July 20, 2002
For
it is the lot of every myth gradually to creep into the crevice of an
assumed historical reality and to become analyzed
as a unique fact in
answer to the historical demands of some later
time or other
(F.Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy,
10)
To Freud, Moses' problem had been "a
ghost not laid" (1) which "It has pursued me through my whole life"(2).
After many hesitations, he decided to render public his three essays Moses
and Monotheism. A few months afterwards he died. We can say that
his declaration: "Moses was an Egyptian" is to be considered his
legacy, what a dying man would leave as his ultimate truth.
Theodor Reik, younger than his master by more than thirty years, had
been the most faithful of Freud' disciples. After having never
questioned Freud's insight, as an old man and after a long and fruitful
life dedicated to psychoanalytical truth, he wrote Mystery on the
Mountain, (Harper and Brothers, New York 1959) where he
energetically confutes his master's truth. To him, Moses was a Hebrew.
He lived another ten years, but this was his last important book. His
last legacy has been the opposite of the one of his highly cherished
teacher.
Was it the already well known rebellion of son against father,
like Jung's statement at the height of the debate with Freud, when he
quoted from Nietzsche' Zaratustra: "One repays a teacher badly if one
always remains nothing but a pupil"?
We don't think so. Reik was too a trained and sophisticated analyst to
slip on such a pitfall.
In the Introduction of his book he writes the following opening
salvo:
I am compelled to disagree with my great master on two counts: 1) I am not persuaded that Moses was an Egyptian; he seems to me surely to have been a Hebrew. 2) To my mind, it seems at least questionable to ascribe the origins of historic monotheism to the Egyptians.The first part of the statement is an anticipation of what he will try to prove in the book, and it is perfectly legitimate. The second part, however, "I continue to be loyal" and " I remain loyal", and between them "Like him" is too overdone to be casual. He could well dissent from Freud on this matter and still not be suspect of disloyalty. It seems that he is stating his loyalty where no one had any reason of questioning it.
Parting company at this point with Freud, with whom I was closely associated for thirty years, I continue to be loyal to him in aspiring to a common way of understanding man's nature and culture. Like him, I have sought to unravel the meanings and varieties of religious experience and, specifically, to penetrate the non manifest meanings of developed forms. Thus, in the present connection, I venture into the labyrinth of the early history of the Hebrews looking for clues to the fascination which the Decalogue and the Book of the Covenant have exerted over the minds of men in the West. Finally, I remain loyal to Freud in the conviction that psychoanalytic research into neglected corners of historic tradition is the royal road to the uncovering of forgotten meanings and tangled emotions in the life of culture (p. XII).
In the forty years since my fateful conversation with Freud, my thoughts have more than once returned to my old undertaking. Thinking of it was always accompanied by a kind of malaise, or uneasy conscience, as though I had not kept a promise to Freud. Yet I knew I had never explicitly promised Freud or anyone else, even myself, to write a book on the Sinai - Exodus events. The commitment I had made was an unspoken or silent one. When after an interim of more than four decades, I threw myself anew into the study of the materials now grown to gigantic dimensions thanks to the new discoveries of archaeology, it was as though I had come home again. (pp. IX - X).Needless to say that no archaeology discovery can prove nor disprove that Moses was an Egyptian, nor that the Revelation on the Mountain was an initiation rite, nor whether the Israelites had been there. The Introduction, which is seven pages long of odd statements on loyalty and commitments to truth, has in it something which is not convincing. The impression is that Theodor Reik is trying to hide a totally different kind of motivations.
There can be no doubt that it was a lack of moral courage that prevented me from following that early concept to the end. Freud used to say to us, his Viennese students, that many people have psychological talents which might enable them to become good psychoanalysts, but what always proves decisive in the choice of one's profession is character. Within this domain of character, it is moral courage which plays the paramount part. Moral courage gives us power to face unpleasant truths within ourselves and in others, secures us the strength to persevere in ideas which at first appear absurd or repulsive, outrageous or fantastic. In every research it is moral courage which overcomes what Freud once called "Gedankenschreck" fear of adopting and investigating an idea which initially strikes one as bizarre or dangerous. To go to end with one's ideas against one's inner resistances amounts to what we call in war "bravery in the face of the enemy"It looks more as a homily than an introduction to a scientific essay. Furthermore, when someone states that "There can be no doubt", it means that a doubt must indeed be cast. We don't think that Theodor Reik had lacked of moral courage. After Freud's Three Essays on the Sexual Theory, Totem and Taboo, Moses and Monotheism, after that he himself had written Pagan Rites in Judaism, The Shofar,Ritual and all the essays in which he describes Jewish rites as archaic and similar to those of primitive tribes, suddenly he describes himself as lacking of moral strength only because he had delayed a book that describes the Revelation on the Sinai as a puberty rite. Moreover, he himself, in a supplement to Shofar, "Moses of Michelangelo and the Events on the Sinai" (in Ritual, Farrar &Strauss, New York 1946), had already described the Golden Calf sin as a Totemic rite. What was new, after all, in his Mystery on the Mountain ? Only the statement that Moses was a Hebrew and not Egyptian, but this had been already implied in the afore mentioned work.
Freud opens the First Essay as follows:
To deprive a people of the man whom they take pride in as the greatest of their sons is not a thing to be gladly or carelessly undertaken, least of all by someone who is himself one of tem. But we cannot allow any such reflection to induce us to put the truth aside in favor of what are supposed to be national interests; and, moreover, the clarification of a set of facts may be expected to bring us a gain in knowledge.Freud feels that trying to prove that Moses was an Egyptian is equivalent to deprive the Jewish people from their greatest son, and this is not a thing "to be gladly or carelessly undertaken".
