La distinción mosaica o el precio del monoteísmo

Moses the Egyptian #2

by Jan Assmann, Guadalupe González Diéguez (Traducción)

Ya sea cristiana, judía o musulmana, tolerante, ilustrada o fundamentalista, cualquier religión monoteísmo es hija de una revolución religiosa acaecida hace 3.000 años: el paso de la multiplicidad de dioses al Dios único, absoluto y omnicomprensivo. Jan Assmann llama a ese desplazamiento la «distinción mosaica». El autor describe los cambios los cambios fundamentales que determinaron la traumática ruptura que supuso el paso del politeísmo al monoteísmo, de una religión primaria comunitaria a otra secundaria de carácter universal. Este cambio no solamente tiene un sentido teológico, como transformación de la idea de Dios en cuanto a su universalidad, sino que también conlleva una vertiente política, con el paso de religión cultual a una religión del libro. Pero no se trata tan sólo de la superación del politeísmo como expresión de la multiplicidad cosmoteísta: lo decisivo de la distinción mosaica es el establecimiento de religiones ciertas y religiones falsas, del conocimiento verdadero y la ignorancia, de la creencia o increencia. La ruptura se establece sobre la veracidad de la unicidad religiosa. Que esta unicidad se haya convertido en el curso de nuestra historia en una excusa para el odio y la exclusión convierte este ensayo en una provocación cultural al fundamentalismo religioso. Polémico y fascinante, en este ambicioso trabajo sobre los orígenes del monoteísmo Assmann sintetiza toda la concepción mnemohistórica que ya presentara en sus anteriores trabajos y combate aquellas opiniones que se han vertido en contra de la posición que mantuviera en Moisés, el egipcio. La presente edición incluye, además, un apéndice con cinco artículos de diferentes especialistas publicados al hilo de la controversia que sus teorías han suscitado.

Genres: Religion, History, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theology, Christianity, Judaism

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Assmann studied Egyptology and classical archaeology in Munich, Heidelberg, Paris, and Göttingen. In 1966-67, he was a fellow of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, where he continued as an independent scholar from 1967 to 1971. After completing his habilitation in 1971, he was named a professor of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg in 1976, where he taught until his retirement in 2003. He was then named an honorary professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Constance, where he is today.

In the 1990s Assmann and his wife Aleida Assmann developed a theory of cultural and communicative memory that has received much international attention. He is also known beyond Egyptology circles for his interpretation of the origins of monotheism, which he considers as a break from earlier cosmotheism, first with Atenism and later with the Exodus from Egypt of the Israelites.

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Monotheism ... and Its Consequences (9/24/2011)

Many (if not most) people, upon reading Jan Assmann's earlier book, "Moses the Egyptian: the Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism," took him to be advocating a return to pagan religiosity. Our author specifically denies that several times in this text. But what drew readers to his 'Moses' book is apparently not what drove our author to write it. This book before us was written to set the record straight. Our author is interested in memory, specifically cultural memory. And not only memories that everyone acknowledges, but also ones that are repressed, like the memory of the specific forms of religiosity that came before the rise of monotheism and continually reappear at the edges of our western society, culture and history. In this review I would like to concentrate on what he thought to be some of the consequences of this turn to monotheism from the earlier 'paganism' which preceded it.

First, being a 'mnemologist,' he is naturally interested in the transition from cult and ritual to text. Now, of course, he is not maintaining that our monotheists (our author calls them 'secondary' religions) do not have rituals; his point is that for them, ritual "is reduced to a supporting and supplementary role." Whereas for pagans (he refers to them as 'primary' or 'archaic' religions), "the text is embedded in ritual and subordinated to it". This turn from primary religion to these later 'book religions' was a pivotal moment in world history according to our author. "Writing and transcendence belong together on the side of secondary religions, just as ritual and immanence belong together on the side of primary religions." Regarding these archaic religions we are told that "interlinked with the principle of ritual continuity is the idea that the world needs to be held on its course. Ritual cultures or cult religions typically operate on the assumption that the universe would suffer, or even come to an end, if the rites ceased to be observed in the prescribed fashion."

