Original title: Uccidere Dio: il destino del popolo ebraico. Dall'assassinio di Mose all'omicidio di Rabin.
Copyright 2000: Iakov Levi and Luigi Previdi.
Published in Agora, a cura di Fabio Minazzi, Annuario IV, Ed. Arterigere s.r.l., Varese 2000 (Italy).
Translated by Iakov Levi
 

As described by Reik (1)  the image of Moses condenses the symbolic representation of the son – figure, the emissary of the horde of the brothers, and of the tribal father.
Starting from Michelangelo’s statue of the horned Moses, Reik unfolds his investigation.
We report below the most outstanding parts of Reik’s essay, which are the key to the decoding  of the great leader’s image:

Conosseurs assure us that the horned head and the compressed forehead of the law-giver, as well as his facial expression, contribute essentially to the fact that the impression produced by the masterpiece oscillates between attraction and repulsion. An understanding of this detail will perhaps give an explanation of the “ambivalent” effect of the Moses.
It is well known that the horns on the head of this statue as well as on many other representations of Moses can be traced back to an incorrect translation of a passage of the Bible. Exodus XXXIV: 29-30 says: “And it came to pass when Moses came down from the mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses hand, when he came down from the mount. That Moses wist not that the skin of his face shown while he talked with him. And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him” .
The Vulgate and the Aquila incorrectly, it is said, translate the Hebrew word Karan “was horned” instead of “shone”, so that according to the texts Moses appears before the Jews with horns. In this way Moses made his entry into plastic art cornuta facie… The Hebrew word has actually both meanings. It means “to shine” as well as “be horned.It may even be supposed that the meaning “to shine” is the latter and more developed one.Thus the halo round Moses’ head was originally a pair of horns which were only later changed into a light. Why then did the leader came down from Sinai with horns on his head?.(p.309). The text expressly says that the shining of Moses’ face was caused by his association with Jahveh: it is, therefore, the reflection of the Deity which hovers over the great man’s head.
The change of sense in the Hebrew word meaning “to shine” as well as our earlier elucidations, force us to assume that Moses has identified himself with God by assuming the attribute of horns: he ha become God. The horns were the signs of the vanquished totem-god…the horns and the halo are historically only different attribute of the Deity; the one repressed the other, and in the repressing element we again find the repressed in an altered form (p.310)….
The double effect of the great artist’s statue of Moses, i.e. the alternation of attraction and repulsion, no longer puzzles us. This double effect is produced, on the one hand, by our admiration and reverence for the divine character of the figure, and on the other hand by our unconscious resistance against the traits which tend to remind us, without our knowing it, of an idea of God which we believe we had overcome….Moses of the saga has really become a bull because he identifies himself with Jahveh. The horns on the head of Michelangelo’s marble statue are a remnant of tis old suppressed, but unconquered idea. The animal like savageness, the suppression of which appears in the figure, constitutes a second indication of the original nature of the hero (p 311)…Moses has taken possession of the skin of the father-god, and has thus become God himself according to the ancient idea. A trace of this phase can be recognized in the representation of the horned Moses. The second phase has replaced the skin of the animal, which is incompatible with the higher concept of god, by radiance; but the light on Moses’ face still comes from Jahveh. We can see that in this phase (p.314) also Moses makes himself almost equal to the deity by taking over the divine attribute. The Jews were afraid before him as though he were Jahveh himself (p.315)….
This becomes clear if we consider that the whole saga was only associated with the more developed Jewish cult quite late; it was woven into the religious view of that time, though it originally arose in an epoch when Jahveh was not yet the law giving God of Sinai. At this period Moses did not use a mask, or skin of an animal, in intercourse with God; for he tore the skin from the God, and thereby became God himself. Every priest was also God. Moses who speaks to Jahveh in the tabernacle, is a later figure; because Moses himself was Jahveh, the presence of Jahveh seems to be duplicated. When, however, Moses wears the veil or mask in order to terrify the Jews, he wishes unconsciously to deter them from a repetition of the deed which he had carried out, and (p.315) which would this time be directed against his own person. Psycho-analytically the situation can be explained as follows. The identification with the father-god, by putting on the skin of the totem, was the result of the son's elementary wish to take the place of the father. The wearing of the paternal skin of the animal is a symptom both of triumph over the father's defeat and of his victory – since the son who overcame the father is compelled to take over the paternal role. The son, who has thus advanced to the state of the father, finds himself compelled by his unconscious fear to retaliation to use towards the younger generation the same means of intimidation and paternal authority which he had himself overcome.

The assumption of the original presence of two animal-images in the scene on Sinai , one representing Jahveh as bull and one Moses as calf, suggests a period of Jewish religious development in which a son-deity was worshipped as well as the father- god. We have reason to suppose that the details of the text have partly betrayed this development in the replacement of the plural by the singular. There must have existed a period in which the son-god Moses had repressed the father-god Jahveh, and when his own cult was in the foreground (p.330). This process coincides with what we found in the analysis of the horned Moses. A son overpowers the father and now takes his place. We may recall the suggestion that a late insurrection of the son was related in the language of the totemic past. It is therefore no accident that in the saga the Jews actually worship a calf. The young of a bull can only represented thus….In the Exodus narrative we find traces of a subsequent period in which father and son deities stood side by side and were equivalent objects of religious worship. When the Jews say, “these are the gods which have brought you up out of the land of Egypt, they mean Jahveh and Moses. Progressive development led to the son-god being assigned a subordinate position while the father-god was elevated to still higher supramundane heights (p.331)….The particular feature of Judaism is that the father finally attains the victory and indisputably holds the domination in firm hands (p.332).…We therefore need not fear the apparent contradiction that Moses, in destroying the golden calf, annihilated himself. We know that Moses originally destroyed the bull, and that the calf was only later put in its place. In virtue of this transformation the destruction of the bull became a praiseworthy deed in the service of the Deity, instead of a severe crime against Him (p.333)….When Moses destroys the calf he also kills himself and expiates the guilt which he had incurred through the destruction of the father-and bull-deity, Jahveh. Therefore, according to the inexorable law of retaliation, he takes upon himself the punishment of death ordained for the murder of a member of the tribe (p.334)…The double personality of Moses as man and prophet and as calf does not weaken our hypothesis. We find here again one of those duplications which we have already discovered - the human figure is the later one, the animal form the earlier” (p.335)

And Moshe went out to meet his father in law, and bowed, and kissed him; and they asked each other of their welfare; and they came into the tent. And Moshe told his father in law all that the Lord had done to Par’o and to Mizrayim for the sake of Yisra’el. And all the travail that had come upon them by the way, and how the Lord delivered them…And Yitro, Moshe’s father in law, took a burnt offering and sacrifices for god: and Aaron came and all the elders of Yisra’el, to eat bread with Moshe’s father in law before God (Ex. 18:7-13)

There came a time when people began to regret the murder of Moses and to seek to forget it. This was certainly so at the time of the union of the two portions of the people at Kaddesh.
But when the Exodus and the foundation of the religion at the oasis [of Kadesh] were brought closer together, and Moses was represented as being concerned in the latter instead of the other man (the midianite priest), not only were the demands of the followers of Moses satisfied but the distressing fact of his violent end was successfully disavowed. In actual fact it is most unlikely that Moses could have taken part in the proceedings at Kadesh even if his life had not been cut short (6).