The hero was a man who by himself had slain the father - the father who still appeared in the myth as a totemic monster [...] For we often find in them that the hero who has to carry out some difficult task (usually the youngest son, and not infrequently one who has represented himself to the father-substitute as being stupid, that is to say, harmless) (Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) Chap. XII (B))Reik was indeed the youngest son of the horde, and according to his own words, exposing the fact that Moses was a Hebrew and not an Egyptian, in defiance to Freud's own previous "bravery", was proving his own "bravery in the face of the enemy". Like the archaic hero, he captures his master's phallic symbol (bravery - eagerness for truth) in order to use it against him.
Freud felt that expositing his intuition that Moses had been an
Egyptian was equivalent to robbing the Jewish people of their hero, and
this is the perception that he transmitted to Reik. However, we don't
share this feeling. There is a Hebrew say which goes as follows "A
prophet is not without honor except in his own country and his own
house" (Cfr. also Matt. 13:57), meaning that a man, who is well
known by his fellow countrymen and has grown up in their surrounding,
is not fit to be a prophet, because he will not be respected and taken
seriously. Indeed, it was customary that the Prophets who were born in
Judah were sent in mission to the kingdom of Israel, and the other way
around.
The one who reads Freud's Three Essays does not have the
impression that he deprived the Jewish people of their hero, on the
contrary, he added to the apology of the Great Man.
Furthermore, we shall prove in the following pages that he had in
his arsenal much more evidence in order to prove that Moses was an
Egyptian, than that which he actually used. He used only evidence that
is circumstantial, that could be interpreted in more than one way, and
that could easily be confuted. In other words, he unconsciously but
intentionally kept his work as "ein historisher Roman" (see note
1, letter to Jones (n. 645), p.751) . The impression is that he was not
sure that he wanted to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Moses
was an Egyptian. He preferred to leave the question in the foggy
terrain between romance and history. The reason is his emotional
ambivalence towards his Jewish roots and the heroes of his people (3).
It seems that the same was true of Theodor Reik.
Like in the symptoms of an obsessive neurosis, the energies of the Id,
demanding instinct satisfaction, are countered by an investment of
energies in the opposite direction, demanding inhibition, and in the
meantime the soul is torn apart by the conflict between these
antithetical forces, so is to be understood the apparent conflict
between Freud's thesis and Reik's anti - thesis.
Freud's: "Moses was an Egyptian" represented the drive, the doing.
Reik's: "Moses was a Hebrew" represented the counter - drive, the undoing.
The doing was the rebellious instinct, and the undoing was the Ego, the
tradition of the Fathers, the inhibiting instance.
As a Jew and a Viennese of the same milieu of his teacher, and
torn apart by the same affective ambivalence, Reik took on himself this
role, in respect and as a deferred obedience to his master, who
commanded him to undo his own acts.
In The Puberty Rites of Savages, Reik himself has shown how the
fathers identify their sons with their own fathers. Freud had been, at
his own turn, the son who had committed a sacrilege against his fathers
generation, and now, Reik, his own son, (Freud used to say to us,
his Viennese students = his children) identifies with his
"grand-fathers", Freud's fathers, and undoes his Master's
sinful acts, in the name of his grand-fathers.
This, in our opinion, is the only way to decode the strange and
overdone assertions of Reik in the Introduction of his book.
Reik's arguments
Speaking of the Exodus, Reik
states: "There is no contemporary evidence or proof of that migration,
no testimony except the Old Testament. It was a world-shaking event of
which the established world recorded no remembrance" (p.7).
Not he nor Freud ever mentioned the most compelling evidence of all,
that not only there had been an Exodus, but also that it was led by
Moses and that he was an Egyptian.
Both ( Freud, Second Essay, 4; Reik, p.14) quoted Josephus' Antiquities
(II:10), where the Jewish Roman writer tells us that Moses had
reached a high status at the Pharaoh court, and that he had lead a
successful campaign in Ethiopia.
This, of course, is not compelling evidence. Indeed Josephus, telling
us that Moses had lead a military campaign to that country, hinted also
that he was an Egyptian, but he could have invented this story in order
to make an apology of him.
However, Josephus in Against Appio tells us something
more:
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; (Contra Appionem I:31)In the same chapter, Josephus also tells us many details from Manetho's book on this "priest of Heliopolis" called Osarsiph (Moses and Osarsiph and Osiris are the same word), who lead the Hebrew lepers out of Egypt. The importance of Against Appio is that Josephus' aim is to confute Manetho's stance that Moses had been an Egyptian. Josephus, like Reik, sustained that Moses had been an Hebrew. So, why to invent a story only to confute it? It does not make any sense.
As
for Reik statement that "It was a world-shaking event of which the
established world recorded no remembrance", it is doubtful that at that
time it had been considered a world - shaking event. After Akhenaton
revolution and counter- revolution, at the tempestuous juncture between
the XVIII and the XIX dynasties, the Egyptians probably had other
things in their mind. As Reik himself writes, it could have been an
Exodus of a few thousands, at most. Moreover, if, according to Freud's
exposition, the event was indeed in the context of Akhnaton religious
revolution, all the records concerning the Amarna period were destroyed
after the restablishment of the old order. Even if there had been such
documents there is a good explanation why they have not been found.
However, some traces began to emerge much later through Manetho's
writing, as we know from Josephus' Against Appio, in which he
mentions an exodus of "lepers". Therefore, it seems that some
remembrance was recorded, and Reik's statement is not completely true.
Reik ignored Josephus' Against Appio, in the context of his
endeavor to invalid Freud's theory. Reik
continues:
Freud's theory of Moses' allegiance to Ikhnaton's belief would find a confirmation if newer excavations would unambiguously point to the possibility that a group of Ikhnaton's followers lived at the time of Moses around Mount Sinai where they rigidly and intolerantly continued the cult of Aton (pp.12 -13).Traces of a cult which is iconoclastic and monotheistic can hardly be found. In archaeologic excavations we find traces only of building and temples, and not of tents and huts. No matter if we accept Freud's theory or not, for sure the Hebrews lived in the desert in nomadic conditions.
