Freud- Moses-and-Monotheism
Source: PDF
Quotes:
The apparently rationalistic religions of the East are in essence ancestor cults; therefore they stop short at an early stage of the reconstruction of
the past.
The most essential
difference apart from the name of their God
is that the Jewish religion entirely relinquishes
the worship of the sun, to which the Egyptian one
still adhered. When comparing the Jewish with
the Egyptian folk religion we received the
impression that, besides the contrast in principle,
there was in the difference between the two
religions an element of purposive contradiction.
This impression appears justified when in our
comparison we replace the Jewish religion by that
of Aton, which Ikhnaton as we know developed
in deliberate antagonism to the popular religion.
We were astonished and rightly so that the
Jewish religion did not speak of anything beyond
the grave, for such a doctrine is reconcilable with
the strictest monotheism. This astonishment
disappears if we go back from the Jewish religion
to the Aton religion and surmise that this feature
was taken over from the latter, since for Ikhnaton
it was a necessity in fighting the popular religion
where the death god Osiris played perhaps a
greater part than any god of the upper regions.
To be continued
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