Reading Exodus together with Freud’s Moses and Monotheism – Biblical Sources of the ‘Apocalyptic’
While self-isolating this December as a result of the pandemic, I immersed myself in reading the Book of Exodus, as well as Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism. [i]
The experiences of Moses and the Israelites in Exodus probably transpired during their forty years in the deserts east of Egypt. First, there was the liberation of the Israelite slaves from the Egyptians through the shifting of waters in the Red Sea Rift. These shifts could have been caused by a tsunami, which would create a temporary tidal recess followed by the surge of drowning waves that ultimately overwhelmed the Egyptians. There followed encounters with volcanoes and earthquakes, causing the Israelites to undergo more life-altering changes. This happened in the vicinity of the Red Sea Rift. They survived those calamitous threats because the Lord God gave them hope and His assurance of deliverance from ‘Apocalyptic’ events in order to awaken them to call upon Him in their distress.
Sigmund Freud was not a historian in the strict sense; neither was he a philosopher of religion nor a theologian. In Moses and Monotheism, he did what he did best; he dug into the dark areas of the unconscious where others dared not tread. Working in the field of psychiatry for many years, I learned to pay attention to any ideas put forth by Freud, whose insights penetrated emotional depths. In this work, for instance, he explores the conflicted relationship between the Israelites and their religious teacher, Moses.
Freud lived in Holocaust times, but regarded himself as a non-believing Jew. He was much influenced by Ernst Sellin (1922) who had suggested that the Israelites actually killed Moses. Sellin finds evidence for this awful crime against the founding father of Judaism in passages from Numbers (Ch. 25) and Hosea (5:1). Freud and Sellin speculated what happened afterwards, suggesting the Israelites embraced the volcano god of the Midianites, who were distantly descended from Abraham. These people inhabited an area of the Red Sea Rift that has always been subject to volcanoes and earthquakes. Freud viewed the Midianite volcano god as the terrifying “demon Jahve,” who purportedly won the Israelites over by promising to help them conquer the Land of Canaan. More on all these speculations later.
A Christian raised on the Holy Bible, I tried to make sense of these radical speculations. Some, such as areas of potential volcanic activity, required research. I believe there is religious understanding to be gained from the spiritual transformations undergone by Israelites when confronted with the terrifying spectacle of a fiery mountain consumed by smoke. Going forward, it is worth remembering that, as taught by the Lord God through Moses, spiritual values override earthly preoccupations.
Freud, however, believed that Moses’ teachings could be ascribed to Pharaoh Akhenaten (1350 B.C.E.), whom he idealized as the first monotheist. Akhenaten, though, was disgraced and considered a religious heretic by the Egyptian priesthood because he had abandoned the tradition of polytheism. With the foregoing contradictions in mind, I tried to follow Freud’s line of questioning about Exodus. Freud dug as deep as he could into the dark, interior conflicts that challenged human psyches in those days; I tried to dig deeper still. Today, we continue to dwell in much ‘darkness,’ especially in our reluctance to acknowledge apocalyptic-type, climatic threats.
To Freud, Moses was an Egyptian nobleman intent on adapting Akhenaten’s Aton-religion. Nevertheless, he saw that the positive teachings of the original Mosaic religion remained “a dormant tradition,” and a powerful influence on the spiritual life of the Jewish people (1955:87). He ventured to suggest the Mosaic God ‘Enabled the people of Israel to surmount all their hardships and to survive until our time.’ (1955:62). The Godhead of Moses, was to Freud, a humanitarian god of great compassion, inclusive of all people. Seemingly this idealized godhead was at odds with the terrible circumstances through which Freud was forced to live during his last stage of life. He was driven out of his homeland by the arrival of the Nazis in Austria. The Fuhrer was determined to ‘purify’ the Nordic races by totally eradicating all Jews. In his time of adversity, Freud found consolation in the following spiritual conception of Moses’ Godhead.
“To one part of the people the Egyptian Moses had given another and more spiritual conception of God, a single God who embraces the whole world, one as all-loving as he was all-powerful, who, averse to ceremonial and magic, set humanity as its highest aim a life of truth and justice. “ (Freud, 1955:41)
As for the Godhead known to Moses, biblical scholars commonly refer to Him as Yahweh. This comes from Exodus Ch.3. One day Moses led the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law “Beyond the wilderness … to Horeb the mountain of God”; and in that place “The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of bush…” Moses was surprised to see the bush was not consumed in the fire (Ex. 3:1-3). As Moses talked with a God he could not see, he asked to know God’s name, and God said: “I AM WHO I AM.” (Ex. 3:14). Judaist scholar Amihai Gottwald (1989: 211) explains this divine name derives from the Hebrew words spoken by the Lord God: “ehyeh asher ehyeh.” Specifically, he connects ‘ehyeh’ with the name Yahweh. [ii] Israeli archaeologist, Amihai Mazar (1992:366), points to an Egyptian text that identified the land of the Shasu (or Habiru), sometimes called the land of ‘Yahu,’ by the Egyptians. Mazar says this is, “Possibly a distortion of the God of Israel.” [iii] Yet another variant on the antiquity of the name of the Lord God known as Yahweh to Moses.