Our author argues that the truly unique stance of paganism is not its polytheism, rather it is its insistence that the world is divine. Pagans most usually thought that there was indeed a single One above and behind all the various divine beings.
"The counterposition to monotheism does not claim 'God is Many,' but rather 'God is One and All.' It would therefore be misleading to label it polytheism. What is important is not that the divine be manifold, but that the fulness and richness of its innerworldly manifestations not be hemmed in by any dogmatic boundary lines. In essence, the issue here is the godliness of the world."
This is why our author prefers to define these primary religions as 'cosmotheism' (the belief that our mundane world partakes in the divine) rather than the expected 'polytheism'. Of course, over against this cosmotheism is the One God of the Monotheists who is above, and Other to, everything, - and He most decidedly is not a part of nature!

With the rise of the several monotheisms the Sacred (perhaps) irrevocably changes. For our cosmotheists and their rituals, the focus is on "the sacred as it is made manifest in the world." For our monotheists, "the sacred is no longer to be found in our world." The sacred is now found only in holy scripture. The sacred has left the world, it is now found in either transcendence or scripture. "This amounts to a complete volte-face. Rather than being used to stabilize ritual, writing takes its place." The World (land-sea-sky-sun-stars) is no longer sacred: "The step into the religion of transcendence was a step out of the world - one could almost speak in this context of an 'exodus' - into scripture." Our author regards this as a pivotal moment in our history. After this, the natural world itself really can only be, at bottom, an Idol!

We have left the magical world behind. Of course, this doesn't happen immediately, it is a long ongoing process that is not yet complete. But down this road, something like our secular modernity may be almost inevitable once 'book religions' rise. "Prophetic monotheism lacks natural evidence; it walks, as Saint Paul says, not in vision but in faith." But this particular faith is in a God Who is entirely separate from His Creation. What the sociologist Max Weber named 'disenchantment of the world' and the psychoanalyst Freud called 'progress in intellectuality' continually grows along this road. Consider yourself at least a sympathizer of cosmotheism if this doesn't entirely strike you as progress.

The question now is 'how have these sympathies survived?' That is another consequence of monotheism. "None of the new or secondary religions succeeded in completely wiping out the vestiges of the primary religion or religions on which they were built; rather, they frequently adopted such traces and adapted them to their own purposes." This is a process of 'syncretistic amalgamation'. The archaic sacred was not immediately wiped away as if by a sponge. The 'New,' in order to arise, must incorporate aspects of the 'Old'. Our author quotes Theo Sundermeier approvingly on this point: "Here we find an organic syncretism at work that is both inevitable and unobjectionable. The more this synthesis succeeds, the greater are the chances that the new religion will be able to establish itself as a viable popular religion." So you see, secondary religions must incorporate pre-existing 'sacred' material in order to be successful. Without such pre-existing material, one suspects that the religion would be largely ignored and then forgotten.

But our author adds that the origin of these syncretistic elements "has to be forgotten and made invisible." Assmann argues "that secondary or counterreligions develop a new form of unconsciousness by enriching themselves with elements of primary religious experience and religious practice, while at the same time having to reinterpret their semantics and refunction their forms to fit them to the new context." And it is from this 'crypt' of cultural unconsciousness that supposedly new religious movements often draw their ideas. Of course, as our author notes, this has some similarity to the Freudian notion of the 'return of the repressed'.

Freud was right about this much, there is always an unacknowledged depth. Out of these depths grow ever new syntheses of the contemporary and the archaic. These deep traces "forms a depth dimension, a 'crypt' of religious tradition, which, like language, bears within it much more knowledge and many more memories than those who live in that tradition can ever fully bring to consciousness." Not only does the individual mind have an unconscious, but culture does too! One suspects that just as psychoanalysis teaches us that all individuals are a bit neurotic so too all cultures, or at least all cultures formed around secondary religions, must also be a little 'crazy'. It is the existence of this crypt of memory that allows our author to say of our secondary religions that they, "are duplicitous; they bear encrypted within themselves the paganism they ostensibly reject."

