Moses and Civilization - The Meaning Behind Freud's Myth

Book Reviews
PAUL, ROBERT A. Moses and Civilization: The Meaning behind Freud's Myth. New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1996. 268 pp. $32.50 (cloth). While there is no dearth of accomplished Freud exegesis in Robert A. Paul's Moses book, its main concern is not so much the re-productive task of interpretation as it is the productive task of showing how Freud's ideas can be fruitfully extended. By "rectifying certain missteps" in Freud's argumentation, Paul hopes "to reawaken interest" in a "great mythic matrix": the slaying of a hated-and loved-primal-horde father by his brutalized sons, their guilt, remorse, and covenantal renunciation that inaugurates "a new social system" resting on "prohibitions against incest and murder . . . instituted" to abrogate the primal-horde system (pp. 1, 3). Freud's "missteps" presuppose "dubious historical and ethnographic 'facts'," "outmoded cultural evolutionism," "direct inheritance" of "repressed complexes," and "the central analogy": "a civilization is like a person." Paul's critical responses are "constructive," using Freud to improve on Freud, specifying Freud's generalities, simplifying, structuring, and reconstructing his arguments (pp. 3, 9, 10-12, 152-59, 172-74). Retracing "Freud's path of reasoning" and working backward from the Eucharist, Paul reconstructs Freud's talionic reconstruction of the "killing of the primal father," a "mythic narrative" whose textual-historical relevance is latent in the manifold ways it is replicated in the Torah, the "heart of Jewish worship" and "foundation for the Christian tradition as well." Making latent patricide manifest requires the horde's analysis as a "Darwinian triadic structure" (senior malejunior male-female) as well as analysis of obsessional "defensive strategies" like "reaction-formation," "splitting," "isolation," "intellectualization," and "doing and undoing." These structural-anthropological-psychoanalytical tools yield a tripartite division of the Torah reflecting three stages of the primal-horde myth: (1) "the regime of the primal horde" = "the era of Israelite bondage . . . under Pharaoh"; (2) "the rebellion by the band of brothers" = "the rebellion against the pharaoh of Egypt"; (3) "the establishment of the new order . . . prohibition against incest and murder . . . . deification of the slain fatherltyrant" = "revelation of the Law at Mount Sinai" (pp. 5-12, 20, 24, 150, 12-13; cf. on "deification" pp. 118-1 9, 185-86). Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy continue and elaborate the Sinaitic "establishment of a new, 'civilized' form of life," and Genesis provides an "overture to the central narrative." Its "mythic stories" vary "a few central underlying themes," imaging "terms and relations out of which the . . . overarching myth is to be constructed." Genesis also affords a mythicocosmic1mythicohistorica1 context for Moses, the culture hero-to-come, most immediately by its "happy ending" in a "state of harmony"; "conflict and estrangement" between family members, between peoples, between Pharaoh and Israel, are displaced by "respect and affection"-"before the fall [!] into the Freudian primal-horde situation" (pp. 13-14). Thus, Paul divides the "combined Judeo-Christian biblical myth" into (1) an overture culminating in "a harmonious state of society," Israel "under the good pharaoh," followed by; (2) "the regime of a bad pharaoh" = Freud's "paradigm of the 'bad' primal horde"; (3) [Moses'] "rebellion against this regime"; (4) "a covenant based on shared guilt in the rebellion"; (5) [Christ's] "second rebellion"; and (6) "a new covenant," taking "as its model of society the oppressed but united band of brothers living in harmony and love" (p. 214).
The Journal of Religion

The larger configurations traced by Paul's structural-anthropological-psychoanalytical methods contain fertile analyses of more limited structures, including: the Egyptian triad + (Isis-Osiris-Horus Seth), the primaeval pastoral triad + (ewes-rams-nonbreeding males + herdsman) or double dyad (ewes-rams, nonbreeding males-herdsman), and the biblical double dyads (Joseph-Moses, good pharaoh-bad pharaoh); "social practices" in pre-Sinaitic times as "the antithesis of what becomes normative" post-Sinai, especially in re incest; God's prohibition against Moses' entering Canaan as grounded in "pre-oedipal demand for the breast." Finally, Paul's psychoanalytic comparison of Moses and Jesus ("like" and yet "antithetical") lies at the heart of his concluding juxtaposition of Christianity and Judaism: Moses, guilty [father-] son, offers the Law and its commandments, a system of "painful self-reproaches" and "self-control," as "primary defenses" against the guilt of primal rebellion; Jesus, innocent son [-father], offers himself in love and faith, as a "system of secondary defenses," not only against the guilt of primal rebellion, but also-and primarily-against the "set of self-reproaches" embodied in "the Mosaic Laws" (pp. 30-40, 59-64, 61-70, 106: "the waters of Meribah," 2 15-1 8). Paul's tour de force, interweaving structural anthropology and psychoanalysis, Judaeo-Christian and cultural-civilizational studies generally, will surely evoke much discussion, perhaps even a little controversy. It would be surprising if work of this depth, quality, and originality failed to do so. The book is marked by clarity, sobriety, and modesty (cf., e.g., pp. 14 below to 15 above), traits of intellect and character that recall the model of Freud himself. This brief review presents a few selected highlights, nothing remotely approaching the wealth of insight and stimulation in Paul's book. I hope I have at least conveyed something of its humanistic engagement with fundamental issues, its author's hope: "To have demonstrated that Freud's myth of the primal horde and the story of Moses as told in the Torah are one and the same, to have drawn out some of the implications of this identity, and to suggest that inquiry based on the recognition of it will lead toward a richer understanding of who we are and what we are doing" (p. 221). SAMUEL PI JAFFE, CTniversitjof Chicago.

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Book Reviews

The Journal of Religion

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