The doctrine of Moses may have been even harsher than that of his master. He had no need to retain the son-god as a support: the school of On had no significance for his alien people. Moses, like Akhnaten, met with the same fate that awaits all enlightened despots. The jewish people under Moses were just as little able to tolerate such a highly spiritualized religion and find satisfaction of their needs in what it had to offer as had been the Egyptians of the Eighteenth Dynasty, The same thing happened in both cases: those who had been dominated and kept in want rose and  threw off the burden of the religion that had been imposed on them. But while the tame Egyptians waited till fate had removed the sacred figure of the Pharaoh, the savage Semites took fate into their own hands and rid themselves of their tyrant (7)

and I set before the sons of the house of the Rekhavim goblets full of wine, and cups, and I said to them, Drink wine. But they said, We will drink no wine: for Yonadav the son of Rekhav our father commanded us, saying, You shall drink no wine, neither you, nor your sons for ever: Neither shall you build a house, nor sow seed, nor plant a vineyard, nor have one: but all your days you shall dwell in tents; that you may live many days in the land where you sojourn. And we have obeyed the voice of Yonadav the son of Rehkav our father in all that he charged us, to drink no wine all our days, we, our wives, our sons, and our daughters; nor to build houses for us to dwell in (Jeremiah 35:6-10)

Moreover also the Arab tribe of the Nabatean, who one thousand years after Moses migrated seasonally between the Northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, the Neghev desert and the Arabian Hejaz, held the interdiction of sowing, of planting trees, of drinking wine, and of building houses.
Lehmann suggests, therefore, that the interdiction of possessing a house, in this context, is by itself an evidence of the archaic contents of the Decalogue and its attribution to the original Moses, the Egyptian prince. The implication of this thesis bring us much further. If the Mosaic commandment intended to prohibit the Israelites to possess houses and vineyards, all the construction of the exit from Egypt with the aim of entering the Promised Land has no more reason to exist.
If Freud had dared to follow his own thoughts to the end, should have reached the same conclusion. It was himself, who suggested that the aim of the Egyptian prince was of imposing to the Hebrew the highly spiritual iconoclastic religion of Akhnaten.
Moses, therefore, intended to lead the Hebrews into the desert, because there they would have had the best conditions to enact Akhnaten’s religion. If he had in mind to detach them from the idolatrous modus of the religion of Egypt, with the numerous statues and images, why to bring them to Palestine, where a people accustomed to the ways of the cultivators and their idolatry had been living?
Moses should have known that, once settled down as residents on the land, they would have relapsed into all the habits of the city-dwellers, who in antiquity were also cultivators: the cult of Baal, the god of rain and the thunder; the cult of Astarte, the fertility goddess and sacred prostitute; and the  religion of a god who dies at the beginning of the summer, to resurrect with the first rain (Tammuz) as Nature, so closely watched by the cultivators who are so dependent on her cycles. It had had to be obvious that all the interdictions and curses described in the Torah would have been of no use. There is no point in leading the cat before the milk, only to prohibit its licking.
Moreover, if Moses was an Egyptian, why should he lead the people of Israel into a land which reconnected to the sagas of the shepherds, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Which link could it have been between Moses the Egyptian and the Hebrew tradition of ancient migrations on the fringe of the seeded land? What link could possibly have existed between the monotheistic and highly spiritual religion of Akhnaten and the rape of the seeded land, that would obviously be violent and genocidal? It could not possibly be any link between the Mosaic preachment, and the tradition of Simeon and Levi, they who, whenever possible, invaded the seeded land to exterminate its inhabitants. The preaching to commit genocide of all the dwellers of the Promised Land could not come from Moses, the Egyptian, described by Freud.
Therefore every trace leads us to Freud’s conclusion that there had indeed been two Moses, and consequently two different external projections of God: the first of the spiritual monotheistic Aton, by the high moral standards, of the first Moses, and the second of the volcanic bloodthirsty demon, violent, irascible and prone to vengeance of the second Moses, wizard of Jahve.
It was Jahve who manifested himself in his menacing epiphany on mount Sinai, in the context of a collective initiation rite, described by Reik, but for sure it was not he who promulgated the Decalogue. It was he, who took the form of a cloud by day and of a pillar of fire by night, in leading the Israelites to the rape of the Promised Land. This was the god whom the Israelites needed to cross the terrible desert and not a moralistic ecumenical god, who could not promise their enemies’ blood. This god, the first bull-god, which probably was the reactivation of a more archaic totem, connected to the Mesopotamian tradition previous to the migration into Egypt, and then ram-god, totem connected to Jahve’s cult (9), took his violent vengeance on whoever diverged from the strict ritual of tribal rites, which, as in the contemporary savage tribes, must be observed to the letter, or be punished by death.
The god of Moses, prince of Egypt, Akhnaten’s god, as explained by Freud, will make his appearance again only in the later history of the people of Israel, when they will need a merciful father-god, but in the meantime the Hebrews needed a deity, who could maintain the discipline in the hard conditions of the desert.
Now, following the deductions of Freud and then of Lehmann we can understand what really happened in the desert: Moses, the Egyptian, led the Hebrews out of Egypt to distance them from the corrupted iconodule environment of Egyptian Pantheon, which had been re-instituted, after the death of Akhnaten. He knew that the nomad, in contrast to the cultivator, has a natural tendency to spirituality, monotheism and iconoclasm (10), as has been mentioned also by Reik, in his analysis of the events on the Sinai (11). Therefore Moses hoped that, encouraging the Hebrews to reconnect to their own ancient tradition of nomadic shepherds, before the migration to Egypt, he would create the perfect environment for the enactment of his new religion. This Moses gave to his adopted people the Decalogue and the moral parts of the Torah, among which also the interdiction to become sedentary and to possess a house. What he did not foresee was that the Israelites, used to the easy ways of the land of Egypt, at direct contact with the rough reality of the desert began to complain and to rebel: “Who shall give us meat to eat? We remember the fish, which we did eat in Mizrayim for nothing; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic: but now our soul is dried away…” (Numbers11:5).
The second thing that Moses did not take into account was that the Hebrews, before the migration into Egypt, had been semi-nomadic shepherds, but had never been Bedouins. At difference from the Bedouin, who is craving for the razu, the sudden raid into the seeded land, in order to return immediately into the desert, the semi-nomadic shepherd grazes his herd at the fringes of the seeded land, with the lusting eyes directed towards the fields and the houses of the hated cultivators and, as soon as possible, in moments of strength, settles down in their place and changes his style of life. The Hebrews did not want to be led by a man, who imposed on them the interdiction of invading the seeded land and of possessing houses. In this connection the above mentioned Rekhabim, sons of Jonadab, that in the 6th century B.C. still were dwelling in tents and did not drink wine, represented a clan, which had remained truthful to Mosaic tradition and, in the context of their own time, was in strident contradiction to the social and mental habitat of the Israelites cultivators.