A third consequence of monotheism, according to our author, is 'the invention of the inner self'. This occurs because monotheism at its inception "sharply delimits itself from its own other, a process for which 'Egypt' and 'Canaan' stand as the central symbols; and it gives itself the form of a 'covenant', modeled on a political alliance, according to which Israel not only agrees to become the people of god, but god likewise vows to become the god of a people." Our author understands this to mark a "conversion from primary to secondary religion, from a lower to a higher state of consciousness, allegiance, and commitment."

Of all this, primary religions knew nothing. They "do not separate themselves from something else, and they therefore have no need to distinguish themselves from 'culture' or to 'sectorally segregate' themselves within culture. Secondary or counterreligions foster a higher degree of consciousness because the distinction between true and false on which they rest must continually be drawn anew within the soul of the believer." (Our author often refers to the distinction between true and false religion as the 'Mosaic Distinction'.) It seems that the old pagan religions were religions almost exclusively of exteriority; one performed the appropriate rituals correctly at the prescribed time and one was done with it. But I doubt that one could ever be 'done' with the God who is interested in the recesses of our very souls!

Exteriority is easy; interiority is hard. Thanks to these secondary religions many distinctions, primarily between True and False Religion (but also between True Religion and 'science, art, politics', and also the natural world), we are told that the "the transition from primary to secondary religious experience is therefore also a consciousness raising experience." Now, if this experience sounds unhappy to you, you may well be a cosmotheist! Our author again approvingly quotes Theo Sundermeier (from an untranslated work) regarding this transition: "Now one can and must decide for the new. It is not enough to go through the motions, inner acceptance is required as well. Belief and discipleship are the order of the day, truth must be separated from lies. ... Now there is 'true' and 'false' religion."

There are people who read these last words and say, perhaps only to themselves, 'welcome to hell'. Our author concludes his discussion of this particular consequence of monotheism by saying, "the distinction between truth and lies does not just carve up external space, it cuts through the human heart as well, which for the first time becomes the stage upon which the religious dynamic is played out." Again, the archaic gods were gods of exteriority and performance; the One God Who Rules Alone is concerned exclusively with our interiority (i.e., our faith). And it is the resulting expansion of human interiority (both terrible and exhilarating) that has irrevocably changed our world.

The last consequence of monotheism that was especially important to our author is its status as what our author calls a 'counterreligion' and its relation to sin. Our secondary religions (i.e., our monotheisms) are counterreligions because they must oppose something that is 'untrue'. The first thing they oppose, of course, are the primary religions. Now, the type of 'sin' our author has in mind has nothing to do with the Biblical 'Fall of Man' (i.e., expulsion from Eden) and the story of Noah and the Flood. As our author points out, there "are numerous parallels to the fall and the flood; this concept of sin is thus nothing new and by no means first came into the world with Monotheism." The 'new form of sinfulness' that our author is interested in is found "in the dance around the Golden Calf."

Ultimately, the difference is that with our monotheisms, one must want to sin. Now, one could certainly, in the primary religions, dishonor the gods. Of course, we are told, the gods "can be neglected, insufficiently venerated, sinned against in a hundred different ways, for example by breaking one of the taboos associated with them, but one can choose neither to initiate nor to terminate a relationship with them." After all, the pagan gods are but names for the various forces in the world. It is obvious that "no one would ever contemplate denying the existence of divine forces. They are there for all to see, in the form of sun and moon, air and water, earth and fire, death and life, war and peace." All these things are either natural or social (i.e., collective); none of them require an inner decision on the part of the individual. My inner decision is no more responsible for war and peace (for the pagans, these too are personified as divine forces) than it is for keeping the sun and moon in their appointed paths.

