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52 of 64 people found the following review helpful:
Admit it! You hate your Dad!, January 11, 2002
This is my favorite nut book of all time, principally because it was written by THE most original thinker of the 20th century. A conspiracy book by a mediocre paranoid is par for the course; but one written by a genius of the first order is bound to be outstanding. To fully understand M&M one has to be somewhat conversant with Totem and Taboo, and Freud reiterates those basic premises here as well. Briefly they are as follows: The origin of society begins with a tribe in which the dominant male gets all the women, including his sisters and Mommy. His sons are understandably upset at being left out of the fun and complain, so Dad kills or castrates them. Or makes the mistake of being lenient and simply drives them off. The sons, unable to find females of their own, band together go back and murder dad. Then, of course, they eat his body. There being too many sons (and feeling repressed guilt at killing their old man) they make taboos against incest thus establishing the rule of law. (Bet you didn't know this was the origin of Magna Carta, et al). This keeps the gene pool safe from inbreeding but leads to all sorts of guilt feelings which get acted out politically-- not the least of which is a worshipping of Mommy, which leads to LHM -a Literal Historical Matriarchy. (And to think feminists dislike Freud) Next, they get fed up with being bossed about by Mom (and who wouldn't?) so they re-establish the patriarchy; only this time they stick to the rule of law, because they can't afford further fraticidal bloodshed and they invent polytheism to boot. But deeply repressed father hatred looms within, which leads to the final step: monotheism, in which God is an avenging Father who must be appeased before he starts castrating again. . . (Naturally there are sub-plots--Christianity belongs to the religion of The Son who becomes more important than The Father, Islam is a attempt to restore The Father, etc.) I forget what all this has to do with Moses, and halfway through the book, so does Freud who goes off on a tangent about how the Catholic church failed to protect him in Vienna against the Nazis, so he was forced to flee to England, where things are now better, and though he thought of destroying the manuscript he figured he was old, so what the hell, might as well publish it. Freud refuses to use the 's' word --speculate--Or rather he waffles. At one point he admits that all he's writing is conjecture and the reader should know that and not force him to repeat it in every paragraph. But a couple of paragraphs later, he appeals to his clinical material (his patients and his own fantasies) and his deductive powers in a manner that could only be described as objective--or, to be less kind, dogmatic. Will the real S.G please stand up? In any case, the speculations/objective deductions regarding Akhnaten, the case for there being 2 Moses's -one got murdered and presumably eaten by his children. The myth 'in reverse' of the childhood of Moses (don't ask) and what it all REALLY means make for fascinating and compelling reading.
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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
Freud's Last Act, March 29, 2006
Freud's Last Act
Who founded Judaism and monotheism is indeed a tricky but nevertheless intriguing question? Tom Cahill, in his wonderful and lyrical piece "The Gift of the Jews," lists monotheism as an important Jewish contribution to civilization. On the other hand, Dr. Frances Cress Welsin, in the Isis Papers, and others of her Africanist cohorts, suggest that Judaism -- as well as Christianity -- are but off-shoots of well-established Egyptian myths, rituals and religions.
While it is one thing for free-lance interlopers on either side of this issue to speculate on these matters, it is quite another when the father of modern psychology himself, Sigmund Freud, does so -- even if it is done as his last professional act.
Using his earlier work, Totem and Taboo as the psychological foundation and backdrop, Freud in his final book, spins out a not altogether unconvincing tale that Moses was an Egyptian Prince who was killed by his sons, and that monotheism was the necessary cultural invention and outcome that ultimately prevented the cycle of fratricide from continuing.
It is a fascinating read even if not up to Freud's normal high standards of analytical rigor. Despite its speculative nature, this thesis has global implications for contemporary religion, the Western worldview, and for how our current structure of morality was established and continues to work. Five stars
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14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
let my people go - all of them, August 17, 2006
Reading through the many wonderful reviews here, one gets the picture of what it is with this book: love it or hate it, believer or skeptic, even telling people the gist of the thesis and the story (the book is magnificently both), this work never fails to evoke a strong reaction. Look at the reviews. What is evident is that the book is truly provocative - rare for any book - no less a slight, speculative work of less than 200 pages, written somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century. Who would really care? But as you can see from this representative sample, people do.
Despite the ongoing controversy regarding, increasing skepticism towards, and perhaps dismissal of his major ideas, Freud still engages us as one of the most influential thinkers of the past century, and this work, which, surprisingly, may come to be regarded as his masterpiece (it is a masterpiece - do not doubt that), written as he was dying of cancer of the jaw and fleeing from the Nazis (Freud was Jewish - and among all the things that it is, the book is his response to that singular experience), is his signal contribution to religious studies.