As mentioned, Freud saw Moses as a native Egyptian, though he observed that, by tradition, Moses was born into the Levite tribe. Presumably, after Moses fled Pharaoh’s anger to live among the Midianites, he assimilated aspects of their culture. He spent 20 years among these descendants of Abraham, having married Zipporah, daughter of Jethro, a priest of the Midianite volcano god. In Exodus 3:6 and again in Ex. 6:2, the Lord God spoke of Himself to Moses as being the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (and of the Midianites). But, in my understanding of Yahweh’s declaration: “ I AM WHO I AM,” these words (in their English translation) affirmed to Moses the Reality of His Existence. Is it not fitting that the Lord God manifested His supra-physical superiority to the more primitive fire-god of the Midianites through the burning bush that did not burn?
In due course, I shall analyse the texts for their specificity regarding Moses’ ascents to the Holy Mountain. I concur with Freud that one (or more) volcanically active holy mountain must have been located in the Red Sea Rift. I suppose the Israelites’ encounters with such volcanism would have been powerfully transforming, challenging their faith and trust in God’s deliverance. This great theme, central to Exodus, remained integral to the biblical themes belief of the Israelites’ descendants in their writings on the ‘Apocalyptic.’ Hebrew prophets, great temple visionaries, whenever they introduced fiery elements into their prophetic writings, they revived the memory of the Godhead’s higher “Glory of Light,” which had been experienced by the Israelites even within the inferno of the holy mountain enveloped in smoke and flames.
The radical psychiatrist, Stanislav Grof, writing in the 1980’s, says that in dealing with psychotherapeutic eliciting of traumatic memories, clinicians find the following:
“Memories of serious physical trauma, such as episodes of near drowning, injuries, accidents, operations, and diseases, appear to be of greater importance than those of psychological traumas emphasized by contemporary psychology and psychiatry.” (1985:37). [iv]
Israelite prophets, drawing upon archaic memories of traumatizing events such as in Exodus, remained mindful of catastrophic possibilities in the world of nature. Reviewers of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism see it as dealing with his own life-threatening difficulties. At Freud’s advanced age, he was forced to leave Austria because of the Nazis’ determination to rid Europe of Jews. At that time, dying of cancer. Freud faced considerable physical threat and adversity. No wonder he dwelled upon the Midianites’ demon god, Jahve.
Gottwald establishes religious linkage between the Israelites and the Midianites of the Red Sea Rift region (1989:195). He points to the archaeological discovery of a tent-shrine in an ancient Egyptian copper mine near the Gulf of Eilat, the location of ancient Midia. It looks like the tent of meeting described in Numbers 21:8-9. Gottwald observes that some take this as support for the Midianite origins of Yahwism, but he writes: “ Of course, the opposite explanation is not impossible, namely, that Moses introduced Yahwism to the Midianites.”
As mentioned, Freud thought deeply about Ernest Sellin’s as yet untranslated earlier German writings. While not a biblical scholar, Sellin, an archaeologist, thought that certain Old Testament passages implied that Moses had been killed by one of the Israelites, in keeping with a belief born of longstanding oral tradition. [v] In Numbers Ch. 25, it tells that Phineas, grandson of Aaron, killed another Israelite, Zimri, because the latter had brought a Midianite woman into the Israelite community. Sellin argued that Zimri was a “stand-in” for Moses. Moses was the one who married Zipporah, daughter of Jethro, priest of the Midianite fire-god. I believe Sellin’s weak argument over-interprets, given the paucity of other facts.
As suggested, Israelite experiences of volcanic Midia lay deep and dimly remembered in the collective unconscious (in the Jungian sense) of their descendants To Freud (1955:39), the volcano-god Jahve was a threatening demon,in his words: “He is an uncanny, bloodthirsty demon who walks by night and shuns the light of day.” Biblical scholars find it strange that Ezekiel (6th century B.C.E.) in cursing the King of Tyre, wrote of his origins in Eden (southern Iraq). Nightmarishly, Ezekiel conflated that West Semitic ancestry, similar to Israelites, with features of the fiery landscape where the Israelites once lived among the Midianites.