But my inner decision, and mine alone, decides my relationship to the One True God. A terrible and exhilarating responsibility indeed! We are now forever alone with The One Who Is Forever Other. "In turning to face the world, the One and Only God finds no other partner than the people who believe in him and the human heart that yearns for him, since the world itself is bereft of all godliness." Each of us, alone with the Alone, "bears the weight of god's address to the world [...] Never before had man borne such a heavy responsibility...". I found this point in particular to be the most profound consequence of monotheism; I mean the unprecedented expansion of human interiority. I believe this expansion occurs in order for each of us to better meet the unfathomable depths on the One God Who is Forever Other. The depths within each of us (unconsciously) strive to mirror the Other Who cannot ever be imitated.

"The gods of polytheistic religions realized the forms in which they addressed the world in mutual obligations and constellations. In monotheism, the One God invests himself for the first time exclusively in humans and their capacity for love and fidelity. The correlate of this shift is an entirely new sense of inadequacy on the part of humans." Ah yes, sin. This is why the dalliance with the Golden Calf is of such importance to our author. We had given our word to be faithful to the One God, and we broke it. "The commandment to renounce false gods evidently meets with the greatest resistance in the human soul." So no, monotheism did not 'invent' sin; it invented a new kind of sin. And this is not to be considered a denunciation of monotheism by our author:
"I am not claiming that 'sin and guilt are the result of the division of the world through the Mosaic distinction,' merely that a new consciousness and conception of guilt came into the world with the distinction and the turn it brought about in the history of consciousness. This assertion does not imply any value judgment."

Perhaps a few concluding words on the 'Mosaic Distinction' between True and False Religion are in order. "Monotheistic religion [...] defines itself in the Exodus story by differentiating itself from Egypt. Egypt had to be left behind so the promised land of monotheism could be reached." Again, our author insists that this move is not to be deplored. Unfortunately, this never happens in an evolutionary manner. "Humankind would never have progressed to monotheism in the natural course of events, in the sense of a gradual evolution. Monotheism demands emigration, delimitation, conversion, revolution, a radical turning towards the new resulting from an equally radical break, abnegation, denial of the old." Paganism is the 'natural' form of religion; there is no 'progress' from it, only revolutionary rejection. The Exodus from Egypt was the first Revolution. One doubts we will ever see the last one.

Perhaps there may even be a revolution overturning our present religions! How? Well, the archaic remains of pagan religion still haunt our cultural unconscious. In fact, our author will make note of the "eruptive forcefulness with which this repressed dark side has continually returned to haunt the West: in the idea of a prisca theologia and in Renaissance hermeticism, in the ideas of natural religion, Spinozism, and pantheism in the Enlightenment and early Romanticism, and in the various neo-cosmotheisms, from the Munich cosmicists through to 'Hitler's God,' the Wicca cult, and other New Age religious fads."

As you can see, throughout post-medieval times, new religious movements have continually appeared. And all of them, according to our author, with a healthy dose of the archaic cosmotheism within them. Is there a religious revolution that overturns our secondary religions in the making? No one knows for sure. However, if it does come I believe we can be certain of one thing. It will be no mere return to ancient religiosity. The 'new', according to our author, always emerges out of a mixture of the contemporary and the archaic. I suspect that if a new religion were to arise it would be a mixture of the archaic belief in the 'divinity of the world' alongside the spiritual depth gained thanks to our several secondary religions. If this were ever to come to pass the apologists of this new religion would likely say that, 'the infinite exterior of our divine World and the eternal recesses of the in-dwelling Spirit had at last come to rest in each other arms'. ...Or so I imagine.