What happened was that the Hebrews, who remembered the fertile pastures of Palestine and the ancients trials to invade them, the fields and the houses of the Cananites, found themselves compelled to live as Bedouins, whom, even at the times of the Patriarchs, had always despised, and led by someone who spoke in metaphysic terms and inhibited them from possessing a house.
The real reason for the assassination of Moses was, therefore, not the hard conditions of the desert per se, since no new leader could change them. The new Moses, priest of Midian and wizard of Jahve, who substituted the original Moses, could not promise to make rain in the Sinai desert, nor to make sprout the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic of Egypt, and the Hebrews knew very well this simple fact of life. What they wanted was not a monotheistic metaphysic god, but a warrior-god, who would be their own personal and tribal reference, and would lead them beyond that terrible desert into the land they craved from the times of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the prototypes of their shepherd nation. In this context is to be remembered that the semi-nomadic shepherds, who migrated at the fringe of the seeded land, if they only had the occasion, tried to sow at the semi–arid margins of the northern Neghev desert and, if they were lucky, and the winter was rainy enough, could even harvest. Isaac, who wandered in this strip of land, south of the Canaanite cities of the northern Neghev, where desert and seeded land penetrate each other “…sowed in that land, and received in the same year a hundredfold: for the Lord blessed him.” (Gen. 26:12).
The residents of Palestine never sow in this area, because of the scarcity of rainfall. Even today the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture does not grant drought compensations to whom sow in this region, and whoever decides to cultivate this strip of land risks to lose his investment. Isaac “bought a lottery ticket and won”, in the language of the Bible: the Lord blessed him. We can realize how far was the intention of the Hebrews to exit Egypt in order to become Bedouins. The new Moses proposed his god, the god of the shepherds, Jahveh by the thousand magic, who did not pretend to be the only god of the world, but who would be the only god for them, and stronger than other tribes’ gods. He promised to fulfil the archaic desire for vengeance on the Cananites and lust for the land, their houses and fields. With this god it made sense to enter a covenant. In exchange he demanded that, once settled down in the Promised Land, he would not be substituted in favor of Baal, the cultivators’ god, and they would not prefer Astarte and other fertility goddesses, whose cult is peculiar of the dwellers of the seeded land.
In order to understand this point it is necessary to distinguish between monotheism and henotheism (monolatry). The religion of Aton, enacted by Akhnaten, was the first monotheistic religion of mankind, since it postulated the existence of one unique god, and to this concept, according to Freud, reconnected Mosaic monotheism adopted by the Jews who returned from the Babylonian exile, after a latency of eight centuries since had been imposed on them by the great leader and had been rejected. In contrast, when Moses-Yitro, priest of Midian, describes his god, he never implies that this is the only god. The religion of the Hebrews, before the Exodus, had been a henotheistic religion, like that of the majority of Semitic semi-nomads. The Moabites worshipped Chemosh, and he was the only god to them. The Ammonites worshipped Milcom, and this too was the only god to them, without doubting the legitimacy of other gods to other peoples. The god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob never sustains to be the only god of the Universe. The emphasis is on being the stronger, and it is of the utmost importance to him being the only god for them. Sedentary peoples, in contrast, adopted more than one god at the same time. The reason for this difference of mentality is to be searched in the different structure of their society, which translates also into a different mentality. Tribal societies remain truthful to the concept of one father-god, who is the external projection of the omnipotent father of the tribe. Nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples have therefore a tendency to henotheism and iconoclasm, but not specifically to monotheism, which, according to Freud, can be born only where there is before the eyes a political structure like an Empire, with borders which extend to the all known world. The Hebrews rejected the monotheism of Aton-Adonai in order to embrace the henotheism of Jahveh, which reminded them of their archaic monolatry of semi-nomads, previous to the migration to Egypt.
This is the reason why Jahveh presents himself to Moses-Yitro, on the Sinai mountain, as god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Ex. 4:5), and as such is presented to the Hebrews, as the sender of Moses and the initiator of the Exodus.
Moses, priest of Midian, introduces God to Paraho as “The God of the Hebrews”, the ‘Ibrim (Ex.5:3), who came to take his revenge and his people, and not as Aton, and Faraho would have realized very well of whom he was speaking about, the sole god creator of the Universe, who in the name of justice decided to liberate the slaves from their yoke. The text does not use the usual expression “children of Israel”, but “ ’Ibrim” (Hebrews), and this expression is used only when it has to be explained to an Egyptian whom are we dealing with, or is used by an Egyptian to describe an Hebrew (Gen. 39:14-17 and 41:12) (12). The text never uses this expression in other occasions (13) .
“ ‘Ibrim” is the Hebrew equivalent of “ ‘Apiru” of the El Amarna tablets, and this word in the 2nd millenium defined a social class of semi-nomadic shepherds and donkey drivers, who caused a lot of trouble to the truthful subjects of the Egyptian Paraho in Palestine and Syria (14). Therefore it is not casual if Moses speaks of Hebrews, “ ‘Apiru”, before the Pharaho. Since as such they were known by the Egyptians, who used this term in a despising mood. The Israelites for sure did not define themselves as such, but only as “children of Israel”.
Now many incongruities of the biblical narrative become clear.
The text operates an overlay between the first Moses and the second but, at this point, it will be easy to us distinguish between the two.
“Now Moshe kept the flock of Yitro, his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he lead the flock far away into the desert, and came to the mountain of God, to Horev.” (Ex.3:1). This  obviously is the second Moses, himself priest of Midian and shepherd, who knew nothing of Egypt. The narrative of the sacred mountain fits with one of the places of periodical gathering of the desert’s tribes, to perform their sacred rites, as it happens even today. This probably was the sacred place in which the puberty rites of initiation were acted out. To this context belongs the narrative of the bush burned with fire, but was not consumed, as one of the magic deeds performed during the initiation rites. “And Moshe hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God” (Ex. 3:6). In all these rites, frightening masks are used to threaten the novices.
Moses appears here as the synthesis of the threatening adult, wearing a mask, and the frightened novice. To this sacred place the Hebrews will be led to pass their collective initiation rite (15). Then the verses:

“And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Mizrayim, and have heard their cry by reason of their task-masters; for I know their sorrow; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of Mizrayim and to bring them up out of that land to a good land and a large, to a land flowing with milk and honey; to the place of the Kena`ani, and the Hitti, and the Emori, and the Perizzi. And the Hivvi, and the Yevusi.” (Ex.3:7-9)

And they said, The God of the Hebrews has met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days journey into the desert, and sacrifice to the Lord our God; lest he fall upon with pestilence, or with the sword (Ex.5:3)

God led them not through the way of the land of the Pelishtim, although that was near; for God said, Lest the people repent when they see war, and they return to Mizrayim (Ex. 13:18).

Go up into this mount ‘Avarim, to mount Nevo, which is in the land of Mo’av, that is facing Yereho; and behold the land of Kena’an, which I give to the children of Israel for a possession: and die in the mountain into which thou goest up, and be gathered to thy people […] because you trasgressed against me among the children of Yisrael at the waters of Merivat-qadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because you sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Yisrael. Yet thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go there into the land which I give to the children of Yisra’el (Deut.32:48-52)

Go up into this mount ‘Avarim, and see the land which I have given to the children of Yisra’el. And when thou hast seen it, thou shalt be gathered to thy people, as Aharon thy brother was gathered. For you rebelled against my commandment in the desert of Zin, in the strife of the congregation, to sanctify me at the water (Num. 27:12-14)

and thy rod, with which thou smotest the the river, take in thy hand, and go. Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horev; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink (Ex. 17:6)

Moses’ Rod

Moses’ rod is omnipresent as for magic acts:

1) And the Lord spoke to Moshe and to Aaron, saying, When Par’o shall speak to you, saying, Show a miracle for yourselves: then thou shalt say to Aaron, Take thy rod, and cast it before Par’o, and it shall turn into a snake (Ex.7:8-9).

2) And the Lord said to Moshe, Par’o heart is hardened, he refuses to let the people go. Get thee to Par’o in the morning; lo, he goes out to the water; and thou shalt stand by the River’s brink to meet him; and the rod which was turned to a snake shalt thou take in thy hand. And thou shalt say to him, The lord God of the Hebrews has sent me to thee, saying, Let my people go, that they serve me in the wilderness: and, behold, till now thou wouldst not hear. Thus says the Lord, in this thou shalt know that I am the Lord: behold I will smite with the rod that is in my hand upon the water in the River, and it shall be turned to blood. And the fish that is in the River shall die, and the river shall stink; and Mizrayim shall no longer be able to drink the water of he River.  And the Lord spoke to Moshe, Say to Aaron, Take thy rod, and stretch out thy hand upon the waters of Mizrayim, upon their streams, upon their canals, and upon their ponds, and upon all their pools of water, that they may become blood; and that there may be blood throughout all the land of Mizrayim, both in vessels of wood, and in vessels of stone (Ex. 7:14-19).

3) And the Lord said to Moshe, Why dost thou cry to me? Speak to the children of Yisrael, that they go forward: but lift up thy rod, and stretch out thy hand over the sea, and divide it: and the children of Yisrael shall go on dry ground through the midst of the sea (Ex. 14:15-6).

4) And the Lord said to Moshe, Pass before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Yisrael and thy rod, with which thou smotest the river, take in thy hand, and go. Behold, I will stand before thee upon the rock in Horev; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink (Ex.17:5-6).

This last act was so unclear and foggy, concealing indeed the traces of a much more traumatic happening, that returns again in Numbers:

And the Lord spoke to Moshe, saying, Take the rod, and gather the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak to the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth its water, and thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink (Num. 20: 9-11)

And the Lord spoke to Moshe and Aharon, Because you did not believe in me, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Yisrael, therefore you shall not bring this congregation in to the land which I have given them (Num. 20:12-3)

Birth is regularly expressed in dreams by some connection with water: one falls into the water or one comes out of the water - one gives birth or one is born (22)

And if thou wilt make me an altar of stones, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast defiled it. Neither shalt thou go up by steps to my altar, that thy nakedness be not exposed on it (Ex. 20:25).

Joshua

The Book of Joshua is the less truthful, from an historical perspective, of all the books of the Exateuch (23). We can reach an understanding of the historical happening, as for the conquest, only looking in Book of Judges, which preserves lively flashes of the slow and relentless penetration of the Hebrews into the Holy Land. The importance of the Book of Joshua relies on its representation of the mental modus, which created the tradition, transferred from generation to generation, as for the violence and the desire of the original invasion of the thirsty tribes storming the land from the Eastern desert. The Book of Joshua is not an historical source: it is the poem of war of the Hebrew tribes and is the story of the perpetrated incest: so will be narrated the deeds of Jahve and Joshua his servant.
His first dispositions are to send spies to explore the Promised Land, exactly as the text had attributed to Moses, in the trial to give some credibility to the mystification that had been the first Moses, prince of Egypt, to push for the invasion: “And Yehoshua the son of Nun sent out of Shittim two men to spy secretly, saying, Go view the land and Yeriho” (Joshua 2:1), as had done his master before: “And the Lord spoke to Moshe, saying, Send thou men, that they may spy out the land of Kena’an, which I give to the children of Yisrael” (Num.13:1). In contrast to Moses, who had sent twelve explorers, one for every tribe, Joshua sends only two. Of the twelve men sent by Moses only two had returned with a positive opinion of the country. The other ten were terrorized by the size of the inhabitants, and had demoralized the people. Therefore this time only two explorers were sent, who indeed returned with a positive message: “Truly the Lord has delivered all the land into our hands; and moreover all the inhabitants of the country do melt away because of us” (Jos. 2:24). After a single incursion into Jericho, the men for sure could not make such a complete report to Joshua. We may assume that all the story of the incursion into Jericho, the two spies and their brief report, is only a repetition of that of the Numbers with the purpose of making an undoing of the sin of Moses’ explorers: now the people are no more demoralized and believe in Jahve’s promises, earning the right to conquer the Land.
Joshua’s second deed is the dividing of Jordan’s waters, as Moses had divided the Red Sea. The text tries to make of this deed a miracle:

And the feet of the priests that bore the ark were dipped in the brink of the water, (for the Yarden overflows all its bank throughout the time of harvest) that the waters which came down from above stood and rose up in a heap (Jos. 3:15-6)

Different are men, but similar their needs

In the same century in which the Hebrews were living their epos and were giving expression to their saga of conquest, that finds its catharsis in the biblical narrative, the West was living its own epos, last and ultimate of Achaean tribes' songs .
Troy’s war may be easily compared to the conquest of the Promised Land.  The Greek myth is much less hermetic and condensed, but the existential unconscious contents are the same. The Achaeans gather to act out the conquest of the fortified city and to take her queen. The incestuous intention is double-expressed since Helen of Troy and the city itself represent the repetition of the same symbolic concept as Helen and the fortified city represents the woman. Achilles is the real hero: the son-god, who undertakes the mission  of killing  the Father in the figure of the strongest of the Troians: Hektor, Tamer of Horses.  He represented the figure of the Father, inhibiting the Greek horde from taking possession of the city. After Hektor's death, as after the assassination of Moses, the way to the incest was open. Achilles, as Moses, condensation of Son-god and Father-god, was to die before the incest of the brother’s horde could be consummated. Achilles died before the fall of the city of Troy, and as a direct consequence of his sacrilege, as his mother Tetis had said explicitly: "Then, my son, is your end near at hand- for your own death awaits you full soon after that of  Hektor” (Iliad, XVIII: 94).
The task of perpetrating the incest, that the biblical myth bestows to Joshua, is acted out  by the second “Achilles”: the shrewd Ulysses penetrates the city with his own phallic symbol, the horse. Part of the wall is demolished to let the horse, which is bigger than the gate, enter the city. A very clear hint to the defloration act of a mother (the city) still perceived as virgin. The Greek heroes pour from it in a liberating orgiastic coitus. Ulysses is not punished by death, since this is the destiny of the parricide. His sin is considered less grave.  The belief of being able to substitute the father and lying with the mother, distillated from the parricide, which had already been committed by another, represents a sin of hybris (24).  Its punishment is a long wandering. Greek myth rationalizes Ulysses’ wandering as the consequence of an insult to Poseidon. This god in Orphic myth, which is also the more ancient, is only another epiphany of Zeus, the Father-god, in a unique condensation with Ades, the archaic Zeus Katachtonios (25). The Greeks, in this way, split into two separate heroes not only the figure of the son, one committing the patricide and the other perpetrating the incest (26), but also the figure of the father, against whom the two sacrileges are perpetrated. The Hebrews, constrained in the frame of their monolatry could not split the figure of the Father, but separated between the son committing the parricide and the one perpetrating the incest. Moses-father is killed, Moses-Yitro substitutes him and as son-god smites the rock, commits sacrilege and is condemned to die on the threshold of the Promised Land, being inhibited from perpetrating the incest. In the same way Achilles desecrates Hektor’s body and dies before Troy’s fall (27). In both cases the death of these son-gods remains foggy and unclear. Achilles’ death is not reported in the main text (the Iliad), but is attributed in later legend (28) to an arrow cast by Paris, the Trojan anti-hero. Hitting Achilles in his famous heel, it is parallel to a casual death, whose only reason is Fatum’s will.  The message of the legend is the same as Moses’. No one is stronger than the Hero, first of the brothers’ horde, and chosen by Destiny to perform the parricide and to suffer the consequences of the sacrilege. Moses and Achilles had to die, but their death remains  in an aloe of god induced mystery.
The “third Moses” who perpetrates the incest, is Joshua. In his saga, as in Troy’s, there is a repetition of the object of the incest in the conquest of Jericho and the fall of all the Promised Land, conquered by storm, parallel to the capture of Helen and the fall of the city. As we shall see below in the Hebrew story a further repetition emerges in the figure of Rahab, the prostitute. In both sagas the fall of the city is not the result of an act of force and military virtue, but the product of a magic, which traces the foggy childish perception  of defloration. Childhood fantasy perceives the act of defloration as the product of a magic knowledge: only the omnipotent father knows the precise formula that allows the possession of the craved mother.
This is the reason why the device, invented by Ulysses in order to deflower the city of Troy becomes a sin of hybris against Poseidon, the other face of the Father-god Zeus. The Greek legend tells us that the destiny of Ulysses is the consequence of his hybris against Poseidon, and the god curses the Hero (29), but the real sense of the sacrilege had been removed, and what remained in its place is a foggy and senseless sin without any inner logic. Every rationalization contains also the nucleus of the real sense of the events, but discloses a face whose exterior features have been changed with the aim of concealing the repressed contents. Under the new aspect the narrative loses its inner logic and becomes unrecognizable. But once decoded, the original sense becomes clear again.
Both in the Hebrew and the Greek saga the horde of the brothers cannot conquer the city by force, but only by an astute expedient. In the case of Troy the incest is perpetrated through a device invented by the most astute of the horde, and in the case of Jericho through a magic formula revealed by God himself. As Troy was hermetically closed before the horde, so “Yeriho was closely shut up because of the children of Yisrael: none went out, and none came in” (Joshua 5:15). The Hebrew myth emphasizes “none went out, and none came in”: the act of defloration will be a privilege of the Israelites. The magic connotation of the penetration is emphasized by its exclusivity. The myth, as in childish fantasy, is ambivalent and confused. The Greek story had told us that Helen had gone after Paris by her own will, but here the myth implies a liberation. Helen, instead of being punished because of her treason, becomes queen of the conquerors. All becomes clear if we ignore the first part of the story, in which she is presented as the wife of Menelaos and queen of Sparta, as an explanation for the reason of Troy’ war. Without this rationalization, that “explains” the reason for the war, the sequence of events becomes clear: the horde of the brothers’ coalition perpetrated the incest in the capture of the city and the queen inside its walls, after having committed the parricide in the figure of Hektor, the strongest of Troy’s heroes. The main text itself, the Iliad, indeed opens the saga telling us of the band encircling the city, and the wrath of Apollo, the initiator god of all Western civilization. All the stories “explaining” the previous deeds, which would have caused the war, are part of later addictions, as rationalizations introduced to disguise the real sense of the saga. The main text does not mention them.
Nevertheless the posterior rationalizations are not void of significance. Telling us that the Greek heroes went to war in order to re-take what was their in the first place, the myth translates the incestuous fantasy in a new reconstruction of reality: the body of the mother belonged to the father of the brother’s horde, but in the reconstruction of reality, induced by desire, it should have been theirs: the Achaean heroes go to war to re-take what belonged to them by right.  In the same way the biblical myth explains that the Promised Land belongs by right to the Hebrew horde, as Helen belonged by right to the Achaean horde. In the Greek myth, because she had been abducted, in the Hebrew myth by divine promise. The Bible tells us of a Covenant between Jahveh and his sons, by whose right they can claim the Promised Land: the Father himself gives her to the sons. In both cases, the former because of a previous abduction, the latter by divine right, the incestuous possession of the craved body is established de iure. The different elaboration of the saga reflects the different psychic structure. The Greek heroes reflected the transfiguration of human reality in a world where the differentiation between Divine and Human had not yet been defined: Greek fantasy was crowded by gods, semi-gods, above-natural heroes and humans, and the roles were often interchangeable between them. The tension was running high in the interaction between them. The perception was of a divergence of interests between the Olympus and Earth, that found expression in all the stories of gods, heroes and men. The Achaean right is not, therefore, because of a Divine Will, which, because of the conflicts between gods and men, would not have represented per se an ultimate right. Greek mythology is permeated by the sensation that divine will, stronger than human, is based on gods’ arrogance more than on justice. Therefore the promise of one of the numerous gods who populated Olympus would have been a poor guarantee of legality. Theirs had to be an uncontestable human right: the woman had been abducted, and therefore was their right to fight to have her back. The means is a blood covenant between the brothers and as such transforms the right in a duty which nobody is allowed to evade (30). In contrast, for the Hebrew, organized in a different psychic-social structure under the compelling Covenant with the Father, the Divine will was the best legal alibi. “Submitting” to the Divine Promise they presented at the same time the best legal document (31). In this way the incest is perpetrated with the blessing of the Father himself, allowing the removal of the aggressiveness related to it.
 