“You were in Eden, the garden of God, every precious stone was your covering ….With an anointed cherub as guardian I placed you, you were on the holy mountain of God; you walked among the stones of fire….So I brought out fire from within you; it consumed you, and I turned you to ashes on the earth….” (Ezekiel 28:13-14, 18)
To Freud, the heroic and purely Egyptian figure of Moses must have been a member of the household of some reigning pharaoh. Did Moses live during, or shortly after, the reign of Akhenaten (1350-1333 BCE)? Formerly Amenhotep IV, the pharaoh changed his name to conform with his new Aton-religion. Freud wrote (1939:26) that the Aton symbol of the solar disc had once been represented by “a small pyramid and a falcon.” Then Freud noted that Akhenaten’s “almost rationalist” symbol represented what he said was, “a round disk from which emanated rays of light terminating in human hands.” ( Freud 1955:26)
I refer those of you who have read my previous writings on this site to the vision of Christmas, 2004. You might agree with its conceptual resemblance to Akhenaten’s depiction of a Divinity extending blessings into the light. In this vision I saw a golden light falling into a small space over a hilltop in the West Bank, Israel, where it dissolved into a rocky outcrop. Then I saw a giant hand/arm reach down into that hard rock, transforming it into a brilliant light energy.
While writing Moses and Monotheism, Freud struck out in another direction, for towards the end of how life circumstances had “radically changed.” (1955:69-71). Previously he lived under the protection of the Catholic Church and feared to publicise ideas he now recorded. Sadly, he remarked that when the Nazis invaded Austria, the Catholic Church showed itself as “a broken reed,” unable to afford protection to Jews. Safe in London, he wrote:“ I find the kindliest welcome in beautiful, free generous England … I live now relieved from oppression and happy that I can speak and write .. I dare to make public the last part of my essay.” (1955:70).
Freud embarked upon his psychoanalytic analysis (1955: 111-112) of the Christian Holy Communion as follows. The believer “Incorporates the flesh and blood of the Redeemer,” but he hastened to add they did this, “in its tender and adoring sense, not aggressive.” He linked this sacramental feast to the original primal crime of ‘the murder of the Father by the Sons.’ The feasting which followed, though meant to propitiate the progenitor-deity ultimately dethroned the original Godhead. Freud believed that, “The Mosaic religion was a Father religion, Christianity became a son religion.” He wrote:
“The Christian religion did not keep to the lofty heights of spirituality to which the Jewish religion had soared… It [Christianity] was not inaccessible to the penetrations of superstitions, magical and mystical elements, which provided a great hindrance to the spiritual development of the two following millennia.” (1955:112)
I disagree with Freud’s dismissing of the “mystical elements” in Christianity, or in any compelling experience of the sacred, such as experienced by his ancestors in Exodus. The more I read about Moses’ holy mountain ascents, the more I saw that Freud and Sellin were probably right to assign some of these locations to Midia rather than Sinai. But I also came to believe that in the mystical sense, Moses became a holy man of God; his spiritual transfiguration was attained through his acceptance of the challenges of ascending a mountain – that might have been spitting out rocks, shooting up flames and itself encircled in clouds of smoke.
To later Christians, Moses’ earlier transfiguration, as well as Elijah’s, were both recalled in the gospel writings. The disciples of Jesus witnessed all three men: Jesus, Moses and Elijah, sitting together on Mount Tabor in Galilee. “Jesus was transfigured, his face shone like the sun his clothes became dazzling white.” (Matt. 17:2 and 5) This evokes Moses on his descent from the Holy Mountain (Ch. 34). A further echo occurred when the disciples saw all three covered in a cloud of glory. “While he [Jesus] was speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them…” Greek Orthodox theologians made the Spiritual Transfiguration on Tabor the center of their faith. In their mystical traditions, Moses was equal to any saint in the Christian Church.
As the Lord God said to Moses, His purpose was to make of them “A holy nation and a kingdom of priests.” To do this they had to move away from their Canaanite-cultured traditions, exemplified in the archaic language of the ‘Song of Praise to the Lord,’ attributed to Moses and found in Ex. 15:1-18. Supposedly it was written after their escape from Egypt, which meant that was before Moses received the God’s commandments. (Ex. 20:1-17 In particular it predated the Second Commandment, which prohibited the rendering of God’s image in nature.
The excerpt quoted below from this Song of Praise shows a poeticized anthropomorphic Godhead, overpowering humans with the waves of the sea.
“Pharaoh’s chariots and army he cast into the sea; his picked officers were sunk in the Red Sea. The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone … in the greatness of your majesty you overthrew your adversaries … At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up, the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea..” (Ex. 15:4-5 and 7-8)
The Israelites were learning not to be afraid of the strength of the forces of nature, as long as the Lord God was with them. The extraordinary powers of the sea, thus stirred upwards, could have been due to a tsunami created by undersea quakes in the unstable Red Sea Rift.