But is a new religion even possible? "The Hebrews in thrall to pagan idolatry are converted to monotheism by Moses, Paul converts Jews and gentiles to Christianity, Mohammed converts Jews, Christians, and infidels to Islam; and in all these situations of conversion the Mosaic distinction between true and false is reintroduced and tightened. The Mosaic distinction must constantly be drawn anew." It seems that the Mosaic distinction between true and false belief is itself a permanent revolution! Ultimately, all theology is local. Each and every religious formation reacts, negatively, to the beliefs that came before them; of course, along with this there is, as one would expect, also a reaction to what is unique in its local circumstances too. Thus what our author calls 'cosmotheism' (the entire world is divine) precedes monotheism (the Divinity is entirely separate from the world) which in turn will (eventually) be overthrown by something else. So yes, perhaps it is not impossible that a new religion, especially in a time of protracted trouble, would again be able to rise. But the 'Price of Monotheism', that is, the consequence of humanity first drawing the Mosaic distinction between true and false religion, is always repression of what came before it. And so, each new religious formation can never truly bring a lasting peace.

This is because the 'denied' (i.e., the overturned religion), whatever it might be, becomes at least a part of the newly minted archaic, and there it slumbers fitfully in the deep recesses of culture. ...Until the next crisis calls it forth.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four start for the following: 1. Good introduction to and synthesis of interesting ideas like primary vs secondary religions, the Axial Age, mnemohistory, and others. These are not the author's original ideas, but he does incorporate them in a way that is very informative. 2. Honest good-will attempts throughout the book to engage with critics of his ideas and address their concerns 3. Development and correction of some of his previous ideas or conclusions. It's seems rare among scholars of religion to admit to making a wrong conclusion and correct themselves. It was a pleasure to see this evolution and refinement of ideas in action.

But just because I though it was a pleasure to read doesn't mean I agree with most of this book's main points. They seem solid on the surface, but disintegrate if you examine them too closely. Which is probably inevitable for any book that tries to over-generalize all of world religions ever into a neat series of dichotomies. The pattern mostly holds... except for those two-thirds of cases where it doesn't, which are either brushed off or conveniently omitted.

In the end, I came away with new knowledge of the religious history of Egypt, more knowledge of Maimonides, and a clearer understanding of some of Freud's, Jaspers's, and others' ideas about religion. So I count this reading experience as a win. But I would not recommend this book to anyone who is not at least familiar with "pagan" religions or Christian theology. This book is very vague and imprecise on those topics, to the point that it might even be misleading. It definitely should be taken with a grain of salt.

[Rodney Harvill · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this book, Dr. Assmann contrasts monotheism with what he calls cosmotheism. While God in monotheism is transcendent, separate from and over the universe, the gods of polytheism are immanent members of the universe, the world that we experience; hence, the term cosmotheism or world (cosmos) theism. Perhaps we could characterize polytheism or cosmotheism as a form of pantheism with personality.

A key distinction between monotheism and cosmotheism has do with truth claims. The ancient pagans did not consider the existence of their gods to exclude the existence of others and often equated their gods with the gods of other peoples, gods that had different names and attributes but were sufficiently similar as to be comparable. For example, Dr. Assmann noted Mesopotamian tables of divine equivalencies correlated up to six different pantheons. In contrast monotheism posits that there is only one God and no other. Any other purported gods are false gods, mere products of human imagination. In other words, polytheistic cosmotheism is inclusive and tolerant of other beliefs, while monotheism, in contrast, is exclusive and intolerant. There is but one God and no other. Now, that is an emphatically exclusive truth claim! This intolerance has sometimes manifested itself in persecution of those holding contrary beliefs, but it often provokes hatred by those excluded by those truth claims. For example, I grew up in a small Christian sect that believed anyone who did not adhere to its doctrines was not Christian. Not surprisingly, it was often hated and mocked by Christians who weren’t part of it. If someone so much as heard from the grapevine that I was part of this group, it was not unusual for him to have harsh words with me even if I had said nothing to him. True, one person once scolded me for saying nothing to him if I believed that he was condemned to hell, but he was the exception rather than the rule. If someone who has been taught to love his neighbor as himself can so react to a contrary truth claim, what hope is there for someone who lacks that background?