The story is that:
1) Moses was an Egyptian, likely of royal birth, that he learned monotheism from the renegade Egyptian monarch, Akenaton, who, during his brief and probably aborted reign, unsuccessfully attempted to displace the long-standing polytheism and its attendant institutions with a unitary sole deity - a sun god - not represented in any form or art .
2) - That he may have been the proprietor or governor of a fringe province, the Biblical "land of Goshen" with a population of Hebraic or Semitic descent, to whom he taught the new religion. At some point during the exodus, Moses was murdered by his followers. The new God was rejected in favor of a tribal deity, a bloodthirsty, local lunar God, Jahve. However, his immediate entourage, also of the Egyptian court or priesthood, were established as the Levites, or priestly caste, and their descendents eventually revived the ancient monotheism, which we know as the religion of the ancient Hebrews.
The thesis (more complex) quite briefly is:
Akenaton possibly adopted monotheism as adjunct to Egypt's imperialist expansion in the 18th century B.C. Circumcision, which first evolved among the Egyptians (there is the pictoral evidence, as far back as it goes), is rooted in the idea of prehistoric enforced fidelity to the clan father under threat of castration thus symbolized (the primal "covenant" between father and sons). Moses was murdered because he restricted access to the women of the tribe, in repetition of the totemic archetype. The Pentateuch is a palimpsest, references the original monotheistic religion inscribed under references to the later religion of Jahve, and then again, the revival, written over those references in the Levitical Law. The revival was spurred by long, pent up guilt over the collective memory of the death of Moses. And well, Papa don't take no mess! The religion of the Levites, developed during the Babylonian exile, represents a return to the Father dominance. The Messianic trend represents yet another turn away from this father dominance toward the Son, away from circumcision, and toward social decentralization, eventually a priesthood of all believers. There's a lot more to it - but these are the bare bones.
I don't believe anyone would want to make absolute claims as to what went down thirty-eight centuries ago - but, all considered, Freud's thesis has its moment, and that moment is now. Could it be that the Jews and Arabs are one people - Semites - who have been divided over time by those with ulterior motives? Resoundingly, yes, the possibility must be considered. Freud wrote this remarkable text at a time when the Nazis were beginning to fund the Islamic Brotherhood (after they themselves had been funded by Prescott Bush and the Union Bank). Ironically, Freud's thesis suggests that the current situation in the Middle East has apparently brought this world to the edge of annihilation, may involve combatants who have no conception of their true origins or the basis of what they are fighting for, but, from the standpoint of carefully fostered illusions, merely believe, in an all too human way, that they do. Freud argues closely and pervasively enough to raise and honest doubt in our minds. Well worth the read.
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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Understanding an image of God, October 9, 2001
I feel this short book is well worth reading. Freud, at the time, was debating whether to leave Nazi-occupied Austria and was deeply afraid that the public would misinterpret him. He accepts that Moses was a composite character and that Jewish history was compressed for the sake of clarity and on this premise he explores the psychological underpinnings of the religious story. He does link Moses and Judaism with Akhenaten's religion and he does it in a believeable way that should stand up against modern criticism. All in all, this is a very valuable book.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Kemet-Moses & Akhenatens religion, February 6, 2005
Kemet-Moses:
Who founded Judaism is a tricky question. More tricky is, who founded Monotheism, Moses or Akhen-Atun? There are several people who were essential to the creation of Judaism, Egypt served as a womb, in a nascent stage, where the Jewish people were formed as a nation, within four centuries of their soujourn in the land of Goshen (North-eastern Egyptian province), by training in civilized traditions and worthy articrafts.
The Bible shows Moses as the founder of the faith, while Abraham was the root of the nation. Moses, the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, has protected the Jews from the wrath of God, and negotiated with God on their behalf, according to the Torah, is an Egyptian Princely sage, according to Sigmund Freud.
Philo to Assmann's Moses:
Philo Judeas of Alexandria mentioned that some Jews doubted the historical reliability of their scriptures and considered part of their content as myth. Aristobulus, Philo's Alexandrian predecessor moved beyond the literal to the hidden meaning, allegorical and philosophic, similar to the treatment of texts of classical mythology, as was the tradition in their megalopolis (Great City).
Origen, who wrote Contra Celsius, refuted Celsius argument that the Mosaic book of Genesis was based on borrowed sources like the Ducalion narrative for the flood story, known as such to the Greeks.
Assmann starts with the definition of Egyptian thought construction as Mnemo-history, a 'Suppressed history of Repressed memory' of Akhenaten in Moses conscience. His ultimate thesis, srarting from Spencer's findings as 'before the Law,' is based on his analytical review of eighteenth century historical discourse on Moses. Freud shows up in his spear headed psychological idea; 'the Return of the repressed.' The roots of Egyptian monotheism of the enlightened elite, was conceived in the 'One,' Amon-Ra'e, and Aten, consecutive masters of Theban and Heliopolitan Pantheons, which echoes in Psalm 82, Concluding into what JH Breasted elaborated eighty years ago. freud followed him in abolishing Mosaic primacy of monotheistic revelation.
