The key text has always been Freud's 1938 (and final) book 'Moses and Monotheism'. Here is Amazon's blurb:
"To deny a people the man whom it praises as the greatest of its sons is not a deed to be undertaken lightheartedly--especially by one belonging to that people," writes Sigmund Freud, as he prepares to pull the carpet out from under The Great Lawgiver in Moses and Monotheism. In this, his last book, Freud argues that Moses was an Egyptian nobleman and that the Jewish religion was in fact an Egyptian import to Palestine. Freud also writes that Moses was murdered in the wilderness, in a reenactment of the primal crime against the father. Lingering guilt for this crime, Freud says, is the reason Christians understand Jesus' death as sacrificial. "The 'redeemer' could be none other than the one chief culprit, the leader of the brother-band who had overpowered the father." Hence the basic difference between Judaism and Christianity: "Judaism had been a religion of the father, Christianity became a religion of the son." Freud's arguments are extremely imaginative, and his distinction between reality and fantasy, as always, is very loose. If only as a study of wrong-headedness, however, it's fascinating reading for those who want to explore the psychological impulses governing the historical relationship between Christians and Jews. --Michael Joseph Gross
Moses was merely the liminal figure who corresponds with the timing of the 'Exodus' by which a dispossessed Egyptian cult becomes fully Hebrew. There are far too many resemblances between the Jewish ethics and that of the Egyptians to overlook, and even those Christian that maintain connection with the Decalogue, which point for point appears in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
'Moses and Monotheism' was a key text in a Modern Critics of Religion course I took as an undergrad - along with 'Civilisation and its Discontents,' Kermode's 'The Effect of the Real' and a few others that stand out in my memory. It's an interesting theory - might have to have a deeper look into that!
I myself used 'The Future of an Illusion' in the course I taught as 'Religion in Modernity', along with Berger's 'The Sacred Canopy' and Weber's 'The Protestant Ethic...', and Durkheim's 'The Elementary Forms...'. For my philosophy of religion course, I used an early Heidegger volume 'The Phenomenology of the Religious Life' which is quite intriguing since it focuses in on what the essential experience of faith is on the ground, modeled in the Pauline texts centered around anxiety. Here is an article I wrote on the topic; must have been incomprehensible - over 600 downloads and yet no citations! - https://academicjournals.org/journal/PPR/article-abstract/C0C905445052
I'm going to go out on a bit of a limb and suggest that because indeed Akhenaten attempted to collate a number of adorational fetishes in one and abstract the imagery of the Gods as well as remove names and references that he was beginning to reconstruct polytheism in Egypt, he just ran out of time, perhaps in a calculated manner given the radicality of his actions which, as you, say, appeared to be popular. It was also a consolidation of the power of the cultic life itself, and thus any priesthood associated with newly marginalized figures or characters of a pantheon would resist.
There is evidence for all of this, yes, but not for my next statement, so hold on: the displaced followers of his new cult were ancestors of the ancient Hebrews.
Interesting theory re the Hebraic ancestors emerging from Akhenaten's attempt towards monotheism. I tend to think it all stems from Moses eating a bunch of 'shrooms in the wilderness (he was involved with/married to a Midian priestess and - this is from somewhere way back in my mind - the Midians weren't averse to ingesting the odd what-we'd-call-today-a hallucinogen). But I can certainly see them conjoin ...
The key text has always been Freud's 1938 (and final) book 'Moses and Monotheism'. Here is Amazon's blurb:
"To deny a people the man whom it praises as the greatest of its sons is not a deed to be undertaken lightheartedly--especially by one belonging to that people," writes Sigmund Freud, as he prepares to pull the carpet out from under The Great Lawgiver in Moses and Monotheism. In this, his last book, Freud argues that Moses was an Egyptian nobleman and that the Jewish religion was in fact an Egyptian import to Palestine. Freud also writes that Moses was murdered in the wilderness, in a reenactment of the primal crime against the father. Lingering guilt for this crime, Freud says, is the reason Christians understand Jesus' death as sacrificial. "The 'redeemer' could be none other than the one chief culprit, the leader of the brother-band who had overpowered the father." Hence the basic difference between Judaism and Christianity: "Judaism had been a religion of the father, Christianity became a religion of the son." Freud's arguments are extremely imaginative, and his distinction between reality and fantasy, as always, is very loose. If only as a study of wrong-headedness, however, it's fascinating reading for those who want to explore the psychological impulses governing the historical relationship between Christians and Jews. --Michael Joseph Gross
Moses was merely the liminal figure who corresponds with the timing of the 'Exodus' by which a dispossessed Egyptian cult becomes fully Hebrew. There are far too many resemblances between the Jewish ethics and that of the Egyptians to overlook, and even those Christian that maintain connection with the Decalogue, which point for point appears in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
'Moses and Monotheism' was a key text in a Modern Critics of Religion course I took as an undergrad - along with 'Civilisation and its Discontents,' Kermode's 'The Effect of the Real' and a few others that stand out in my memory. It's an interesting theory - might have to have a deeper look into that!
I myself used 'The Future of an Illusion' in the course I taught as 'Religion in Modernity', along with Berger's 'The Sacred Canopy' and Weber's 'The Protestant Ethic...', and Durkheim's 'The Elementary Forms...'. For my philosophy of religion course, I used an early Heidegger volume 'The Phenomenology of the Religious Life' which is quite intriguing since it focuses in on what the essential experience of faith is on the ground, modeled in the Pauline texts centered around anxiety. Here is an article I wrote on the topic; must have been incomprehensible - over 600 downloads and yet no citations! - https://academicjournals.org/journal/PPR/article-abstract/C0C905445052
Fascinating read!
Glad you liked it! I love ancient Egypt - it never ceases to amaze.
It is a fascinating time to study!
I'm going to go out on a bit of a limb and suggest that because indeed Akhenaten attempted to collate a number of adorational fetishes in one and abstract the imagery of the Gods as well as remove names and references that he was beginning to reconstruct polytheism in Egypt, he just ran out of time, perhaps in a calculated manner given the radicality of his actions which, as you, say, appeared to be popular. It was also a consolidation of the power of the cultic life itself, and thus any priesthood associated with newly marginalized figures or characters of a pantheon would resist.
There is evidence for all of this, yes, but not for my next statement, so hold on: the displaced followers of his new cult were ancestors of the ancient Hebrews.
Interesting theory re the Hebraic ancestors emerging from Akhenaten's attempt towards monotheism. I tend to think it all stems from Moses eating a bunch of 'shrooms in the wilderness (he was involved with/married to a Midian priestess and - this is from somewhere way back in my mind - the Midians weren't averse to ingesting the odd what-we'd-call-today-a hallucinogen). But I can certainly see them conjoin ...
In this sentence of your post 'From 21 November 2023, this is a set (21:58) by Santigold', I think you mean '21 November 2022'?
Thanks! No, it’s not from the future. There goes the proofreader’s job!
Ha ha!
And you're welcome.