The great empires of the Egyptians, of the Greeks and Romans, favored the universality of one god to whom they were easily merged. Yahweh was, at the times of Moses, the God of Israel and they were His people as Marduk was the God of the Babylonians. The religion of the early Israelite was henotheism, not monotheism . The famous credo, "Hear. O Israel, the Lord, our God is one God" originates in a later phase (p.13),Agreed. This is exactly Freud's point. The Israelites abandoned Aton's religion to embrace the Midianites' cult of Jahveh, which could also have been their god before they migrated to Egypt, and was henotheist and not monotheist. In trying to invalid Freud's theory, Theodor Reik confirms it more and more.
The significance of Moses liberating deed and religious innovation cannot be in the foundation of monotheism as Freud conceived it. The idea to which Schonberg gave an artistic shape, namely, the concept of an invisible god, of an imageless divinity, comes certainly nearer to the character of Moses' religious revolution (p.13).Reik enlists Schonberg, as in the previous pages he had enlisted Martin Buber, who, like the many more historians, artists, and poets mentioned in the book, could only project into the Moses' conundrum their own mental and social habitat. For sure, they could not contribute anything to the substance of the problem. Later overlays, metaphorical, allegorical and philosophical explanations are only rationalizations. Reik knew that. This is the only book of his where he indulges in so many diversions, odd and irrelevant stories, like a magician who makes many gestures, in order to divert the attention of the public from what he is really doing in the meantime.
Freud's hypotheses have met vigorous contradiction...A few instances of the opinions will suffice: The outstanding archaeologist, William Foxwell Albright, thinks that Freud's book is "totally devoid of serious historical method".Albright was an outstanding archaeologist. However, not only he had no understanding of psychoanalysis and its methods, but he also was a strong believer that all what the Bible says is absolute revealed truth, and it was all a preparation towards the coming of Jesus. He submitted his archaeological findings to his religious beliefs ( See: Burke O. Long, Planting and Reaping Albright, The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pennsylvania 1997).
Then, he
directly attacks Freud's assumption that, even if Moses was,
indeed, an Egyptian name, and so the names of many of Levi's tribe,
they
were Egyptians. To this purpose, he makes a long detour into German
Jews situation, where many of them had German names, even if they were
Jewish: of course, Sigmund himself.
Pages 15-16 are very enlightening. He is longing for his own and
his Master's Viennese past. He clings to the German culture, which had
betrayed them, just as Egyptian culture had betrayed the Israelites. He
makes a projection of his sentiments, as a Viennese Jew, into the
Hebrews of the 14th century B.C.: The Jews felt like Germans, they
loved German culture, therefore they gave German names to their
children.
It is like saying: we, the Jews, have been betrayed by our Gentile
neighbors, like the ancient Hebrews had been betrayed by the Egyptians.
Henceforth, we should not accept an Egyptian god (Moses), as we did not
accept the Christian god.
The analogy between German and Austrian Jewry, and the situation
of the Hebrews in the Egypt of the 14th century, is unacceptable.
Furthermore, why all the Egyptian names were concentrated in the tribe
of Levi? No other Israelite had an Egyptian name.
In ancient times it did not work that way. When archaeologists find a
name, this is the only way we have to decide if we are dealing
with an Indo-European, or a Semite, or an Egyptian. The name is the
race. A Hebrew would never have given to his child an Egyptian name. As
an Egyptian would never have given to his children a Hourian, a
Hittite, or a Semitic name.
After the conquest of the Semitic East by Alexander the Great, the
situation changed. That was the first time that a truly cosmopolitan
and ecumenic culture was created, and at that time the desire of
belonging to an ecumenical habitat was born.
Now, for the sake of truth and intellectual integrity, I must
admit that there is a weak point in my counter argument. Esther and
Mordechay, the Jewish heroes of the Purim saga, had indeed
Babylonian names. Esther stays for Astarte, the Mesopotamian and
Syro-Canaanite goddess of fertility and love, and Mordechai stays for
Marduk, the Babylonian god. Apparently, even before the Hellenistic
period there had been important assimilated Jews with names from their
exile cultural habitat.
I have no good explanation. It seems to me that Esther and Mordechay
were not real persons, but Imagines that Persian Jews borrowed
from their Gentile milieu.
Furthermore, here we are in 5th century Persia B.C., almost one
thousands years after the Exodus events. The story is much later and
was already influenced by Greek literature. We just don't know. For
sure we cannot make an analogy with the cultural habitat of
18th Dynasty Egypt. For sure, the analogy with Nazi Germany cannot be
accepted.
At the end of the second millennium, the name was the race and
the religion.
Gideon, the Judge, was named also Ieruba'al (the Baal is
sacred) (Judges, 8:35). Saul' son was called Ishba'al (Man
of Baal), name that the post - Exile redactor edited in Ishboshet
(Man of Shame). However, the Israelites, at that time, were really
worshipping the Baal. That was their religion. Therefore those were
Hebrew names.