Revelation to Akhen-Atun:
Freud is drawn to confirms his discovery of Moses origin and role, in the Jewish traditions, preserved in the Pseudo epigraphic writings, that Moses was murdered by Joshua, who buried him in the wilderness*. "The 'redeemer' could be none other than the one chief culprit, the leader of the brother-band who had overpowered the father." Concluding thatl; "Judaism had been a religion of the father, Christianity became a religion of the son."
The Jewish inter-testiment writing, on the occasion of Moses' impending death, by the rebelling congregation (Numbers 14), and doubting exodus generation with calmination into the revolt of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram (numbers 16), support the same concept of authority rejection of a non-Hebraic Moses.
* The Assumption of Moses: Studia in Veteris Testamenti Pseudepigrapha
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9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
fascinating but very speculative, December 22, 1999
By A Customer
This is a fairly obscure and especially speculative work of Freud's, published originally in the year he died. The argument is fascinating. Its exposition, however, (as Freud himself concedes within it) is repetitive and at times tedious. There were two particular sticking points for me: 1) It assumes one has read Freud's "Totem and Taboo" (I hadn't). 2) The larger argument is contigent on (extra-somatic) racial memory, a biological impossibility. Defending this notion Freud makes several remarks that tarnish his philosophy and psychology as a whole, and this is unfortunate. I'd prefer you read Freud's "The Question of Lay Analysis" (a lucid and engaging account of the basic tenets of psychoanalysis), his "Civilization and its Discontents", and his "The Future of an Illusion". (And while I'm recommending things, there is also, for musicians, "Pentatonic Scales for the Jazz Rock Keyboardist" by Jeff Burns.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
Terrific Insights, March 27, 2007
Like all of Freud's books, this one will change the way you look at things.
In the first part (written in Vienna as the Nazis approached), Freud essentially analyzed Judaism into 2 component parts.
First was the Moses religion--a strict monotheism deriving from Egypt (via Moses, who was an Egyptian) and Ikhnaton: this monotheism was universal, ethical, stripped of priestcraft and magic, retaining circumcision (an Egyptian custom).
Second was the tribal religion of Jahve (Yahweh)--a volcano god of one of the Canaanite tribes: not monotheistic, punitive, exclusivist, loaded with incessant in-group rules and rituals.
Naturally, these two don't fit together well, and this explains why the Old Testament presents such a crazy picture of God: sometimes impersonal and ethical and absolutely fair; most times homicidal (even genocidal), bad tempered, vindictive, given to human sacrifice, obsessed with punctilious rules.
In the second part of the book (written in Freud's last year--after he had escaped to England), Freud talks about the psychodynamics of such a religion, mainly in terms of father-murder.
While I don't agree with some of Freud's assumptions (particularly the idea that monotheism is an "advance" on polytheism), this is still brilliant work.
Reading Freud is always an education (he knows so much) and always a pleasure (he is a wonderful writer).
Can't go wrong on this one.
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8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
A brilliant and capitivating essay on monotheism., October 13, 1998
By A Customer
This is one of the best books I have ever read. It's a page turner -- a brilliant uncovering of the historical Moses. This book is also so affecting because Freud wrote it right before and during the holocaust. The background that he is writing from is part of the drama of the book. Read this book!
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Brilliant, but not for its accuracy., December 25, 2003
My title sums up my feelings about this book. I've read a bit of Freud, but this book, so far, is the most interesting, engaging, and engrossing of the lot. Perhaps this is because Freud occasionally acknowledges the tenuous nature of his argument. What is that argument? I wish not to give away the entire book, but its crux is that Freud begins with the proposition that Moses was an Egyption, a follower of Aton religion, and when that religion vanished after the reign of one king, he passed it on to the Jews. It must first be said that Freud is not the only one to claim that Hebraism/Judaism developed monotheism out of the Egyptian milieu. The most interesting thing is that Freud claims to find this, psychoanalyticaly, in the very myth of Moses' birth, which he argues in an archetypal heroic one. Be that as it may, I cannot give this book 5 stars because the last chapter, though he introduces, quite lucidly, the ideas of the Ego, Superego, and the Id, I came away feeling that the argument could have been made in half the space. Nevertheless, a hearty recommendation.
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Moses and Monotheism by Sigmund Freud, May 17, 2009
My husband is researching western religious history and this book, cited by Joseph Campbell, contains revolutionary theses new to him. Moses and Monotheism deserves much more attention.
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