Analysis of Moses and Monotheism by Sigmund Freud Essay

In today’s society, both Christianity and Judaism are two of the most practiced religions by people all over the world. Both religions have some similarities, they both value the ten commandments. Also, some religious practices used in Christianity such as baptisms were derived from Judaism (Brodd 2016). Although society sees these two religions as similar, they both have vastly different ultimate goals. In order to help believer’s attain these goals, Jesus helps Christians and Moses helps the Jewish fully understand these goals.

Judaism being the oldest out of these three dominant religions was developed in the “third millennium BCE” (130). Canaan is where the Hebrews first prospered, until around 1500 BCE. At this time a famine struck, and influenced the Jewish people to move to Egypt. Egypt was lead by the Hyksos, which shared languages and cultural beliefs with the Hebrews. In Egypt “the Hebrews thrived over the next few centuries, until the Egyptian overthrew the Hyksos and enslaved the Hebrews” (130). At that time Moses (a man lead by God), rallied the Hebrews and helped them escape the slavery they endured in Egypt.

The story of Moses is one of the more widely known stories from the Old Testament. The story is found in the book of Exodus and details the life of the prophet Moses. The story of Moses has been the basis of several Hollywood movies. One of the movies, The Prince of Egypt, is a cartoon depiction of the story of Moses. While the movie is very entertaining and will captivate a child’s attention from the beginning, there are not very many accurate details from the Biblical story.

Moses is an ordinary farmer, and is one of the leader in the revolutionary activities. He is a very opinionated man and likes to argue. He is proud of his Protestant heritage as a “people of the Book,” and he scolds his son Adam for superstitious behavior, telling him the Coopers have been proud of their literate and educated tradition. Moses helps a lot of people especially his neighbor Joseph Simmons. Moses helped Simmons draft the statement on the rights of man as a basis for negotiating with the British for independence. Moses is hard on his son Adam until he hears that Adam does not think that he loves him. “Hate him? My father exploded of all the crazy notions, of all idiotic ideas. There is a boy, my first born son-why would I hate him.” (Page 45) He tells him he is too young for the Committee but at the last minute allows his son to sign up for the muster on the Common because he sees in Adam’s eyes that he will lose his son if he does not recognize him as a man in front of the other men. In the book, Moses Cooper is portrayed as a very opinionated, religious, and an enraged man but behind all of this he is a very emotional person. This is proven as the book reaches “The Morning,” section of the book. In the beginning Moses had no sympathy towards Adam and always looked at him as if he was a boy, but

Throughout this well written passage the author reveals the character “Moses” through multiple literary elements and rhetorical devices. Some techniques that are used are metaphors, imagery, and selection of detail. The author reveals who Moses really is through deep connections. There are also multiple different devices that are intertwined within these techniques and descriptions that help reveal when Moses truly realizes his character throughout the detailed passage. The author, jones does not begin his description until midway through the passage where he states “he was the only man in the realm, slave or free”, this is believed because he wants to give background information about the character Moses before he tells all.

Judaism was formed in 2000 bc. by Abraham in the land of Canaan. They were the first monotheistic religion, this means they only worship one god. They call their deity “God” (Jehovah in hebrew).

Of all the important events that helped develop Jewish Ethical Monotheism, I believe that the most crucial was the second covenant (in which God gave the holy book--or the 10 commandments--to Moses in order to complete their agreement.) God promised to protect and guide all of Moses’ descendents in exchange for all of them to follow and worship only him. The first commandment wouldn’t have been as crucial because it didn’t have any ethical aspect to it; it only described a monotheistic covenant.

The bible mentions many people that God uses in order to do his work on earth, many of which were on earth even before Jesus was even born. Early on in the Old Testament there are multiple people that are considered very important to God and his work on earth. The people that God used did not have to have a special skill or be someone well-known because God does not care about the earthly things we have, so most of the people he used in the Old Testament were just regular people. Some of these people include Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. Because of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam’s importance in the Old Testament we will discuss, each of them individually, which one God favors over the others, and why God favors that one person over the other two.

