Freud - Complete Works (783 page)

Moses And Monotheism

4868

   There can be no doubt that very
different elements came together in the construction of the Jewish
people; but what must have made the greatest difference among these
tribes was whether they had experienced or not the sojourn in Egypt
and what followed it. Having regard to this point, we may say that
the nation arose out of a union of two component parts; and it fits
in with this that, after a short period of political unity, it
split into two pieces - the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of
Judah. History is fond of reinstatements like this, where a later
fusion is undone and an earlier separation re-emerges. The most
impressive example of this was afforded, as is well known, by the
Reformation, which, after an interval of over a thousand years,
brought to light once more the frontier between the Germany which
had at one time been Roman and the Germany which had remained
independent. In the instance of the Jewish people it is not
possible to point to such a faithful reproduction of the old state
of things; our knowledge of those times is too uncertain to allow
us to assert that the settled tribes were once more to be found
together in the Northern Kingdom and those who had returned from
Egypt in the Southern Kingdom; but here too the later split cannot
have been unrelated to the earlier joining up. The former Egyptians
were probably fewer in numbers than the others, but showed
themselves culturally the stronger. They exercised a more powerful
influence on the further evolution of the people, because they
brought along with them a tradition which the others lacked.

   Perhaps they brought something
else with them more tangible than a tradition. One of the greatest
enigmas of Jewish prehistory is that of the origin of the Levites.
They are traced back to one of the twelve tribes of Israel - that
of Levi - but no tradition has ventured to say where that tribe was
originally located or what portion of the conquered land of Canaan
was allotted to it. They filled the most important priestly
offices, but they were distinct from the priests. A Levite is not
necessarily a priest; nor is it the name of a caste. Our hypothesis
about the figure of Moses suggests an explanation. It is incredible
that a great lord, like Moses the Egyptian, should have joined this
alien people unaccompanied. He certainly must have brought a
retinue with him - his closest followers, his scribes, his domestic
servants. This is who the Levites originally were. The tradition
which alleges that Moses was a Levite seems to be a clear
distortion of the fact: the Levites were the followers of Moses.
This solution is supported by the fact which I have already
mentioned in my earlier essay that it is only among the Levites
that Egyptian names occur later.¹ It is to be presumed that a
fair number of these followers of Moses escaped the catastrophe
which descended on him himself and the religion he founded. They
multiplied in the course of the next generations, became fused with
the people they lived among, but remained loyal to their master,
preserved his memory and carried out the tradition of his
doctrines. At the time of the union with the disciples of Yahweh
they formed an influential minority, culturally superior to the
rest.

  
¹
My hypothesis fits in well with
Yahuda’s statements on the Egyptian influence on early Jewish
literature. See Yahuda, 1929.

Moses And Monotheism

4869

   I put it forward as a provisional
hypothesis that between the fall of Moses and the establishment of
the new religion at Kadesh two generations, or perhaps even a
century, elapsed. I see no means of deciding whether the
Neo-Egyptians (as I should like to call them here) - that is, those
who returned from Egypt - met their tribal kinsmen after the latter
had already adopted the Yahweh religion or earlier. The second
possibility might seem the more probable. But there would be no
difference in the outcome. What happened at Kadesh was a
compromise, in which the share taken by the tribes of Moses is
unmistakable.