The transcendence of monotheism has some interesting implications. Dr. Assmann, an Egyptologist, notes that the Pharaoh was “at the same time the medium of salvation and the embodiment of divine presence in the world.” In other words, if you want to please the gods, you have to please the king. Under monotheism, however, the king is on equal terms with the common man before God. God is ultimately sovereign. This point makes me wonder if the medieval divine right of kings was a return by Christian kings to a pagan concept that just happened to be advantageous to them politically, similar to Constantius’ preference for Arian monism because God in one person made for a stronger argument for concentrated political power than did God in three persons.

Dr. Assmann also notes that monotheism places law and justice into the purview of heaven and divine will. The Egyptian gods judged by human wisdom and not by divine law. A man lived in harmony with the gods if he lived in harmony with his fellow man. In other words, justice was defined by man, and the gods followed the lead of man in their judgments. Biblical monotheism, by contrast, presents God as both lawgiver and judge. As a result, it was possible for human judgment and divine judgment to diverge. The king could find himself opposing and opposed by God. Although Dr. Assmann doesn’t mention it, there is a modern concept known as legal positivism, in which right, wrong and justice are defined exclusively by the state, a modern secular version of the pagan role of the king. There is nothing new under the sun.

Dr. Assmann covers more ground than this, and there are some points with which I disagree. For example, he doesn’t consider Moses to be a historical figure, and it isn’t clear to me if he considers the revelations of biblical monotheism to be divine or just a human innovation. Regardless, he has some good insights into the nature of monotheism, and I was able to learn much from reading his book.

[Rene · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Usk tähendab selles uues mõistes tõekspidamist, mida ma ei saa teaduslikult põhjendada, kuid mis sellegipoolest pretendeerib kõrgema astme tõele. Teadmine, ei ole usk, kuna teadmine käib üksnes suhtelise ja ümberlükatava, aga see-eest põhjendatava ja kriitilist verifitseeritava tõe kohta; usk ei ole teadmine, kuna usk käib tõe kohta, mis pole kriitiliselt verifitseeritav, aga on see-eest absoluutne, ümberlükkamatu ja ilmutuslik."

"Siinai mäel tuli maailma rahvaste vahele vihameel. Teised rahvad on kadedad valitud rahvale, kellele Siiani toora anti."

"Kujutused on jumaliku maagilise vahendamise meediumid. Elavat jumalat seevastu ei saa maagilisele kohale manada, ta ilmutab end, millal ja kuidas ise heaks arvab. Jumal ei vaja ka kuningat, kes esindaks teda kohtumõistja ja seaduseandjana."

"Monoteistide jaoks tähendab piltide lõksus olemine maailma lõksus olemist. Pilte kummardades seovad paganad end sellega, mis on loodud ja mööduv."

[Carly Brianne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting first chapter, but arguments can be easily picked apart. Seriously overreaches and constructs weird artificial dichotomies to prove a point. Also, don't tell Jews their Temple is superfluous because as a religion of the book they've evolved beyond the need for ritual. Just one example of the bizarre arguments in this book.

[katie luisa borgesius · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was a great intro to 🍑🧔. accessible, unburdened by academic affectations, and a central thesis both fertile and relatively simple. will read more by him (and by his wife Aleida, whose contributions to his work I've been told are understated).

[withdrawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay. This is not the book that I was expecting. It is more of an apologetic for an earlier book, Moses the Egyptian (1997)the publication of which led to Assmann being labeled with every dirty epithet deemed printable in academia: the worst being "anti-semite". That's a hard one to squirm out from under whether it is true or not.

So the problem with the book is that while the author is trying to put forth a logical set of arguments, he is constantly trying to explain a) why he is not to be seen as an anti-semite and, b) how he sees how some of his arguments could have been misconstrued that way. While I understand his need to try to clear his besmirched name, I would have enjoyed the book more if I had been able to read it without all of the tangential arguments.