Then,
Reik attacks the second of Freud' assumption: the story of Moses' birth
was the typical myth of the Birth of the Hero, with an inversion
(pp.16-17). Freud sustained that if the typical myth of
a hero, born from a royal family, exposed, and then brought up in a
humble family, is inverted, it means that the real story is inverted
too, and Moses was really born in a royal family, and then associated
with a humble people. As we have seen, Freud, in the first page of his first
of the Three Essays, had said that proving that Moses was an
Egyptian was equivalent to taking a hero from his people. We can
therefore understand his hesitation in publishing the First Essay, but
after having already published it and also the Second, why the
hesitation in publishing the Third Essay ? specially
remarkable period...oppressive apprehension...German people...relapse
into almost prehistoric barbarism...Catholic country...protection of
that Church, ...The new enemy...is more dangerous than the old one...I
choose to write about Moses and the origin of monotheist religion...not
give this work to the public (Prefatory Note I). The associative chain tells us
all. Hitler, at
difference with Mussolini, Stalin and other European kings, was not a
father figure- but a son- figure, the Phallic Leader, the first among
peers, the youngest son who had been delegated by the horde to commit
the murder and to subvert every value and ethic. The Nazis swore
fidelity to the Fuhrer and his blood, not to some abstract concept of
State and Country. The elated horde, tearing apart and devouring their
father, as described by Freud in Totem and Taboo, did it to the
Jews, as the ones who represented the religion of the Father, the
Super-Ego, and the inhibiting instance. These are the issues that Freud
embraces in the Third Essay of Moses and Monotheism:
the instinct renunciation of the Jewish people under the yoke of the
ethical demands of Moses, who was interpreted by Freud as vicar of the
paternal imago. This
is the substance of the unconscious discourse between Reik and Freud. In the first chapters of Reik's book, from the Introduction
to the strange analogy between 14th century B.C. Egypt and Nazi
Germany, pivotal to his invalidation of his Master's virility
(Knowledge), those contrasting sentiments emerge in an unmistakable
way: Admiration, devotion, identification, obedience, rebellion,
mockery, anger and rage. Was Moses an Egyptian, after all? As we have seen Freud, in order to
prove that Moses was an Egyptian, the only evidence that he adduces is
the one of the name, the inverted myth of the Birth of the Hero, and
the circumcision, which, according to Herodotus, the "Syrians of
Palestine", meaning the Jews, had received from the Egyptians (Hist.,
II:104). It is all good evidence but still circumstantial. He did not
mention the best evidence from Josephus' Against Appio.
There is another segment
of Against Appio that he did not mention, in which Josephus
tries to confute another story of Manetho, that it is the story of the
iconoclast Osarsiph. Another segment that Reik ignored, because if he
had mentioned it, all his theory of the iconoclastic message of a Moses
who allegedly was a Hebrew, would have been invalidated. Josephus
writes: As for
the
Exodus, Josephus insists in denying that it was led by an Egyptian:
And
another line which is interesting and that we shall try to decode: "for
Manetho, he describes those polluted persons as sent first to work in
the quarries, and says that the city Avaris was given them for their
habitation" (I:27). Avaris is Zo'an. In the Book of Numbers
(13:22) is written : "Now Hevron was built seven years before Zo'an in
Mizrayim". Rashi says, in a comment to this verse: "since Zo'an is a
very ancient city the verse intended to say that Hevron is even mor
ancient (and therefore respectable). Rashi knew that for the Torah to
mention an Egyptian city is very unusual, and therefore it must contain
some hidden significance. This verse is stuck in the middle with no
need nor apparent significance. Therefore he felt the need to make some
explanation because he was bothered by an associative chain whose sense
he did not understand. Rashi was a very sophisticated man who used
Freud's free associations to explain a text, eight hundred years before
Freud discovered the methodology. The associative chain of Josephus is:
Hebrews -Avaris and the association of the Torah is: Avaris -
built. Associating between the two, we might infer that Manetho's
story,
which Josephus so desperately tries to confute, was right, after all.
As for circumcision, Freud sustains that this is a
segment of
Egyptian morality that Moses wanted to transfer to the Hebrews.
However, this is not the only moral precept from the customs of Egypt
which he bestowed on them. And then, there is custom, which is
not
written in any law, and as such is the more genuine, because it
apparently has been trasmitted philogenetically from
father to son:
Epilogue To conclude, we agree with Reik that
the
events on the Sacred Mountain are the description of a puberty rite, as
it was performed by Hebrew and Midianite tribes, and had nothing to do
with Egypt. However, since the Jewish Torah is in many
parts an
Egyptian Akhnatonist code of laws, we must also assume that those rites
on the Mountain remained an archaic mnemonic trace which did not
influence very much the developement of Judaism after the First Exile.
What emerged after the Exile and took possess of Jewish soul is an
Egyptian legacy. The main parts of the Decalogue too are part of that
legacy. Therefore, only after the Exile, the events on the Sacred
Mountain were fused, a posteriori, with the deliverance of the
Law, and the Egyptian Moses who delivered it was condensed with the
Midianite priest (or other Father - images of the clans) who directed
those puberty rites.
This is a difficult point to Reik. In order to straight the point, Reik
goes again to the analogy of his own recent past as an Austrian Jew,
who had suffered from Nazi persecutions.
There is another possibility which to my knowledge has
not previously been discussed, namely that the "legend" enshrines some
reality or historic truth. This sounds strange [indeed it is], but
numerous and reliable records show that many Jewish mothers in Poland,
Austria, and Holland who were afraid that their babies would be killed
by the Nazis left their children in the care of gentile women who
brought them up
And he brings similar examples of mothers who abandoned their
babies, in order to defend them from the Nazis. However, the Egyptians
were not Nazis. Only the Nazis were Nazis.
In
our times horror legends became reality, but in ancient times
myths were only myths. The story of a king who gives orders to kill all
the new-born babies of a people is a myth. If a later reality makes it
to seem a real thing, it is because the later reality went astray.
There is no record in Egyptian archives that such an order could have
been contemplated, and, in my opinion, even the Jews never really
believed that story, because when Paraoh calls to the Hebrew midwives
there are only two, and mentioned by name (Ex.1:15).
Ahmed Osman has analyzed the Egyptian background of the 18th
Egyptian Dynasty, and has relieved from the repression many truths,
which had been buried for thousands of years under the Egyptian sand.
He is not universally quoted because the academic community is still in
shock. Even if there are some weak links in his exposition, his work
cannot be ignored.
He proved, in my opinion satisfactorily, that the story of the
attempted genocide could not have been (A.Osman, op.cit., pp.82
- 92).
In his opinion, the Biblical myth is the mnemonic trace of the
attempt that had been made at the Egyptian court to kill Akhnaton
himself, when he was still an infant, on the grounds of internal
intrigues for the succession to the throne. It sounds much more real
than Reik's story, and it also explains why only two midewives are
mentioned by the Biblical text.