   Here we may once again call on
the evidence afforded by circumcision, which has repeatedly been of
help to us, like, as it were, a key-fossil. This custom became
obligatory in the Yahweh religion as well and, since it was
indissolubly linked with Egypt, its adoption can only have been a
concession to the followers of Moses, who - or the Levites among
them - would not renounce this mark of their holiness. So much of
their old religion they wished to rescue, and in return for it they
were prepared to accept the new deity and what the priests of
Midian told them about it. They may possibly have gained yet other
concessions. We have already mentioned that Jewish ritual
prescribed certain restrictions on the use of God’s name.
Instead of ‘Yahweh’ the word ‘Adonai’ must
be spoken. It is tempting to bring this prescription into our
context, but that is only a conjecture without any other basis. The
prohibition upon a god’s name is, as is well known, a taboo
of primaeval age. We do not understand why it was revived precisely
in the Jewish Law; it is not impossible that this happened under
the influence of a fresh motive. There is no need to suppose that
the prohibition was carried through consistently; in the
construction of theophorous personal names - that is, in compounds
- the name of the God Yahweh might be freely used (e.g. Jochanan,
Jehu, Joshua). There were, however, special circumstances connected
with this name. As we know, critical Biblical research supposes
that the Hexateuch has two documentary sources. These are
distinguished as J and E, because one of them uses
‘Jahve’ as the name of God and the other
‘Elohim’: ‘Elohim’, to be sure, not
‘Adonai’. But we may bear in mind a remark by one of
our authorities: ‘The different names are a clear indication
of two originally different gods.’¹

  
¹
Gressmann, 1913, 54.

Moses And Monotheism

4870

   We brought up the retention of
circumcision as evidence for the fact that the founding of the
religion at Kadesh involved a compromise. We can see its nature
from the concordant accounts given by J and E, which thus go back
on this point to a common source (a documentary or oral tradition).
Its leading purpose was to demonstrate the greatness and power of
the new god Yahweh. Since the followers of Moses attached so much
value to their experience of the Exodus from Egypt, this act of
liberation had to be represented as due to Yahweh, and the event
was provided with embellishments which gave proof of the terrifying
grandeur of the volcano god - such as the pillar of smoke which
changed at night into a pillar of fire and the storm which laid
bare the bed of the sea for a while, so that the pursuers were
drowned by the returning waters. This account brought the Exodus
and the founding of the religion close together, and disavowed the
long interval between them. So, too, the law-giving was represented
as occurring not at Kadesh but at the foot of the Mount of God,
marked by a volcanic eruption. This account, however, did grave
injustice to the memory of the man Moses; it was he and not the
volcano god who had liberated the people from Egypt. So a
compensation was owing to him, and it consisted in the man Moses
being transferred to Kadesh or to Sinai-Horeb and put in the place
of the Midianite priests. We shall find later that this solution
satisfied another imperatively pressing purpose. In this manner a
mutual agreement, as it were, was arrived at: Yahweh, who lived on
a mountain in Midian, was allowed to extend over into Egypt, and,
in exchange for this, the existence and activity of Moses were
extended to Kadesh and as far as the country east of the Jordan.
Thus he was fused with the figure of the later religious founder,
the son-in-law of the Midianite Jethro, and lent him his name of
Moses. Of this second Moses, however, we can give no personal
account - so completely was he eclipsed by the first, the Egyptian
Moses - unless we pick out the contradictions in the Biblical
description of the character of Moses. He is often pictured as
domineering, hot-tempered and even violent, yet he is also
described as the mildest and most patient of men. These last
qualities would evidently have fitted in badly with the Egyptian
Moses, who had to deal with his people in such great and difficult
matters; they may have belonged to the character of the other
Moses, the Midianite. We are, I think, justified in separating the
two figures and in assuming that the Egyptian Moses was never at
Kadesh and had never heard the name of Yahweh, and that the
Midianite Moses had never been in Egypt and knew nothing of Aten.
In order to solder the two figures together, tradition or legend
had the task of bringing the Egyptian Moses to Midian, and we have
seen that more than one explanation of this was current.

Moses And Monotheism

4871

(6)

   Once again I am prepared to find
myself blamed for having presented my reconstruction of the early
history of the people of Israel with too great and unjustified
certainty. I shall not feel very severely hit by this criticism,
since it finds an echo in my own judgement. I know myself that my
structure has its weak spots, but it has its strong points too. On
the whole my predominant impression is that it is worth while to
pursue the work in the direction it has taken.