 

Queens and Harlots

The Hebrew myth is much more hermetic than the Greek, and no woman is apparently mentioned as aim of the war, but there is nevertheless an enigmatic feminine figure in the biblical story who condenses the two aspects, the whore and the merciful woman who saves the two explorers  sent by Joshua: Rahav the harlot.
The biblical commentator had a difficult time in trying to make a sense out of this strange figure, which seems completely out of context in the rest of the biblical narrative of the heroic days of the conquest:

And they went, and came  to the house of a harlot named Rahav, and lodged there. And it was told the king of Yeriho, saying, behold, there came men in here tonight of the children of Yisrael to search out the country. And the king of Yeriho sent to Rahav, saying, Bring forth the men that are come to thee, who are entered into thy house: for they are come to search out all the country. And the woman took the two men, and hid them, and said thus, There came men to me, but I know not from where they were: and it came to pass about the time of shutting of the gate, when it was dark, that the men went out; whither the men went I know not: pursue after them quickly; for you shall overtake them (Jos.2:1-5).

After three thousands four hundred  years

A people have vitality as long as they are compelled to repeat their own destiny. If Freud had been living today, he could not believe his own eyes and ears. He understood, or, if  his own theory of inheritability of human experiences is accepted (36), he knew, that the Jewish people owned its own peculiarity to having repeated in the father-figure of Moses the primeval crime common to all mankind (37). If mankind’s unconscious contains the traces of the primeval crime, having repeated it in an historic context made of the Jewish people the deicide par excellence and the most suited scapegoat, since instead of repressing it to the deepest layers of the psyche, they had repeated it. To repress a crime perpetrated in “adulthood” is a much harder task than repressing a drive which had operated in a prehistoric context, and can be much more easily removed.  Other peoples were able to elaborate the crime through religious rites and their “catharsis”. For the  Hebrews, at this point, there remained only the solution of the most intransigent repression. However, as we know, the more the latter is ferocious and the more energetic investment is enlisted to this aim, the stronger is the destiny that, released temporarily the guard or under the influence of a particularly strong stimulus, the defenses collapse, the repressed drive emerges, and the crime is repeated.
As Freud pointed:

The repressed  retains its upward surge, its effort to force its way to consciousness. It achieves its aims under three conditions: 1) if the strength of the anticathexis is diminished by pathological processes….2)  if the instinctual elements attaching to the repressed receive a special reinforcement (of which  the best example is the process of puberty); and (3) if at any time  in recent experience impressions or experiences occur which resemble the repressed so closely that they are able to awaken it. In the last case the recent experience is reinforced by the latent energy of the repressed, and the repressed comes into operation behind the recent experience and with its help (38).

Links:
The Assassination of Rabin and its Consequences for the Israeli Palestinian Conflict
Exodus and Intrauterine Regression. The Genealogy of Jewish Monotheism
The Israelites and the Quails
Freud and Reik. Was Moses an Egyptian?
Hamlet. The Puberty Rite of a Danish Prince and His Companions
Medusa, the Female Genital and the Nazis

Addendum:

After the essay was completed and published, I found a chapter of Josephus' Antiquities where he unconsciously discloses to us how the real events had unfolded in the desert, and he confirms our thesis that Moses did not want the Hebrews to fight the Canaanites, namely, he wanted to keep them in the wilderness. We shall never know what material truth is, namely, the actual unfolding of events, but we can understand what Freud called the historical truth, namely, the psychological interpretation of those unknown events, which is the relevant issue, because it is the interpretation, and not the event itself, which actually dictates the behavior of singles and peoples. From the following citation, we can see that there was a version, which had been removed from the canonic text, but pressed for recognition, and found its expression in the story narrated by Josephus.