Let us compare Moses’ Song of Praise to other contemporary Canaanite writings in the ancient Kingdom of Ugarit, 1400-1200 B.C.E. (Gottwald, 1989:66-67). In the Syrian coastal site, Ras Shamra, in 1929, archaeologists discovered these early Canaanite writings, closely related to early Hebrew. Their poetically-styled epics dramatized a discourse among the gods, and were expressive of the admiration aroused in humans by the power and dynamism of earthly elements. The Epic of Ba’al, quoted below, explores the effect of the Eastern Mediterranean storms at sea. The Ba’al texts are taken from Helmer Ringgren (1973: 147-148). [vi]
Ba’al, the Canaanite storm god, “He who rides on the clouds,’ and his sister Anath, warrior goddess, each battled with and defeated the “Sea,” or Yamm in the Canaanite-Hebrew. Anath declares; “Verily I have smitten Yamm … I have defeated the dragon.. “ Another oft-quoted passage from the Epic of Ba’al has the god of death/drought, Mot (Canaanite-Hebrew) addressing him as follows:
“When you crushed Lotan, the swift serpent, and made an end of the coiled serpent, the tyrant with seven heads, the heavens drooped and hung loose like the belt on your clothes (see here is Baal, the rain-bringer amassing his storm clouds); and I (Mot) was consumed like blood-red funeral meats and died. Truly you [Baal] shall climb down into the mouth of Mot the son of god, into the miry throat of the hero, the beloved of El [El is the father of the gods who sits on his mountain throne, called ‘great and wise, and his grey hairs instruct him’).”
Canaanite poetic metaphors persisted among later Hebrew prophets, in an effort to show the superiority of the God of Israel. Isaiah wrote: “On that day the Lord with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan, the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will kill the dragon that is in the sea” (Isa.27:1), i.e. Canaanites’ storms at sea.
Returning to Moses and Monotheism, Freud observes as part of his exploration of the demon-god Jahve that while the Sinai mountains are not volcanic, there are sporadically active volcanoes along the western border of Arabia. One of these mountains was probably Sinai-Horeb, Jahve’s abode as referenced in Exodus. (1955:39). Of course, the Israelites wandered widely across the eastern deserts. In Chapter 18, prior to any holy mountain episode, Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, came out to meet with Moses and the Israelites. Then they were “In the wilderness where Moses was encamped at the mountain of God” (Ex. 18:5). Jethro gave Moses detailed advice for organizing the social aspects of the community.
As mentioned, Jethro’s native Midia lay in the vicinity of north-west Arabia near the Gulf of Aqaba in Jordanand Eilat in Israel, which open into the Red Sea Rift. David Rothery (2015: 31-32) ascribes two volcanoes to this area. In his map several more volcanoes run down the western lands of Arabia next to the Red Sea Rift. This is a fault line reaching deep into the earth; the waters here also run deep. It is not only subject to volcanic eruptions but also to earthquakes. Rothery says that this rift in the earth’s surface is both because the crust is thinner, and because two or three tectonic plates in the Red Sea Rift region rub against each other, pulling the land masses apart. Eventually, when land ceases to obstruct it, the ocean water will pour forth and create another ocean here.[vii]
By referencing Rothery’s map, we see that Freud rightly pointed out that Exodus’ description of a mountain with flames, plumes of smoke, and rumbling earthquakes is strong evidence for Moses’ holy mountain belonging to the volcanic region of the Red Sea Rift.
After Moses’ and the Israelites encountered Jethro, he returned “to his own country” (Ch.18:27). Exodus 19:1-2, indicated the timing for the first holy mountain ascent. It was three months after the Israelites had departed Egypt and around the time of the new moon. In this context they were in the wilderness of Sinai, supposedly at Mount Horeb; no mention was made of the mountain as on fire, or shuddering with interior quakes. The Lord God called Moses to ascend. While there he obtained the following messages for his people.
“Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation..” (Ex. 19:3-6)
The next text does describe a mountain on fire, and terribly frightening to the Israelites:
“Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended upon it in fire; the smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, while the whole mountain shook violently.”
Moses went up on the mountain where the Lord God said he was to warn the people not to go, “Set limits around the mountain to keep it holy.” (Ex. 19:23). This mountain, holy to God, held exceptional importance because it was here Moses received the Ten Commandments. Although the text designates Sinai as the place of reception, the reality is surely that this mountain lay near the Red Sea Rift. The powerful volcanic imagery lent an evocative backdrop to the scenario, as the quaking echoed trumpet calls heralding the Ten Commandments, Ex. 20:1-17. Thereafter:
“When all the witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance …. Moses said to the people, ‘Do not be afraid for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so you do not sin…” (Ex. 20:18-20)
At the end, it says, “ The people stood at a distance, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.” (Ex 20:21). This later verse, lifted out of its Old Testament context, attracted the Greek Christian mystic, the Pseudo-Dionysius (5th-6th century CE.). To Dionysius, Moses faced the great challenge of ascending and entering an unknown place of ‘darkness.’
