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Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
14.3.1935
Dear Meister Arnold,
Full of impatience I sent right away for Auerbach's history and I was disappointed in my expectations and confirmed in my opinion. My revolutionary new ideas are not dreamt of by A.; neither Moses' Egyptian nationality nor the derivation of his religion from Egyptian monotheism nor the fusion of his person with that of a Midianite priest who took up the religion of Yahweh in Kadesh about 100-150 years after him; nor the view that the miraculous delivery from the bulrushes and the passage into Sinai are phantasies and that Moses had never known the name of Yahweh. In brief, his Moses is not my Moses; he has not broken with tradition nor exposed the pre-history which tradition has always suppressed.
So much for my disappointment. My opinion about the weakness of my historical construction was confirmed and it was this which rightly made me desist from publishing my work. The rest is really silence.
These are tense and unhappy times for our poor Austria, caught between Communism and Fascism. If I come to Haifa I will certainly bring Moses for you. At the moment we are concerned about a more immediate object-our move to Grinzing. We probably shall not be able to get our nice house there again.
My wife is well, my sister-in-law is in Merano, my daughter and nurse busy.
You write very legibly, even without your eyes, to which I extend my best wishes.
Ever yours
Freud