Moses and Monotheism: Guilt and the Murder of the Primal Father

The phenomenon of Jewish monotheism is as puzzling today as it was in the 19th century. It is, perhaps, even more so, because the rich discoveries in this century of the life and religions of near-eastern peoples of the first two pre-Christian millennia—peoples in close contact with the Hebrews—have shed no light on the matter. In fact, these discoveries, by revealing the close similarities between Hebrews and other peoples, have thrown into sharper light the uniqueness of Jewish monotheism. It is beyond the scope of this paper to review the conflicting theories on the origin or Jewish monotheism. It can be said, however, that almost without exception, the scholars remain convinced of the centrality of Moses' role. Yet, the scholars who accept the centrality of Moses' role are no better able to explain or assess it than they were before Freud published Moses and Monotheism some thirty years ago.1

Moses and Monotheism is as heretical a book today as it was in 1939. Much—but perhaps not all—of the hostility the book has aroused is simply hostility to psychoanalytic theory. Part—but again not all—of the hostility is the result of anger aroused in theologians and historians of religion by the incursion into their fields of someone who should not have ventured there.2 While many of these scholars have a tolerant acceptance