Two midewives fits the court, not an entire people.
What we find interesting, is that, for the second time, Reik
calls into cause his own past as a Viennese Jew, that he perceives as
being the same as Freud's. It is the unconscious discourse with Freud
which interests us. The associative chain leading again and again to
Freud - Reik's oath - Moses - Viennese students - German Jews.
Particularly Freud - Moses - Holocaust - Reik's oath - "bravery in the
face of the enemy".
In pp. 26-7, Reik returns again on the Egypt - Nazi Germany
analogy, this time as evidence that the Hebrew tribes which came out of
Egypt were like the German Jews who were forced to leave Germany and,
even more doubtful, that the Hebrew tribes, still living in Canaan,
were like the American and British Jews that helped them settling in
the new countries:
But
what was the religion and the civilization of those
tribes in Egypt? We can imagine that a part of them became assimilated
to Egypt civilization. No doubt Moses was a very educated man and his
loyal Levites had perhaps learned much from Egyptian teachers. It is
likely that many Hebrews, disappointed and deeply hurt by the change of
destiny [narcissistic injury inflicted on German Jews], turned away
from the civilization of the Nile. Yet they could not eradicate in
themselves the traces of the culture pattern into which they had been
born and bred. I have known German and Austrian refugees from Hitler'
Nazi regime who developed a passionate hatred against German
civilization and even refused to speak German. Yet they could not
disavow or obliterate the deep imprint their German education had made
upon their development (p26)...What was the attitude of the Canaanite
Hebrews toward their kin coming from outside? Again the comparison with
the stuation at the outbreak of the Nazi catastrophe occurs to us. The
Hebrew tribes, settled in Canaan, had certainly many relatives amongst
the groups on the Nile delta...(p.27).
Then,
Reik continues in an emotional way to tell the story of the ancient
Hebrews as if they were refugees from Nazi Germany. Every student of
the culture of the ancient Near East can only smile at these
comparisons.
However, to us it is very important for the task of decoding Reik's
unconscious aims.
In Prefatory Note I (Vienna, before March 1938) he says that he was
hesitating because he felt that the Jews and psychoanalysis were in
danger, and the Catholic Church was still the only defense against
Nazism.
Therefore, he did not want to irritate the Church publishing a book,
which invalidates the Sacred Scriptures. However, he had already
published the
First and the Second Essays in Imago in 1937, in which he
declares that Moses was an Egyptian. He had already irritated the
Catholic Church. What possibly could the Third Essay change? True, At
the end of the third essay, Freud mentions the Christ and the link with
the primal murder. However, he could skip this paragraph, which is not
essential, and, secondly, there is nothing in it that had not already
been said in Totem and Taboo (IV:5) more then twenty years
before, and that had indeed enraged Father Wilhelm Schmidt, a
valent anthropologist and the director of the Papal Ethnologist Museum
at the Lateran in Rome (see: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud's
Moses, Yale University Press, New Haven and London 1991, pp. 27-8).
In the Prefatory Note II (London, June 1938), Freud says that since the
Nazis had already invaded Austria, and the Church had proved being a
"broken reed", there was no more reason for delaying the publication of
the Third Essay.
Freud mentions the Nazis as an excuse, first for not publishing
his work on Moses' Egyptianity, and then as a reason for publishing it
(twice). Reik brings again the Nazis (twice) as a weapon against his
Master's theory: 1) Moses had an Egyptian name like Sigmund had a
German name. The Jews had German names because they loved Germany like
the Hebrews loved Egypt. Both have been betrayed. 2) The Hebrew Moses
has been really exposed, because of Egyptian cruelty, like Jewish
babies had to be exposed during the Holocaust, because of German
cruelty.
Reik's
arguments are part of a very complex unconscious discourse with Freud,
and have nothing to do with the scientific endeavor of discovering
whether Moses was an Egyptian. Freud's two Prefatory Notes seem to
us a rationalization, too. However, as every rationalization, also
contains associations which hint at the truth. We are living in a specially remarkable period...We
feel it as a relief from an oppressive apprehension when we see in the
case of the German people that a relapse into almost prehistoric
barbarism can occur as well without being attached to any progressive
idea...We are living here in a Catholic country under the protection of
that Church, uncertain how long that protection will hold out...The new
enemy...is more dangerous than the old one...I choose to write about
Moses and the origin of monotheist religion...So I shall not give this
work to the public (Prefatory Note I)
Prefatory Note II is the undoing of the first, and a
rationalization for the acting out of the aggressive erotic drive:
There are no external obstacle remaining...the way of
Christ [the young hero who must act out the erotic aggressive drive,
removing the inhibition]...future of Israel...internal difficulties
[inhibiting instance]...could alter nothing [will not prevent me from
the doing, the acting out of the drive]...I wrote my book about
Totem and Taboo, and it has only grown firmer since
[heterosexual libido energies are accumulating more and more and now is
the time for incest and patricide]...To my critical sense this book,
which takes its starts from the man Moses, appears like a dancer
balancing on the tip of one toe. If I could not find support in an
analytic interpretation of the exposure myth and could not pass from
there to Sellin's suspicion about the end of Moses, the whole thing
would have had to remain unwritten. In any case, let us now take the
plunge.
Meaning, without the end of Moses (his murder) there would be no
book: I am writing the all thing in order to commit the patricide (the
end). To take the plunge is synonymous of birth. The story of Moses
indeeds begins with a birth. Furthermore, Freud associates between the
erotic drive to be born and the genital erotic drive of committing
incest and patricide (discovering the truth).
He wrote Totem and Taboo...and now he is taking the plunge. Who
is the "dancer balancing on the tip of one toe", if not he himself,
dancing between conflicting drives and counter - drives?