1. NOW this life of the Hebrews in the wilderness was so disagreeable and troublesome to them, and they were so uneasy at it, that although God had forbidden them to meddle with the Canaanites, yet could they not be persuaded to be obedient to the words of Moses, and to be quiet; but supposing they should be able to beat their enemies, without his approbation, they accused him, and suspected that he made it his business to keep in a distressed condition, that they might always stand in need of his assistance. Accordingly they resolved to fight with the Canaanites, and said that God gave them his assistance, not out of regard to Moses's intercessions, but because he took care of their entire nation, on account of their forefathers, whose affairs he took under his own conduct; as also, that it was on account of their own virtue that he had formerly procured them their liberty, and would be assisting to them, now they were willing to take pains for it. They also said that they were possessed of abilities sufficient for the conquest of their enemies, although Moses should have a mind to alienate God from them; that, however, it was for their advantage to be their own masters, and not so far to rejoice in their deliverance from the indignities they endured under the Egyptians, as to bear the tyranny of Moses over them, and to suffer themselves to be deluded, and live according to his pleasure, as though God did only foretell what concerns us out of his kindness to him, as if they were not all the posterity of Abraham; that God made him alone the author of all the knowledge we have, and we must still learn it from him; that it would be a piece of prudence to oppose his arrogant pretenses, and to put their confidence in God, and to resolve to take possession of that land which he had promised them, and not to give ear to him, who on this account, and under the pretense of Divine authority, forbade them so to do. Considering, therefore, the distressed state they were in at present, and that in those desert places they were still to expect things would be worse with them, they resolved to fight with the Canaanites, as submitting only to God, their supreme Commander, and not waiting for any assistance from their legislator. (Ant., IV:1)

Iakov Levi:  [email protected]

NOTES

* The Bible quotations are according to The Jerusalem Bible (Koren Publishers Jerusalem LTD, Jerusalem 1998)
 

(1) Theodor Reik, "The Shofar" in Ritual, Psycho - analytic Studies, Farrar & Straus, New York 1946, pp. 309-361

(2) S. Freud, "Moses and Monotheism: Three Essays" (1939), in The Standad Edition of the Complete Pychological Works of Sigmund Freud, London 1964, vol. XXIII, pp. 36-53

(3) Ibidem

(4)   It is very interesting to notice that Freud did not mention the most compelling evidence of all in favor of his thesis that Moses was an Egyptian: Manetho himself tells us explicitly so (Josephus, Against Appio, I: 31-2). Josephus, who reports the version of Manetho, had no motivation to make up such a story, since he was out to confute  Manetho’s thesis: “ It now remains that I debate with Manetho about Moses. Now the Egyptians acknowledge him to have been a wonderful and a divine person; nay, they would willingly lay claim to him themselves, though after a most abusive and incredible manner, and pretend that he was of Heliopolis, and one of the priests of that place, and was ejected out of it among the rest, on account of his leprosy” (Against Appio I:31, Eng.Tras. Willialm Whiston, Christian Classics Ethereal Library[ CCEL] )
The meaning is that the Egyptians themselves held a tradition that Moses had been one of them. To them either did non make any sense to invent such a story, since Moses had “passed to the enemy”, and should have had all the interest in disparaging him, instead of defining him “ a wonderful and a divine person” .
Between the Hebrew version of Josephus, that Moses had been an Hebrew, and the Egyptian one, that Moses had been a priest of Heliopolis, we must obviously chose the second, since this one had no reason of having been invented. The only explanation is that Freud did not know Josephus’ Against Appio. Amazingly also Reik did not know this uncontested evidence, because he strives to prove that Moses had been an Hebrew and not an Egyptian, in contrast to Freud’s opinion (Theodor Reik, “Mystery on the Mountain”, Harper & Brother, New York 1959, pp.11-14). Freud mentions Josephus’ Antiquities (Freud, op.cit. pp.29 and 32) and the same does Reik (op. cit. p.14), but neither refers to Against Appio, in which Josephus mentions Manetho.

(5)   On the murder of the primeval father, the cannibalistic act, and the consequent cohesion  between the horde of the brothers see:  S. Freud, Totem and Taboo (1913) Chap.4 , par.4 -5

(6) S.  Freud, Moses and Monotheism  in op.cit. p. 48

(7)  Ibidem, p.47.

(8) Johannes Lehmann, Moses- der Mann aus Augypten, Hoffmann und Campe, Hamburg 1983, pp. 183-7

(9)   On the bull and the ram as ancient totems of the Hebrews see: T.Reik, "The Shofar", in Ritual,  op.cit. p.253.

(10)  On how the primitive tribes and the savages have a tendency to some sort of primitive monotheism, see the works of Father Wilhelm Schmidt: Der Ursprung der Gottesidee, Munster (1912-1955); High Gods in North America, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1931; The Origin and Growth of Religion, Methunen, London 1931

(11) Reik, Mystery on the Mountain, Harper & Brother, New York 1959, p.53.

(12)   Joseph is called “Hebrew” by the butler of Paraho and by the wife of Potifar. In both cases the connotation is despising.

(13)  In the book of Jonah the Prophet self-defines as an Hebrew (Jonah 1:8), because he is explaining who he is to the Gentile sailors.

(14)  On the ‘Apiru as bandits, shepherds and donkey drivers see: William Foxwell Albright, The Amarna Letters from Palestine,in Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. 2, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1966, pp.8-17.

(15)  As for the sequence of events on the Sinai, see T Reik, Mystery on the Mountain, op.cit.

(16)  William F. Albright, The Biblical Period from Abraham to Ezra,Anchor, New York 1963, p.27

(17)  T.Reik, "The Shofar", in op.cit. pp.344-350.

(18)  Speaking of the erotic drive to watch Freud says  “The eyes perceive not only alterations in the external world which are important for the preservation of life, but also characteristics of objects which lead to their being chosen as objects of love – their charms” (Freud, "The Psycho-analitic view of Psychogenic Disturbance of Vision", (1910), in op.cit.,vol.XI, p.216)

(19)  Sefer Ha'Aggadah, Devir, Tel Aviv 1948, p.76.,(in Heb.)Free translation of Iakov Levi
According to the perception, as is reflected in the tradition of the Gospels, Jesus lives surrounded by women, but dies a virgin. The Christian myth is a repetition the same leit-motive of parricide and death, without conceding the possibility of incest. It is enlightening the difference between these “archaic” heroes, who commit parricide but not incest, and those more “recent”, who are part of the Apollonian world, like Oedipus, who acts out both.
Even if chronologically the Christian myth is more recent than the Apollonian  (Oedipus) , is nevertheless part of the mental modus of the more archaic rites, since it represents an evolutional regression vis a vis Olympic myths. Christ’s death and Resurrection reconnect, through an evolutional regression, to Orphic archaic mythology, the death and Resurrection of Dionysus. Therefore The Christian myth is part of a psychic modus, which had been overtaken since the times of  Sophocles’ tragedy. shall return on this point below.

