Chapter 2. If Moses was an Egyptian... of Moses and Monotheism - Study Guide by Sigmund Freud

since the themes in these stories are dropped later - 'Moses in Midian is no longer an Egyptian and grandson of the Pharaoh, but a shepherd to whom Yahweh (their name for God) revealed himself. In the Exodus and the destruction of the Egyptians Moses plays no part whatever. This description of Moses of Kadesh and Midian, a miracle- worker equipped by Yahweh with supernatural powers, is just as different from the aristocratic Egyptian inferred by Freud, as Aten is from Yahweh, their demon Mountain God. So it seems that Freud's theory cannot reconcile all accounts so far, and meets a break in its thread.

(5) However, Freud discovers a possibility that could accommodate this apparent split in the theory. As Sellin reports, the Egyptian Moses was murdered by the Jews and the religion he had introduced abandoned, however the immigrants that had moved with him were now a rather large population, furthermore they probably joined up with other kindred tribes in the area between Egypt and Canaan, finding expression in a new religion - the religion of Yahweh (according to Meyer -1906- this took place under the influence of the Midianites at Kadesh - not incompatible with the current hypothesis). With regard to this point, Freud suggests that the nation arose out of a union of two component parts, and it fits in that, after a short period of political unity, it split into two pieces - the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah. This is further supported by the fact that the Kadesh Yahweh tribes, who had been around before their union with the Levites from Egypt, also had an obligatory adoption of circumcision, as well as imposition of a prohibition against saying 'Yahweh' and instead saying 'Adonai' (Lord). The problem of god's name also affords further evidence - since it appears variously as Jochanan, Jehu and Joshua etc. (probably from Yahweh) and as 'Elohim'. The different names are quite a clear indication of two originally different gods.

(6) In this section Freud re-addresses the problem of the distortions in history with which he was faced at the outset of this work. He tries to explain them. He proposes that the tribe of Yahweh, may have wiped out other religions up to the arrival of these refugees from Egypt, however these Egyptians may have been more resistant, not letting themselves be deprived of the Exodus, the man Moses or circumcision. The man Moses was dealt with by shifting him to Midian and Kadesh and fusing him with the priest of Yahweh, circumcision, had to be retained, in conjunction however with various attempts to detach it from its Egyptian roots. However the key problem here is the fact that, circumcision may not have been of Egyptian origin - rather Yahweh, it was said, had already insisted on it with Abraham and had introduced it as the token of the covenant between him and Abraham (Genesis), so why would these Israelites leaving Egypt want to acknowledge every Egyptian as a brother in the covenant? This remains puzzling, however a possible explanation is that the fact that those leaving Egypt had become Yahweh's (or Moses') 'chosen' people, could compensate for the re-invention of circumcision as their indigenous sign once more. So Yahweh was only giving them back what their forefathers had once possessed. Furthermore to accommodate the exodus, they ascribed all thanks for it to Yahweh rather than to Moses.

(7) Freud then addresses the murder of Moses, both in terms of the ways in which it has been furiously worked over by historians and suppressed by immediate human motives. It seems that much like Akhenaten, whose end was inevitable to terminate the resistance to his favoured religion, the savage Semites, took fate into their own hands and rid themselves of their tyrant. The most likely reason behind their merciless murder of their leader, seems to be the fact that while the god that Moses of Egypt was trying to impose was all-loving and all-powerful, Yahweh, on the other hand was a more local, narrow-minded, violent and blood thirsty god. Therefore it is no surprise that again the idea of no sacrificial ceremonies and (they were to considered as magic and sorcery) was resisted against, in the only way that they knew how - through the violence and bloodthirstiness that their god Yahweh endorsed. However it does seem true to say that despite killing Moses, the tradition at least of his teaching did remain, since despite giving Yahweh the undeserved honour of the deed of liberation eventually Moses' god became stronger than Yahweh, and enabled the people of Israel to survive the blows which fate had in store for them.

In conclusion it seems that in introducing the figure of an Egyptian Moses into the nexus of Jewish history, Freud has found many dualities - two groups of people, two kingdom's into which this nation fell apart, two god's names, furthermore, two religions, the first suppressed by the second but later emerging victoriously behind it and two religious founders, both by the name of Moses, with different personalities. However