If we reconnect to what we have said at the beginning on the hero,
"bravery before the enemy", truth as symbol of the maternal body, the
hero who acts out truth as an incestuous act, the doing of
Freud's drive (which must be undone by Reik, the Second
Prefatory Note is quite clear. It is explaining that after having
inhibited himself (Prefatory Note I), now he is casting aside "external
obstacle remaining" = the Super-Ego.
However, also Freud's ambivalence towards his Moses was a multilevel
internal conflict. It was not only his need of acting out eterosexual
energies, which were accumulating, and that he was going to discharge
exposing Truth. In writing his Three Essays he was also reconnecting to
his own roots (see note 3). In Totem and Taboo, he described
how, through the parricide, also an act of identification with the
assassinate father is acted out in the same condensation.
It seems that different conflicting needs were pressuring Freud into
coming out into the open with his Moses. Exposing Truth, acting out the
heroic deed, reconnecting to his own roots through the figure of his
hero: no wonder that he was so torn apart.
The First Prefatory Note is more intriguing because it has more
than one level. Apparently, it represents the inhibition to commit the
deed, which in the Prefatory Note II will be cast aside, and this is
one level.
However, there is another level, which will reconnect us to Reik's
double association with the Nazis as a mean of undoing his master's
aggressive erotic deed.
The Catholic Church which, in his Third Essay, Freud called the
religion of the Son in contrast to Judaism, is better than nazism which
is the new enemy. The Catholic Church, which is the religion of the
Son, is the old enemy of Judaism, the religion of the Father. This is what is new in his
Third Essay: Judaism is the religion of the Father, and this
father imposed on the Hebrews the instinct inhibition which made of the
Jews what they are today. And Reik had expressed himself exactly in the
same manner, dealing with the Moses of Michelangelo: "The particular
feature of Judaism is that the father finally attains the victory and
indisputably holds the domination in firm hands" ("The Shofar" in Ritual,
Psycho-analytic Studies, Farrar & Straus, New York 1946,
p.332), but he had not mentioned the instinct inhibition aspect. This
point is pivotal to the understanding of the all discourse. The
instinct inhibition inherent to the religion of the Father. Nazism
is even more dangerous because it is prehistoric barbarism. To Freud,
prehistoric barbarism is directly associated to the primal brotherhood
horde, and, indeed, in the second Prefatory Note he mentions Totem
and Taboo. Meaning, the uninhibited Horde of the Brothers is more
dangerous to Judaism, the religion of the Father, than the Catholic
Church which is, after all, a compromise of the Son with the Father.
With the old enemy we could reach a compromise. With this new one we
cannot, because they are out for blood, like the prehistoric murderous
horde. Nazism is indeed the religion of the Son in a much more extreme
way than Christianity, which eventually reached a compromise with the
Father figure. The Christ ascends to the sky in order to de-throne his
father, but eventually He compromises, and sits at his right (dextera
patris). Since society and morality are a consequence of a
compromise between fathers and sons, as Freud said and Reik reiterated
in The Puberty Rites of Savages : "The foundation of morality
without the active co- operation of the father - generation is
unthinkable" (in Ritual - Psychoanalytic Studies, Farrar &
Straus, New York 1946, p. 156), the Catholic Church, which reached such
a compromise, was a protection against Nazism, the religion of the sole
Son and of the barbaric prehistoric horde.
This is the real reason why Freud was so hesitant in publishing
the Third Essay. He unconsciously perceived that, by exposing
the Father - inhibiting nature of Moses' legacy and of Judaism, he
would expose his people to the rage of the horde. The horde of the
Nazis, whose repressed Id was preparing an explosion, an orgy of
instinct satisfaction, and the gratification of the most aggressive
sadistic erotic drives. In order to be relieved, they had to murder the
Jews first.
But Freud, the hero, had his own erotic drives to satisfy, and he could
not repress anymore his own Id: exposing the Truth, Maat, the seated
Egyptian goddess.
Now Reik remembers to Freud the damage that he had done to his people
with his Egyptian Moses: "Because of your Egyptian Moses the Nazis have
murdered us, we who had German names and loved Germany and her culture.
Because of your Egyptian Moses, our children have been exposed and
brought up by Gentile women. Only because you could not refrain from
acting out your erotic drives ! Your silly "bravery before the enemy!".
As a vengeance, I will prove that you have done it all for nothing. I
shall be the inhibiting instance, the undoing of your drive, I
shall inhibit post factum your drive, invalid your instinct
satisfaction, and frustrate the erotic gratification you have achieved
at the expenses of our people. Your Moses was an Egyptian, but Our
Moses was a Hebrew. All what you have done in your Moses will
be undone: "Take counsel, and it shall come to nothing; speak word, and
it shall not stand" (Isaiah
8:10).
As we have seen, this odd unconscious discourse between Reik and
Freud was the condensation of two levels. The first is Reik's deferred
obedience to Freud, who had asked him to relieve him of his sense of
guilt by giving back to the people what he perceived he unrightfully had
taken from them. In this role, Reik is the pious son who
through the process of identification, as in one of the puberty rites
he has described, acts out his father's will. The second level is the
anger and the vengeance of a son who has been abused (as a Viennese
Jew) by the inconsiderate narcissism of a Ubermensch father. As
Freud had written: He
[the primal father of the horde], at the very beginning of the history
of mankind, was the "superman" whom Nietzsche only expected from the
future. Even to-day the members of a group stand in need of the
illusion that they are equally and justly loved by their leader; but
the leader himself need love no one else,
he may be of masterful nature, absolutely
narcissistic, self confident and independent (Group
Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921) Chap.X)
Indeed
Freud had written to Lou Salome': "the historical basis of the Moses
story is not solid enough to serve as a basis for my invaluable piece
of insight. So I remain silent. It is enough that I myself can believe
in the solution of the problem" (see note 2). Freud was not used to
express himself in such a narcissistic mode. Until then, he had been a
good listener to other people's opinion. Now, on the Moses' issue, he
suddenly says: "It is enough that I myself can believe in the solution
of the problem" . The Moses issue was perceived by Freud and by Reik as
a Jewish affair, and not as a private domain of Freud. They felt that
he was not entitled to do with it as he pleases.