(20) William Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, Shoken, New York 1972, pp.171-9

(21) S.Freud, “Symbolism in Dreams”, 1916, in op.cit, Vol.XV, p.154.See also: Karl Abraham, "Dreams and Myths": A Study in Folk-Psychology,1909, in Clinical Papers and Essays on Psycho-Analysis, Basic Books Inc. Publishers, New York 1955, (Translated by Hilda Abraham and D.R.Ellison)Vol. II, p.203: “The process of erection has obviously stimulated fantasy activity to an extraordinary degree. The turning of the road (phallus) into the serpent stands for the return of the erect penis to the flaccid state”.
Theodor Reik, Pagan Rites in Judaism, Farrar, Straus & Co, New York 1964, pp.84-5) describes how the women of primitive tribes directly associate between the first menstrual occurrence and the snakes. Reik sustains that that points to the belief that the snake represents an erected penis, causing the flood of blood of defloration, which is equated to the first menstrual blood.
We have before us some confusion: Freud and Abraham consider the snake the symbol of male penis in a flaccid status, while Reik interprets it as the symbol of penis erection. The solution, however, is simple: the snake cannot be the symbol of male penis, as the rod, because does not represents something hard and erected. The problem may be solved if we interpret the snake a the symbol of the female penis, i.e. the clitoris, which even while is erected, remains nevertheless somehow flaccid and more reminiscent of a snake. In this key , the symbolism of Moses’ rod, which transforms into a serpent becomes clear, since, as the rod smites the water, which is the female symbol par excellence, so it becomes serpent, which is also the symbol of female erotism. Freud, who loved so much Rome, for sure had occasion to visit the Sistine Chapel and Michelangelo’s representation of the serpent wrapped around the tree of the forbitten fruit. This serpent is represented as a female body.
Apparently, the founding fathers of psychoanalysis fell victims to their own defenses. Interpreting the symbol of the serpent as that of the clitoris straighten all the difficulties, which arise instead  otherwise. Moreover, it seems that all the erotic acrobatic exercises of women with snakes, represent female masturbation. As we learn from psychoanalysis, the major defenses are enacted exactly with the aim of denying the explicit significance of the representation. Freud, Abraham and Reik, these giants of psychoanalytic penetration, stumbled in their own male narcissism and paradoxically were not able to recognize the obvious, which they had before their own eyes.

(22) Freud, ibidem, p.160

(23) We adopt Wellhausen’ definition (Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena zur Gesschichte Israels, Berlin 1899, pp.1-13), which, instead of separating the Pentateuch from the rest of the Bible, adds to it also the Book of Joshua and calls the first six books “Exateuch”. According to W. this book is part of the same mental context of the first five books of the Bible, as they do not represent an historical narrative.

(24)  Arrogance, lack of respect versus the gods.

(25)  K. Kerenyi, Die Mythologie der Griechen, Zurich 1951, pp.207-8.

(26) The split between  the figure of the Hero committing patricide and the one perpetrating the incest runs as a thread in all Western culture. For instance in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Brutus, representing the leader of the son’s band, kills the Father and invites the horde to immerge their hands into the blood of Caesar’s cadaver, repeating in this way the main feature of the totemic meal. Brutus, “the noblest of the Romans”, will die out of a decision taken only by himself, repeating the pattern of Moses and Achilles, who cannot be overcome by any other hero, being themselves the best of the horde. Mark Antony will perpetrate the incest in the figure of Cleopatra.

(27)  “And fate has destined thee, Achilles, peer of gods, to die beneath the wall of Troy's Proud lords, fighting for fair haired Helen's sake”. (Aeschines, Speeches: speech 1, section 149 [Against Timarchus] ).

(28)  Apollodorus, Library and Epitome (ed. Sir James George Frazer): book E, chapter 5, section 1

(29)  It is very enlightening to compare Poseidon’s curse with that of Reuben by Jacob, who is cursed by his father for having laid with Jacob’s concubine: “[…] unstable as water, thou shalt not excel; because you  wentest up to thy father bed; then thou didst defile it: he went up to my couch” (Gen. 49:4)

(30)  Achilles had tempted to evade the war disguising as a woman (Apollodorus 3.13.8), and Ulysses pretending to be mad (Apollodorus E.3.7). But both had been exposed and compelled to join the war. As Freud explained in Totem and Taboo (par.5), speaking of the importance of all the members of the clan sharing the killing of the father and the totemic meal, also the sense of the legends associated to Troy’s war is that none of the sons’horde can be absent from parricide and incest.

(31) Rashi, the most important biblical commentator, who lived in France in the 11th century A.D.,  in his comment to the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, explains that the reason why the Torah opens with the Creation and not with the first precept, is to justify legally the conquest of the Land of Israel by the Hebrew tribes and the slaughter of her inhabitants. The justification is that the Lord has created all the world, he is its Master and therefore is entitled to give the Land to his chosen people, at his will.

(32)  Karl Abraham, "Two Contributions on the Study of Symbols", (1923), in op.cit, Vol II, p. 84;   S.Freud, "Dostoevsky and Parricide", (1928), in op.cit., Vol. XXI, p.193.

(33)  In many paintings the two women are represented together at the foot of the Cross, as if they had equal importance. The Gospels tell us how after the Resurrection the dominant figure is that of Mary Magdalene and no more that of the Virgin (Matt.,28:1;  Mark,  16:9; Luke, 24:10;  John,  20:1-18)

(34)  The Bible tells us that Josef  was punished  by exile,in connection with a sin of hybris” […] Behold, I have again dreamed a dream; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars bowed down to me. And he told it his father, and to his brothers: and his father rebuked him, and said to him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brothers indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?”  (Gen. 37:9-10). According to Rabbinical tradition the exile to Egypt and and the time in prison are a lesson for Joseph’ arrogance. Ulysses and Joseph are at last pardoned and are allowed to reunite to their beloved. The ancients were ready to pardon arrogance and incest: Ruben, Joseph and Ulysses are not punished by death, and there are no traces in the text of a punishment for Joshua.  Parricide is, on the contrary, a sacrilege whose only consequence is death.

(35)  T. Reik, Myth and Guilt, G.Braziller, New York 1957,pp.161-7

(36)  On the archaic heritage see: Freud, "Moses and Monotheism", in op. cit, pp.94-98

(37) &bbsp;Ibidem, pp. 84-6

(38)  Ibidem, p.95

(39)  The denial is not as for the crime itself but as for its real substance. As the Bible tells us that there were in the desert followers of Moses, truthful to his legacy, so today part of the public in Israel has elevated  Rabin to a concept, independently of a real objective evaluation of the person, whose stature, whatever his qualities might have been, was in our opinion very far from that of a cultural giant, as he is depicted today.
 
 

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