In Exodus 24:, quoted below, Moses reached up into the domain of sanctity. The Lord God was Present not just to Moses but to some of his fellow elders of Israel. The Glory of the Lord was revealed not in a tent or temple, but on this mountainous rock. This evokes of Freud’s comments on the heights of spirituality to which the ancient Jewish religion soared. (This episode was meaningful to the later prophet Ezekiel, see Ezekiel 1:26, for his vision of a higher “throne in appearance like sapphire.” )
“ Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and elders, went up [the holy mountain], and they saw the God of Israel. Under his feet there was something like pavement of sapphire stone like the heaven for clearness…. [Moses left the others to wait for him] … Moses went up on the mountain, the cloud covered it for six days. On the seventh day… the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire in the sight of Israel. Moses entered the cloud and was on the mountain for forty days and nights.” (Ex. 24:9-18)
Exodus 34: Moses spent forty days and nights on the mountain, writing the covenant with God that would become the ten commandments on tablets. On his return to the people:
“Moses came down from Mount Sinai… the two tablets of the covenant in his hand… Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him…” (Ex. 34:29-30).
So bright was Moses’ countenance that he covered his face with a veil, although the people had already witnessed his spiritual transfiguration by the Lord God.
Freud noted a key difference between the early Jewish religion and the Egyptians; the Egyptians ascribed “popularity” to “The death-god Osiris, the ruler of that other world, whereas the Jewish religion denied any possibility of an existence in the after-life. Freud acknowledged “The belief in a life beyond can well be reconciled with a monotheistic religion.” (1955:28). In his consideration of Akhenaten’s solar monotheism, he quotes from Akhenaten’s hymn to the Aton-god: “Thou only God, there is no other God than thee.” (1955: 24.) Another quote, a spiritual idea of the Aton: “He [Akhenaten] worshipped the sun not as a material object, but as a symbol of a divine being whose energy was manifested in his rays.” (1955:23)
We now possess previously hidden translations of Ancient Egyptian tomb writings about the mysteries of the other-world. These writings went back a century or more before Akhenaten, to the reign of Pharaoh-Queen Hatshepsut (1450 BCE). The texts, as recorded in kings’ tombs narrated, both in writing and pictures, the sun god’s nocturnal journeying through Osiris’ realm. In What is in the Netherworld (exploring the Amduat) by Erik Hornung (1999:27-41) recounts how, as the sun god lay dying in the arms of Osiris, he was astonishingly resurrected and revitalised at midnight. Also revived was the soul of the newly deceased king traveling on the solar barque with the sun god. Horus, son of Osiris, sitting in the boat with them, assisted in the resurrection by protecting the healing eye, which would help ignite the transformative light. Below is an excerpt taken from the Amduat. [viii]
“As ba [meaning soul], Re and Osiris united at the deepest point in the nocturnal journey…. At this critical juncture the kings of Upper and Lower Egypt are envisioned with symbols of sceptres, crowns and uraei….to be present at the resurrection of the deceased pharaoh…other gods of the earth and waters are present… At about midnight, the sun shines anew…”
The epic goes on to detail the enormously great difficulties that were overcome by the spiritual travellers. Only at the end, with other gods and goddesses helping, were many worthy souls collected and taken to a higher realm of abundant Light, signifying the radiance of a celestial dawn. This tale of the sun god’s nocturnal journey was created by the Egyptian priests and scribes to reassure kings of their existence in the Light-world beyond death.
Great pharaohs of the 19th dynasty (post-Akhenaten), Seti I and Ramesses II, went to Abydos, the legendary burial place of Osiris, where they built the Osireion complex of chapels and memorial temples. Today these walls and ceilings are admired for their exquisite astronomical depictions of the sun-moon relationship and constellations. Human-figured numerical counts of night-sky phenomena replicated Senenmut’s calendar, first seen in Hatshepsut’s reign in 15th century BCE. The Ramesses listed all preceding pharaohs by their names, omitting Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, and General Haremhab, who assumed power when the lineage of the former two royal pharaohs ended.
As we saw in Freud’s discussion of Judeo-Christian relationships, Freud accused Christianity of having “dethroned the Father.” In view of the Exodus texts quoted above, and preserved in Christianity, this was perhaps unfair. The passage of centuries and changes in liturgical language have resulted in Christians often referencing ‘God the Father Almighty,’ in keeping with Exodus 3 and 6, where God said He was the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. As far back as Genesis, we find a progression of ‘Holiness’ from Abraham to Jacob’s vision of angels, followed by a further leap to Moses in Exodus, who ascended the holy mountain and spoke with the Lord God ‘face to face.’