As a narcissist Ubermensch he could not not to awaken
the rebellious instinct of the youngest son of the horde. Freud himself
implied that he should have remained silent, but at last he could not
refrain, and he spoke out. He acted out the drive whithout
consideration for the damage he was doing to his people (so, at least,
Freud and Reik perceived the all affair).
After which he writes
thus verbatim: "After those that were sent to work in the quarries had
continued in that miserable state for a long while, the king was
desired that he would set apart the city Avaris, which was then left
desolate of the shepherds, for their habitation and protection; which
desire he granted them. Now this city, according to the ancient
theology, was Typho's city. But when these men were gotten
into it, and found the place fit for a revolt, they appointed
themselves a ruler out of the priests of Helliopolis, whose name was
Osarsiph, and they took their oaths that they would be obedient to him
in all things. He then, in the first place, made this law for them,
That they should neither worship the Egyptian gods, nor should abstain
from any one of those sacred animals which they have in the highest
esteem, but kill and destroy them all; that they should join themselves
to nobody but to those that were of this confederacy. When he had made
such laws as these, and many more such as were mainly opposite to the
customs of the Egyptians, (23) he gave order that they should use the
multitude of the hands they had in building walls about their City, and
make themselves ready for a war (Contra Appionem II:26)
As for the events at
Amarna and the desecration of Egyptian gods by Akhenaton:
But for the people of
Jerusalem, when they came down together with the polluted Egyptians,
they treated the men in such a barbarous manner, that
those who saw how they subdued the aforementioned country, and the
horrid wickedness they were guilty of, thought it a most dreadful
thing; for they did not only set the cities and villages on fire but
were not satisfied till they had been guilty of sacrilege, and
destroyed the images of the gods, and used them in roasting those
sacred animals that used to be worshipped, and forced the priests and
prophets to be the executioners and murderers of those animals, and
then ejected them naked out of the country. It was also reported that
the priest, who ordained their polity and their laws, was by birth of
Hellopolls, and his name Osarsiph, from Osyris, who was the god of
Heliopolis; but that when he was gone over to these people, his name
was changed, and he was called Moses (Cnt.Ap., I:26)
The
association of Osarsiph with "the people of Jerusalem" and their
iconoclastic acts is even closer.
This is
what the Egyptians relate about the Jews, with much more, which I omit
for the sake of brevity. But still Manetho goes on, that "after this,
Amenophis returned back from Ethiopia with a great army, as did his son
Ahampses with another army also, and that both of them joined battle
with the shepherds and the polluted people, and beat them, and slew a
great many of them, and pursued them to the bounds of Syria." These and
the like accounts are written by Manetho. But I will demonstrate that
he trifles, and tells arrant lies, after I have made a distinction
which will relate to what I am going to say about him; for this Manetho
had granted and confessed that this nation was not originally Egyptian,
but that they had come from another country, and subdued Egypt, and
then went away again out of it. But that. those Egyptians who were thus
diseased in their bodies were not mingled with us fterward, and that
Moses who brought the people out was not one of that company, but lived
many generations earlier, I shall endeavor to demonstrate from
Manetho's own accounts themselves (I:27)
As for
the iconodule counter revolution of the Theban priests against
Akhenaton: "Now Manetho says that the king's desire of seeing the gods
was the origin of the ejection of the polluted people" (I/33).
Ahmed Osman has made a striking comparison between the Decalogue and
the Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead (ibidem pp.130-1). Only
the first two Commandments which forbid from worshipping other gods and
images, and the fifth that demands them to honor their parents, do not
belong there, but all the other seven are found in the Book of the
Dead.
Freud knew about the Book of the Dead because he mentioned it
in "Symbolism in Dreams", in Introductory Lessons to
Psycho-Analysis 1915-1917 (Standard Edition, vol.XV, p.161).
Furthermore, what he certainly knew is the second book of Herodotus' Histories,
since he himself quoted from it. Herodotus says: There is a custom, too, which no Greeks except the
Lacedaemonians have in common with the Egyptians: younger men,
encountering their elders, yield the way and stand aside, and rise from
their seats for them when they approach. (II :80, ed. A. D. Godley)
And the Torah: "Thou shalt rise up before the
hoary
man, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God" (Lev., 19:
32)*
For sure the Israelites did not receive this precept from the
Spartans.
And the precept, even more important than
circumcision,
that Moses took from the Egyptians and bestowed on the Hebrews, is the
prohibition of sacred prostitution. Let us see what the Father of
History has to say:
Furthermore, it was the Egyptians who
first
made it a matter of religious observance not to have intercourse with
women in temples or to enter a temple after such intercourse without
washing. Nearly all other peoples are less careful in this matter than
are the Egyptians and Greeks, and consider a man to be like any
other animal; for beasts and birds (they say) are seen to mate both in
the temples and in the sacred precincts; now were this displeasing to
the god, the beasts would not do so. This is the reason given by others
for practices which I, for my part, dislike; (Hist.II :64).
Sacred prostitution or temple
prostitution
was the main rite of the Semitic East,
but the Torah says: "Do not prostitute thy
daughter, to
cause her to be a harlot; lest the land fall to harlotry, and the land
become full of foulness (Lev., 19: 29). And: "There shall be no
female prostitution (Quaddeshah) of the daughters of Ysrael, nor
a male prostitute (Quaddesh) of the sons of Ysrael. Thou shalt
not bring the hire of a prostitute, or the price of a dog, into the
house of the Lord thy God for any voe" (Deut., 23: 18).