Moses’ sister Miriam came out and asked Pharaoh’s daughter if she would want a Hebrew woman to raise the child and Pharaoh’s daughter agreed. She gave Moses to Miriam, who took him to Jochebed. Pharaoh’s daughter later got him back and gave him the name Moses. He grew up as a prince with respect and royalty. He would deliver his people from pharaoh but didn’t understand it. God made him a ruler over them but they still rejected him, the same way Jesus was rejected. Moses and Jesus can be compared as they share some similarities. They were both favored by God and were rejected. Pharaoh sought to kill Moses because he had killed an Egyptian soldier, so he fled to a land called Midian because he would have find refuge there. One day, Moses sat by a well, he saw some women, getting water. The owner of the land came and told them to leave but Moses stood up for them and watered the flock. They told their father and he was brought into the family. The father sat him and he ate with them, later he gave his daughter Zipporah to him. She, later gave him a son. The Israelites cried out to God because they wanted to be free. One day Moses led his flock up a mountain,

Moses was a leader of the Hebrews and probably the most important figure in Judaism. He led the Hebrew people out of Egypt and into the Promise Land. His story is told in the book of Exodus, and begins when he was first born during the time that the pharaoh of Egypt declared that all male Hebrew babies were to be drowned at birth. Moses’ mother Yocheved, hid Moses and placed him in a basket in the reeds of the Nile River, where he was then found by the pharaoh’s daughter, who kept Moses and raised him as her own. In the story of Moses, he grows up and stumbles upon an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave. Out of anger Moses murders the Egyptian, and flees to Midian to escape his crime (Hays, 2000). In Midian, Moses rests besides a well,

context, Freud is to be seen as having reconstructed the biblical history in accordance with his

and its cognate, which is the "Jewish joke," that stand behind Freuds discovery of "internalization." It

Moses had an older brother, Aaron and older sister, Miriam. After his birth, his parents hid him for three months until they could no longer do so. The mother prepared an ark, laid him in it and left it in the reeds by the Nile riverbank (Gregory, pg. 45). The sister stood a far to watch what would happen to him and as Pharaoh 's daughter came down to bathe; she saw the child and took him as her own. Then without her knowledge, she had Jochebed brought in to nurse the baby. Therefore, Moses grows in the royal family and acquires wisdom in Egyptian ways, commanding armies and leading in victorious battle. As he grows, Moses sympathizes with his fellow Israelites after witnessing the harsh conditions they are forced to live and work and refuses to be regarded as Pharaoh’s daughter. Rather, he chooses to suffer affliction with his people until he notices an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, whom he murders and escapes upon discovery to Midian. It is here where his journey to save the Israelites from bondage begins. The promise of

Sigmund Freud was born on the sixth of May in 1856 in what is now Pribor in the Czech Republic, or at the time, Freiberg, a rural town in Moravia. The firstborn son of a merchant, Freud’s parents made an effort to foster his intellectual capacities despite being faced with financial difficulties. From an early age Freud had many interests and talents, but his career choices were limited away from his passion of medical research due to his family’s Jewish background, even though he was non-practicing, and his limited funds.

When considering religion, various theories by Sigmund Freud can be quite controversial yet interesting. Some of Freud’s theories and views with regards to religion involve; the origin of religion, the basis of guilt or sin for obedience, and God as a heavenly father a mere projection made by humans based on their needs. Before going into depth on some of the theories of Freud, we can gather from his book Totem and Taboo, that he was in fact of Jewish background and ultimately an atheist as he describes himself as “in his eternal nature a jew with no desire to alter that nature” but also “completely estranged from the religion of his father and any other religion” (Freud 1930). We can also gather that Freud had a reductionist approach, which argues “objects or beliefs, including super human entities, are nothing more than human constructions that can be ‘reduced’ to human basics”. (Nye 2009) Within this approach it continues to also reduce God to “merely what humans want him/her/it to be, a projection of one of more aspects of human behavior.” (Nye