   The Bible narrative that we have
before us contains precious and, indeed, invaluable historical
data, which, however, have been distorted by the influence of
powerful tendentious purposes and embellished by the products of
poetic invention. In the course of our efforts so far, we have been
able to detect one of these distorting purposes. That discovery
points our further path. We must uncover other similar tendentious
purposes. If we find means of recognizing the distortions produced
by those purposes, we shall bring to light fresh fragments of the
true state of things lying behind them.

   And we will begin by listening to
what critical Biblical research is able to tell us about the
history of the origin of the Hexateuch, the five books of Moses and
the book of Joshua, which alone concern us here.¹ The earliest
documentary source is accepted as J (the Yahwistic writer), who in
the most recent times has been identified as the priest Ebyatar, a
contemporary of King David.² Somewhat - it is not known how
much - later we come to the so-called Elohistic writer, who
belonged to the Northern Kingdom.³ After the collapse of the
Northern Kingdom in 722 B.C., a Jewish priest combined portions of
J and E and made some additions of his own. His compilation is
designated as JE. In the seventh century
Deuteronomy
, the
fifth book, was added to this. It is supposed to have been found
complete in the Temple. In the period after the destruction of the
Temple (586 B.C.), during and after the Exile, the revision known
as the ‘Priestly Code’ was compiled; and in the fifth
century the work was given its final revision and since then has
not been changed in its essentials.
⁴

  
¹
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, Eleventh
Edition, Vol. III, 1910. Article ‘Bible’.

  
²
See Auerbach (1932).

  
³
The Yahwistic and Elohistic writings were
first distinguished by Astruc in 1753.

  
⁴
It
is historically certain that the Jewish type was finally fixed as a
result of the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah in the fifth century
before Christ - that is, after the Exile, under the Persian
domination which was friendly to the Jews. On our reckoning, some
nine hundred years had passed since the emergence of Moses. These
reforms took seriously the regulations that aimed at making the
entire people holy; their separation from their neighbours was made
effective by the prohibition of mixed marriages; the Pentateuch,
the true book of the laws, was given its final form and the
revision known as the Priestly Code brought to completion. It seems
certain, however, that these reforms introduced no fresh
tendentious purposes, but took up and strengthened earlier
trends.

Moses And Monotheism

4872

   The history of King David and of
his period is most probably the work of a contemporary. It is
genuine historical writing, five hundred years before Herodotus,
the ‘father of History’. It becomes easier to
understand this achievement if, on the lines of our hypothesis, we
think of Egyptian influence.¹ A suspicion even arises that the
Israelites of that earliest period - that is to say, the scribes of
Moses - may have had some share in the invention of the first
alphabet.² It is, of course, beyond our knowledge to discover
how far reports about former times go back to early records or to
oral tradition and how long an interval of time there was in
individual instances between an event and its recording. The text,
however, as we possess it to-day, will tell us enough about its own
vicissitudes. Two mutually opposed treatments have left their
traces on it. On the one hand it has been subjected to revisions
which have falsified it in the sense of their secret aims, have
mutilated and amplified it and have even changed it into its
reverse; on the other hand a solicitous piety has presided over it
and has sought to preserve everything as it was, no matter whether
it was consistent or contradicted itself. Thus almost everywhere
noticeable gaps, disturbing repetitions and obvious contradictions
have come about - indications which reveal things to us which it
was not intended to communicate. In its implications the distortion
of a text resembles a murder: the difficulty is not in perpetrating
the deed, but in getting rid of its traces. We might well lend the
word ‘
Entstellung
’ the double meaning to which
it has a claim but of which to-day it makes no use. It should mean
not only ‘to change the appearance of something’ but
also ‘to put something in another place, to displace’.
Accordingly, in many instances of textual distortion, we may
nevertheless count upon finding what has been suppressed and
disavowed hidden away somewhere else, though changed and torn from
its context. Only it will not always be easy to recognize it.