In the ancient Middle East the only ones
who did not
practice sacred prostitution were the Egyptians, and this interdiction
was transferred by Moses to the Israelites. The Hebrews, once they
conquered the Holy Land, abandoned Mosaic commands and dedicated
themselves to these cults, which were peculiar to the cultivators,
exactly as the Canaanites who had preceded them.
This evidence alone could have been
enough to prove the
Egyptian origin of the Mosaic Law. It was the emotional ambivalence
between drive and counter - drive, which prevented Freud from being
lucid and coherent. It was his sense of guilt to prevent him from
seeing the most obvious evidence that he was indeed right.
Herodotus continues:
Swine are held by the Egyptians to be
unclean
beasts. In the first place, if an Egyptian touches a hog in passing, he
goes to the river and dips himself in it, clothed as he is (II:47)
During the centuries, the
horror for pork
meat has become almost a household name for Judaism. Even if the Torah
does not list this interdiction as more important than other dietary
precepts, in the collective perception of the Jewish people it acquired
more and more importance, as it had been associated by philogenetic
memory to Moses himself and, as such, pressured more and more for a
particular recognition. The enemies of the Jews perceived it in the
same manner, because when they wanted to force them into abjuring their
faith, tried to force them to eat pork, as a symbol of sacrilege. The
same when they desecrated the scrolls of the Torah. They put them in
contact with pork meat, and not, for instance, with horse meat, which
is equally forbidden from eating.
And it is not all:
Everywhere else, priests of the gods
wear
their hair long; in Egypt, they are shaven. For all other men, the rule
in mourning for the dead is that those most nearly concerned have their
heads shaven; Egyptians are shaven at other times, but after a death
they let their hair and beard grow (Hist.II:36)
All know that it is an important
Jewish
custom to let hair and beard grow when there is
a mourning in the
family.
I have heard of the ancient men of
Egypt,
that Moses was of Heliopolis, and that he thought himself obliged to
follow the customs of his forefathers, and offered his prayers in the
open air, towards the city walls; but that he reduced them all to be
directed towards sun-rising, which was agreeable to the situation of
Heliopolis; that he also set up pillars instead of gnomons (Josep.Cntr.Ap.
II:2)
Moses had been praying
with the face towards
pillars. An orthodox Jew who enters into a synagogue instinctively
searches
for a pillar for tossing toward it while praying.
The wisdom of Egypt and of Moses, the
iconoclastic
Egyptian, seems to have penetrated in such a way into the most archaic
and hidden layers of Jewish psyche, that we can only wonder why the
knowledge that Moses was an Egyptian took so long to emerge from
the repression.
We must not forget that Passover was celebrated
for the
first time by Josiah, king of Judah, at the end of the 7th century, and
on the threshold of the Exile (2 Kings 23:21). Only then, the Book
od
Deuteronomy was "found" in the Temple ( 2 Kings 22:8-20). Sukkoth
(the feast of the Booths) was celebrated for the first time only in the
5th century (Neemiah 8:14).
The Book of Leviticus, which contains most
of the laws, was composed after the return from the Exile. Only then,
the Jews became such, and acquired a national identity fusing their
past, the Exodus, the rite on the Sacred Mountain, and the Mosaic law,
into a unique event. Before the Exile, the deliverance from Egypt, the
rites on the Mountain, and the Egyptian Moses were only mnemonic
traces, kept on the threshold of the preconscious by a few clans, which
in the meantime had become the tribe of Judah.
We don't know whether there had been a real Egyptian experience
by
those clans, or the Egyptian influence was so strong in the Sinai, the
Negev and Canaan, to have imprinted the memory of the events of
Akhnaton, and 14th century Egypt, on the tradition of Judah.
It seems that the Egyptian memory had never been part of the
Israelites' tradition, and it emerged from the repression in the midst
of Judah, only after the distruction of the Kingdom of Israel by the
Assyrians.
It was the trauma of seeing ten tribes out of twelve disappear
into the
thin air, by Assyrian deportation, which enacted a regression into
those repressed mnemonic traces. The prehistoric past was re -
elaborated in such a way that the archaic puberty rites on the Sacred
Mountain were condensed with the memory of the events of Akhnaton's
Egypt.
The events on the Sacred Mountain were not what did of the Jews
what
they are today. The trauma of the disappearance of Israel and the
Exile, and the re-emergence from the repression of
archaic memories, are the real matrix of Judaism.
Links
The
Image of God in Judaism: Father or Mother?
Hamlet:
the Puberty Rite of a Danish Prince and His Companions
Truth
Is a Woman: Bernini - Giorgione - Manet
Killing
God. From the Assassination of Moses to the Murder of Rabin
The
Exile and its Consequences for Jewish Monotheism
Pinocchio.
The Puberty Rite of a Puppet
Medusa,
the Female Genital and the Nazis
Exodus
and Intrauterine Regression. The Genealogy of Jewish Monotheism
Mikis
Theodorakis, Anti - Semitism, and Castration Terror
NOTES
* For Biblical quotations I used The
Jerusalem Bible, Koren Publishers, Jerusalem 1998.
(1) The Complete Correspondence of
Sigmund Freud and Ernest Jones 1908-1939, Edited by R. Andrew
Paskauskas, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge,
Massachusetts and London, England, 1993, p.762
(2) Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Edited
and Abridged in One Volume by Lionel Trilling and Steven Marcus,
Basic Books, Inc. Publishers, New York 1961, p. 502. Freud writes: “the
historical basis of the Moses story is not solid enough to serve as a
basis for my invaluable piece of insight. So I remain silent. It is
enough that I myself can believe in the solution of the problem. It has
pursued me through my whole life”.
(3) For the emotional ambivalence of Freud and Reik towards their
Jewish roots, and why both concealed hard evidence that Moses had
indeed been an Egyptian see: Iakov Levi, Un'analisi del
dissenso tra Freud e Jung. La genealogia di un turbamento, in Dialegesthai.
Rivista telematica di filosofia. [Entered 16 July 2002]