton. He also responds to certain historical conclusions that situated the origin of the Jewish religion in the cult of a volcano god, Yahweh, defeated by a Moses who was of Midian origin, by postulating the fusion of two [[religions]]: Aton's religion of [[truth ]] and justice, which was temporarily [[repressed ]] by the religion of Yahweh, which was focused more on conquest. While reconstituting the history of the Jewish people, Freud rediscovers the dualist [[system ]] that was so important to him: the fusion of two Moses in a single character, of two new religions into a single monotheistic religion, of two peoples into a single [[nation]].

Freud's work is thus an explanation of the [[formation ]] of monotheistic religion on the basis of [[parricide ]] (that of Moses), the collective [[repression ]] of this murder, its passage from [[memory]], but also its survival in the [[unconscious ]] and its reappearance in religious phenomena. This theme is similar to one developed in [[Totem ]] and [[Taboo]]: parricide as the origin of [[civilization ]] and monotheistic religion. According to Freud, this explanation holds for both the Jewish religion, where parricide is not recognized as such but reappears in the [[feeling ]] of guilt, and [[Christianity]], where guilt (original sin) and parricide are recognized and assumed. [[Paul ]] of Tarsus (the [[true ]] founder, for Freud, of the [[Christian ]] religion) is supposed to have recognized the murder. The expiation of parricide could only be carried out by the sacrifice of an expiatory [[victim]]: the son of God himself. The euphoria of [[being ]] the chosen people in the Jewish religion is replaced in Christian religion by the sentiment of compensatory liberation through the sacrifice of the son. Original sin and atonement through sacrifice are the pillars of the new religion founded by Paul. In Freud's approach, Moses is desacralized, reduced to his [[human ]] nature (as in "The Moses of [[Michelangelo]]," [1914b]), and God is reduced to a strictly human origin arising from projections of the [[individual ]] unconscious.

Freud's Moses and Monotheism represents an application of the data of individual [[metapsychology ]] to collective [[psychology]]. For Freud there is an "analogy" between the collective phenomena upon which religions are based and the [[process ]] of repression at work in individual [[development ]] according to the following [[schema]]: [[infantile ]] trauma—defense—latency—onset of [[neurotic ]] [[illness ]] and [[partial ]] [[return ]] of the repressed. As Marie Moscovici noted, Freud's work on Moses is also a consideration of the status of the [[father]], whose function escapes any sensory appreciation or direct [[perception]], and who can only be recognized as father through the [[mental ]] activities of the son who designates him as father. Moses and Monotheism is also a [[reflection ]] on Jewish [[identity]], the character traits on which it is based and which ensure its longevity, the [[hatred ]] it arouses in [[anti-Semitism ]] and which Freud explains as the price to be paid for the [[denial ]] of parricide and the [[refusal ]] to acknowledge this.

As in all of Freud's work, one possible [[reading ]] of Moses can refer to the individual history of the founder of [[psychoanalysis]]. The book was written immediately before his death. It constitutes what is almost his final text at a time when he feared that psychoanalysis, because of the rise of [[Nazism ]] and the [[internal ]] struggles among his own followers, was threatened with extinction. The idea that some might desire the death of the founder of psychoanalysis, just as the Jewish people would have desired the death of Moses, was probably not far removed from his contemplation of parricide.

# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1939a [1934-1938]). Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion: Drei Abhandlungen. Amsterdam, Allert De Lange]]