Unit Nine Section Three Page 2

In Moses and Monotheism Sigmund Freud makes the following argument, he "comes to the startling conclusion that Moses himself was an Egyptian who brought from his native country the religion he gave to the Jews. He accepts the hypothesis that Moses was murdered in the wilderness, but that his memory was cherished by the people and this religious doctrine ultimately triumphed. Freud develops his general theory of monotheism, which enables him to throw light on the development of Judaism and Christianity."

The book itself is a series of essays written over several years and published in the year of Freud's death. The argument about Moses being an Egyptian Prince and a dual foundation for Monotheism, has not been widely accepted. Freud uses linguistic, historical evidence, and theories of religion and psychology to show his case. Even if one does not accept his specific arguments, the methodology and general insights he does have about human behavior, biography and the process of history are worth understanding. In concluding his first section of the book Freud articulates how psychology can help understand biography and the development of religious belief systems.

Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism Translated by Katherine Jones. (New York: Vintage, 1939)

(pp.64-65) "With this I have come to an end, my sole purpose having been to fit the figure of an Egyptian Moses into the framework of Jewish history. I may now express my conclusion in the shortest formula: To the well known duality of that history - two peoples who fuse together to form one nation, two kingdoms into which this nation divides, two names for the Deity in the source of the Bible- - we add two new ones: the founding of two new religions, the first one ousted by the second and yet reappearing victorious, two founders of religion, who are both called by the same name, Moses, and whose personalities we have to separate from each other. And all these dualities are necessary consequences of the first: one section of the people passed through what may properly be termed a traumatic experience which the other was spared. . . . In what exactly consists the intrinsic nature of a tradition, and in what resides its peculiar power, how impossible it is to deny the personal influence of individual great men on the history of the world, what profanation of the grandiose multiformity of human life we commit if we recognize as sole motives those springing from material needs, from what sources certain ideas, especially religious ones, derive the power to which they subjugate individuals and peoples - - to study all this in the particular case of Jewish history would be an alluring task."