Creating the Jews: Mosaic Discourse in Freud and Hosea

Abstract

This chapter presents a critique and alternative to Freud’s history of Moses, which relies on a monograph by the biblical scholar Ernst Sellin. A close examination of Sellin’s argument exposes its flaws, but also poses the possibility of a different response to Freud’s questions. Rather than seek to uncover a secret (or latent) history of Moses in the prophetic books, their plain (or manifest) sense provides ample evidence for the fashioning of monotheism and Jewish subjectivity by the prophets’ “Mosaic discourse.” To reformulate Freud, not Moses but Mosaic discourse created the Jews.