Jacob saw a ladder or staircase which linked earth to heaven, traversed by human-like angelic beings. Unlike Moses, Jacob did not ascend the ladder to union with the Godhead. But Jacob wrestled with an angel of God and received the new name ‘Israel,’ which means ‘wrestled with God,’ as a result. Thus Jacob/Israel became the ‘father of the twelve sons of Israel.’ Their descendants were the Israelites in Egypt, seeking return to Canaan. In contrast, Jacob journeyed away from his family in Canaan and sought a wife in Harran in Syria. When he lay his head down on a stone in a field to sleep, a vision overcame him in the place he named Bethel, or,Gateway to Heaven. This vision, ‘Jacob’s Ladder,’ envisioned that angels ascend to and descend from a higher realm as beings linking heaven and earth.
When Jacob’s grandfather, Abraham, looked into the star-filled sky – the realm of eternity – the Lord said these innumerable lights represented his numberless descendants, Jews, Christians and Muslims among them. Similarly, starlit skies were painted in pharaohs’ tombs, along with the Amduat tale of kings and deceased souls attaining resurrection into heavenly light; all ideas, Christians took still further.
Greek Orthodox theologians took the Transfiguration of Jesus before Elijah and Moses on Mount Tabor very seriously. Building on the envisioning of the cloud of glory covering all three figures, Greek theologians developed radical ideas about human potential for union with God. They viewed it as equivalent to a form of human “deification.” In The Divine Darkness (1973: 23-43) [ix] Vladmir Lossky draws on the ideas of the 6th Century theologian Pseudo-Dionysius. Lossky writes that spiritual transformation involves “ A new condition, a progress, a series of changes, a transition from the created to the uncreated…. Being deified in this union with the uncreated … Here union means deification..” (1973:38).
As mentioned, Lossky refers to ‘Dionysius the Areopagite,’ once believed a disciple of Paul but whose work was later ascribed to ‘Pseudo-Dionysius’ (6th-5th century C.E,). Dionysius influenced Greek Orthodox mysticism in profound ways. Most importantly, he suggested (1973:25) that approaching knowledge of the Godhead by entering into ‘the Divine Darkness’ is superior to positive affirmations of the Godhead’s greatness. In Lossky’s words:
“Now God is above all that exists. In order to approach Him it is necessary to deny all that is inferior to Him … It is by unknowing that one may know Him who is above every possible object of knowledge. For even as light…. renders darkness invisible; even so the knowledge of created things, and especially excess of knowledge, destroys the ignorance which is the only way by which one can attain to God in Himself. “ (1973:25)
At this point, let us refer to Elijah’s 8th Century discovery about the ‘uncreated’ nature of the Godhead’s Being. Here was the conclusion to the Lord God’s Exodus teaching that the people should not be afraid to encounter the elements in an uproar. In 1 Kings:11-13, the Lord God showed Elijah that He was not in the wind, nor the earthquake, nor the fire but in “the sound of sheer silence.” Then Elijah drew his cloak around him at Mount Horeb in Sinai and stood in the mouth of the cave, contemplating, one imagines, the dark night spread out around him.
Lossky goes on to discuss Dionysius’ view of Moses; his ascent of Mount Sinai to meet with God started with self-purification. Moses may have heard the notes of the trumpet, lights flashing, but then, he separated from the many and the chosen priests. ‘Even here… he did not contemplate God … but the place where he is.’ Lossky writes: “ I think this means that the highest and most divine of the things which are seen and understood are a kind of hypothetical account of what is subject to Him who is over all.”
One of the early Church Fathers, St. Gregory of Nyssa pointed out that every concept relative to God is a simulacrum, a false likeness, an idol. (1973:33). In St Gregory’s Life of Moses, he views Moses’ ascent of Mount Sinai as representing in Lossky’s words, the move “Towards the “darkness of incomprehensibility…the way of contemplation … superior to Moses’ first meeting with God when He appeared to him in the burning bush.” (35)
Another Church Father, St. Gregory of Nazianzen (1973:36), made comparisons with other Old Testament traditions. He wrote that he was allegorically running to lay hold on God, up into mount, the clouds. Lossky quotes St. Gregory’s words here:
“As far as I could learn,” he said, “not that abiding within the first veil … and hidden by the Cherubim,,, but – “the majesty, or as holy David calls it, the glory, which is manifested amongst creatures….. As to the divine essence it is the Holy of Holies which remains hid even from the Seraphim.”
One thinks St. Gregory of Nazianzen alluded to the veiling of Moses’ shining countenance after his encounter the Lord God in Chapter 34.