That all being said, I must say that I enjoyed following the gyrations of his arguments and that I, for what it's worth, do not believe the author to be an anti-semite. Just an innocent academic who didn't think through how he could be read as opposed to how he intended to be read. Once burned: twice cautious.

Assmann is attempting to trace the development of Monotheism, in the instance of Judaism, as a move from a 'primary religion' to a 'secondary religion'. The marking principles are the development of a monotheistic(from polytheistic); an "antagonistic" self understanding based on the concepts of 'chosen people' and, more importantly, on the concepts of truth and falsity (they being the sole possessors of the truth); and "progress in intellectuality". There is much more that I have not cited. The most important is the distinction between what is true and what is false, "The Mosaic Distinction".

With this distinction in mind, the Jews, and later the other monotheisms, became an exclusive group (sort of a George W. Bush view of you're either one of us or you're the enemy or at, at least, not one of us).

The arguments of this book, while interesting, are often like my childhood attempts to fly by jumping off the garage roof wearing a cape: bruises and sprains but no loft. Using the concept of mnemohistory traces Jewish monotheism back to the time a Akenaten, who first introduced a form of monotheism to Egypt thousands of years before the supposed time of the somewhat mythical Moses and the Exodus. Moses thus has absorbed this concept from the Egyptian culture in which he grew up, even though most of Akenaten's record has been destroyed by his immediate successor, and passes it on to the Jewish people. Moses thus leads the Jewish people out of Egypt (polytheism) and to the borders of Canaan (monotheism) although a number of centuries of struggle were required for the ideas to stick, including a great deal of back sliding. His theory also includes that the first anti-semites were the Egyptians who came to resent their former slaves running off like that and establishing a superior (i.e. monotheistic; exclusive; intellectual society). Apparently it may be possible to trace today's unfortunately thriving anti-semitism back to early Egyptian myth. The Egyptians may take this suggestion badly necessitating another book by Assmann.

A large part of the book is given over to an analysis of Freud's book Moses and Monotheism and some references to Totem and Taboo. Assmann seems to be using Freud to support his theory while highlighting the differences between the two theories. There are a great many similarities although he does acknowledge that Freud was a bit of a pseudo-scientist. My general impression is that both of them are using their over-active imaginations to fill in the gaps in theory. Of course, Freud made a career of doing that. I cannot imagine why so much space has been dedicated to Freud in our age where only the French, a few Eastern Europeans under French influence and a couple of Germans still take his science seriously (Assmann is one of the Germans.) (This is my bias put clearly on display.) Perhaps Assmann is just trying to show that his theory has some Jewish support. (Don't quote me on that.)

This book is fascinating to read, if not easy to swallow. The arguments are skillfully developed, if not a bit imaginative. While there is a certain logic, there is no necessity to that logic. The arguments, for the most part, have the same necessity as the Pentecostal pastor's Sunday morning exegesis. If you want to believe it, you can, but don't get hung up on the details. But I enjoyed reading the book in spite of its faults.

I gave three stars for creativity and a certain revelation of the history of Egypt and a number of new ways to think about the rise of early Jewish monotheism. An intellectual exercise.

[Maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

A relatively short book written 4 years after Moses the Egyptian to further develop the ideas discussed in the older book and to answer some of the critics thrown at him.

The people who can read German should get the original German book rather than this translation as it contains some essays written criticizing Moses the Egyptian, and prompted the writing of this book to clarify and to answer.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very thought-provoking book about the author's take of the Mosaic distinction (the distinction between true & false religion), which, as the name implies the started with Moses after leaving Egypt.
It's not easy reading, and even I could stand to reread it again in conjunction with his first book, Moses the Egyptian. But overall, it's a book that offers a lot to think about in regards to true/false religion that arose with the Mosaic brand of iconoclastic monotheism.

[Vander Alves · Rating 2 out of 5]

Insights interessantes com relevância contemporânea, mas o autor é repetitivo e fica se justificando pelas críticas legítimas às religiões abraâmicas.