This Christmas Eve, 2020, while listening to scriptures read during the virtual midnight service held by Epiphany-St. Mark, I was struck by a reading from Isaiah, 9:2-7. Was this relevant to Exodus or not? These lines, quoted below, mention “Midian.” Did the war-like Midianite fire-god, Jahve, enter into this oracle that Isaiah gave to King Ahaz? The Oxford annotated edition, NRSV, interprets the mention of “Midian” as a reference to Gideon, the Judge, who led the Israelites in an attack on Midianites. Isaiah recalled the disunited era of the Judges before the monarchy founding by Saul, David and Solomon.
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light … ….You have multiplied the nation, increased its joy, For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, you have broken as on the day of Midian …. Boots of tramping warriors, garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire…” (Isa. 9: 2-5 summarized)
The above led into Isaiah’s prophecy of a “Child to be born… Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace… upholding the throne of David.. “ (Isa. 9:6-7). Sadly, the Kingdom of Judah ruled by the Davidic line of kings came to an end in the early 6th century B.C.E. (See Isaiah of Jerusalem’s Words from the Lord God, Isa. 6: 13, “Even if a tenth part remain in it, it [the city] will be burned again…” ) To Christians, Isaiah’s words to King Ahaz were prophetic of Christ, “the Prince of Peace,” yet to come.
Then, listen to what another prophet, the Second Isaiah, believed would come about through His “chosen servant,” meaning ‘Israel’ to the Jews, and Christ’s Coming to the Christians. These ideas have been retained as the messianic hope of a deliverance of the nations.
“Here is my servant, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations… a bruised reed he will not break [Freud’s characterized of the weak Catholic Church reaction to Nazism] ….I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes of the blind. “ (Isaiah 42:1; 6-7)
The messianic conception of deliverance outlined in the words “A light to the nations, to open the eyes of the blind,” was a monumental task laid upon Hebrew prophets such as Daniel. Gottwald, a Judaist scholar, places the Book of Daniel in the ‘genre of the apocalyptic’ (1989:590-592). It was written in 165 B.C.E, when Antiochus IV Epiphanes defiled the Jerusalem Temple. Jews rejected his Hellenizing attempts, such as placing a statue of Zeus inside the temple and a statue of himself at the foot of this altar, acts which contravened the Second Commandment given to Moses. Led by the Maccabee family they drove away Greek forces. This story is commemorated by the annual Festival of Light as observed by Jews every December.
In my understanding, Daniel, Ch. 7:1-14 represented the prophet’s vision of “Light to the nations… to open our eyes.” This begins with characterizing the political forces at work in the world, emblemizing its kings as animals. Then it highlight great cosmic perils as a form of judgment. Daniel saw the idolatrous imagery of kings as animal-like powers, and here we recall Ba’alist-Canaanite imagery. The name of ‘Daniel,’ reaches back through time; Gottwald refers to Ezekiel, 14:14, who combined the names, “Noah, Daniel and Job.” Gottwald (1989:590-592) also mentions the ‘Daniel’ featured in a Canaanite myth (Ugaritic). Daniel saw three kingdoms, identified by their animal symbols sink beneath the waves one after another: “I, Daniel, saw in my vision by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea…” (Dan. 7:2).
The significance of Daniel, 7:9-10, was his sight of “the Ancient of Days” and His execution of a final judgment upon the nations. In the poeticized language of nature, this prophetic vision forecast certain conditions our age! (Jesus’ Apocalypse, Mark 13:24-27, prophesied that people would see “the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory;” in this context Jesus referred back to Daniel 7:13-14.)
Daniel described the figure of the “Ancient One” on his throne, who is portrayed with white hair and clothes, reviving ancient Canaanite El. In Canaanite myth, grey-bearded El dwelled on a remote mountain, with two streams at the foot. Daniel’s vision speaks to us of the turbulent chaos in our world today; it foreshadows the melting ice caps and thawing of permafrost in the Arctic caused by global warming as increased heat and sunlight affect these ice-covered regions.
“… thrones were set in place, and an Ancient One took his throne, his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, and its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued ….” (Dan. 7:9-10)
At the top of the world, as I recently learned from internet sites, in the Arctic ocean basin at 85 degrees north lies the Gakkel Ridge that extends some 1800 km from north of Greenland as far as Siberia. Scientists noticed evidence of fresh volcanism and earthquakes happening under these ice-covered seas in 1999-2000. One website develops the concept that there has been crustal rebounding, uplifting of land and the building of new crust by volcanic eruptions, new displacements created in this Arctic region – consequences of deglaciations that began some 10,000 years ago, or so. [x] The Gakkel Ridge is a crack in the thinner crust of the earth (something like the Red Sea Rift), lying within the boundary between two tectonic plates, the North American and the Eurasian. It has been propelling heated mantle material upwards as giant plumes of methane (though not on fire at the bottom of these deep cold seas). The Gakkel Ridge uprisings are regarded as super-volcanic awakenings.
Some believe the activation of volcanoes and earthquakes in the Gakkel Ridge is “the smoking gun” accounting for polar ice melt in recent decades. Temperature exchanges of ocean currents waters, cycling from the south into north, play a role. In southerly regions, over-heated waters strengthen the intensity of hurricanes attacking coastal lands. But perhaps the Gakkel Ridge events are themselves affected by global warming that reduces ice cover in the Arctic seas.
During this pandemic, with the collapse of economies and the leadership of nations in disarray, I wondered: what is this age all about? Then I woke up. I heard Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations speaking. I quote Gutteres, as recorded by Ibrahim Thiaw:‘The State of the Planet is broken..’ (Dec. 2, 2020).
“Humanity is waging war on Nature … This is suicidal, Nature always strikes back, already doing so with growing force and fury… Biodiversity is collapsing… One million species are at risk of extinction .. Ecosystems are disappearing before our eyes. Desert are spreading. Wetlands are being lost…”
Gutteres, as far as I know, made no mention of the current pandemic caused by human intrusion into the habitation of coronavirus-bearing bats.
When I read the last pages of Freud’s Moses and Monotheism, an unexpected a memory based on his earlier theorizing in Totem and Taboo, seized me. As quoted below, Freud on totems evokes our thoughts upon the most primeval times.
“ the horde, previously ruled by the father, was followed by totemistic brother clan… Instead of the father [whom they had killed[, a certain animal declared the totem; it stood for the ancestor and protecting spirits, and no one was allowed to hurt or kill it… Once a year, a feast for this revered totem … the solemn repetition of the father-murder … in which religion had its beginnings.” (Freud 1965:168)
In December 2007, while touring Egypt I visited the Cairo Museum, attracted to its display of Tutankhamun’s tomb goods. I noticed a sign announcing a special exhibition of animal mummies. While there, something overcame my consciousness. I fled the interior to sit on the curb outside to collect my senses. I was in an emotional torment, not my own – it was something foisted on me. The spirits of those mummified creatures briefly siezed my mind to communicate something of their creaturely sufferings, inchoate and wordless, entirely overwhelming.
Later, I looked on the internet to know more about those ancient Egyptian animal mummies. They were “holy creatures,” and considered “holy offerings to the gods.” They were seemingly all wild creatures; baboons, falcon or ibis-type birds, crocodiles, fish, mongoose, shrew-like creatures, scarabs and cats. (See website: ‘Soulful Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt,’ January 2018.).
As I sat outside the Cairo Museum my thoughts went, then inexplicably, to Totemic traditions among our Canadian First Nations. I recollected the tall totem poles exhibited in our museums, carved out of the tallest trees in the forests by the ancestors of the First Nations. Each totem pole features stacked images of their history represented by the emblems of clan identities and former leaders. As I recently learned in a course on Primal religions, the First Nations regard the creatures of the wild as their “relatives, sisters and brothers.”
Returning to Freud’s discussion in Moses and Monotheism on the thematic import and reverence for other creatures in Primal Religions, Freud dug into archaic religious feelings. These were often powerful reservoirs of guilty feelings not commonly acknowledged. I venture that Christ, called the ‘Lamb of God,’ because of his words at his Last Supper, must have hoped people would find ways to rise above inhuman sins, especially our sins against other creatures.
My temporary identification with the mummified creatures caused me to feel their understandable concern and fear for the extinction of many breeds. I could not dismiss this meaningful theme of our age. Is it yet another issue of our inhumanity to the Divine Creation? Today it is central to animal advocates horrified by the extent our thoughtless human activities has damaged and diminished habitats across the earth.
[i] Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, Translated from the German by Katherine Jones, New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, first published in 1939, this edition 1955.
[ii] Norman Gottwald, The Hebrew Bible -A Socio-Literary Introduction. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989 edition.
Doubleday, 1992 edition: 366.
[iv] Stanislav Grof. Beyond the Brain, Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy, Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1985.
[v] Risto Olavin Nurmela. Web-site entitled: ‘Moses: Freud’s Ultimate Project,’ November 9, 2020, summary of Sellin’s views of Moses’ slain by Israelites.
[vi] Helmer Ringgren. Religions of the Ancient Near East. Translated by John Sturdy. Philadelphia: The Westminister Press:1973.
[vii] David Rothery. Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis, A Complete Introduction, London: Hodder and Stroughton Ltd. 2015: 31-32.
[viii][viii] Erik Hornung. The Amduat,’ in The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife. Translated from the German by David Lorton, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. 1999 edition. Pp 27-41
[ix] Valadimir Lossky, ‘The Divine Darkness” in The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 23-41Greenwood, S.C.: the Attic Press Inc. 1973 edition, pp 23-41.
[x] A. Kumar and L.S. Singh. ‘Is Isostatic Rebound in Slow-Spreading Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Ocean due to Climate Change?’
Historical Visions 