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8/12/2019 Assmann, Distinction http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/assmann-distinction 1/21 The Mosaic Distinction: Israel, Egypt, and the Invention of Paganism Author(s): Jan Assmann Source: Representations, No. 56, Special Issue: The New Erudition (Autumn, 1996), pp. 48-67 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928707 Accessed: 31/10/2009 19:59 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Representations. http://www.jstor.org

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The Mosaic Distinction: Israel, Egypt, and the Invention of PaganismAuthor(s): Jan AssmannSource: Representations, No. 56, Special Issue: The New Erudition (Autumn, 1996), pp. 48-67Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928707Accessed: 31/10/2009 19:59

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Representations.

http://www.jstor.org

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N S S M N N

The Mosaic istinction

Israel, Egypt, and theInvention of Paganism

Draw a distinction . . .Call it the first distinctionCall the space in which it is drawn the space severed or cloven the distinction

IT

S MS SIF GEORGE Spencer Brown s first Law of Construction

does no t apply solely to th e logical and mathematical construction fo r which it ismeant. It also applies strangely well to th e space of cultural constructions anddistinctions an d to the spaces t ha t a re severed or cloven by such distinctions.

The distinction with which this essay is concerned is t he one between t rue andfalse in rel igion: a distinction that underlies the more specific ones between Jews

and Gentiles, Christians and pagans, Muslims and unbelievers. Once this distinct ion is drawn, there is no end of reentries or subdistinctions. We start with Chris-

tians and pagans and end up with Catholics and Protestants, Calvinists and Lu-

therans, Socinians and Latitudinarians, and a thousand similar denominations

and subdenominations. These cultural or intellectual distinctions construct a uni-

verse that is full not only of meaning, identity, and orientation but also of conflict,intolerance, and violence. Therefore, there have always been at tempts to overcome th e conflict by reexamining the true-false distinction, albeit at th e risk o flosing cultural meaning.

Le t us call th e distinction between true and false in rel igion th e Mosaic distinction because tradition ascribes it to Moses. While we cannot be sure that Mosesever lived, since th ere a re no other traces of his earthly existence outside thelegendary tradition, we can be sure, on th e other h and , t ha t h e was not th e first

to draw the distinction. There was a precursor in th e person o f the Egyptian kingAmenophis IV, who called himself Akhenaten and instituted a monotheistic rel igion in the fourteenth century B.C.

His religion, however, c re at ed n o lastingtradition and was forgotten immediately after his death. Moses is a figure o f mem-

ory, but no t of history, whereas Akhenaten is a figure o f history, but not of mem-

ory. Since memory is all that counts in th e sphere of cultural distinctions andconstructions, we are justified in speaking no t of Akhenaten s distinction but ofthe Mosaic distinction. The space severed or cloven by this distinction is th e space

o f Western monotheism. I t is t he men ta l an d cultural space constructed by this

distinction that Europeans have inhabited for nearly two millennia.

8 REPRESENTATIONS 56 • Fall 1996 © TH E R EG EN TS O F T H E UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

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This distinction is no t as ol d as rel igion itself though at first sight it might

seem plausible to say that every religion produces pagans just as every civiliza-tion generates barbarians. But cultures and their constructions of identity notonly generate otherness but also develop techniques of translation. O f course

the real other is always there beyond mysel f and my constructions of selfhoodand otherness. It is th e constructed other that is to a certain degree compen

sated by techniques o f translation. Translation in this sense is no t to be confused

with the colonializing appropriation o f th e real other. Rather it is an a tt empt tomake more t ransparent the borders erected by cultural distinctions.

Ancient polytheisms functioned as such a technique o f translation within the

ancient world as an ecumene of interconnected nations. The polytheistic reli-gions overcame the ethnocentrism of t ribal rel igions by distinguishing severaldeities by name shape and function. The names the shapes of the gods and th e

forms of worship differed. But th e functions were strikingly similar especially inth e case of cosmic deities: the sun go d of on e religion was easily equated to th e

s un g od of another religion and so forth. In Mesopotamia th e practice of trans

lating divine names goes back to t he thi rd millennium. In th e second millennium

it was extended to many different languages and civilizations of the Near East.Plutarch generalizes in his treatise on Isis and Osiris that t he re a re always com

mon cosmic phenomena behind the differing divine names: the sun t he m oo n

th e heaven the earth the sea and so on . Because all people live in the same world

they adore th e same gods th e lords of this world:

Nor do we regard th e gods as different among different peoples nor as barbarian andGreek and as southern and northern. Butjust as th e sun moon heaven earth and sea ar ecommon to all though they are given various names by th e varying peoples so it is withth e on e reason logos which orders these things and th e on e providence which has chargeof them and th e assistant powers which ar e assigned to everything: they ar e given differenthonours and modes of address among different peoples according to custom and they usehallowed symbols 5

The divine names are translatable because they are conventional and because

there is always a referent serving as a tertium comp r tionis The cultures lan

guages customs may be different: religions always have a common ground. Thegods were int erna ti onal because they were cosmic and while different peoples

worshiped different gods nobody contested th e reality of for eign gods and th e

legitimacy of foreign forms of worship. The distinction in question did no t existin th e world of polytheistic and tribal religions.

The space severed or cloven by th e Mosaic distinction was not simply th e

space of religion in general then but that of a very specific kind of religion. Wema y call this a counterreligion because it not only constructed but rejected andrepudiated everything that went before and everything outside itself as pagan

ism. It no longe r functioned as a means of intercultural translation; on th e con-

The Mosaic Distinction 49

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trary, it functioned as a means of intercultural estrangement. Whereas polytheism

or rather cosmotheism, rendered different cultures mutually transparent andcompatible the new counterreligion blocked intercultural translatability. Falsegods cannot be translated.

Usually th e fundamental distinction between t ru th a nd falsity assumes th e

form o f a grand narrative underlying and informing innumerable concrete

tellings and retellings of th e past. Books 2 through 5 of the Pentateuch unfoldth e Mosaic distinction in both a narrative and a normative form. Narratively, th e

distinction is presented in th e story of Israel s exodus whereby Egypt came torepresent th e rejected, the religiously false, th e pagan. Egypt s most conspicuous

property th e worship of images, thus became its greatest sin. Normatively, the

distinction is expressed in a code of Law that confirms the narrative by giving theprohibition of idolatry first priority. The worship of images comes to be re-

garded as th e absolute horror falsehood, and apostasy. Polytheism and idolatry,in turn are seen as one and t he same form of religious error: images are othergods because the true god is invisible and cannot be iconically represented. Thesecond commandment is hence a commentary on th e first:

1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.2. Thou shalt not make unto thee an y graven image.

The Exodus story, however, is more than simply an account o f historicalevents, and th e Law is more than merely a basis fo r social order and religious

purity. In addition to what they overtly tell and establish, they symbolize th e Mo-saic distinction. Exodus the Law, Moses, the whole constellation of Israel andEgypt are symbolic figures for all kinds of oppositions. The leading one however,is th e distinction between true religion and idolatry; in th e course of Jewish history

both t he concept of idolatry and the repudia tion of it grew stronger. The later

th e texts, the more elaborate th e scorn and abomination they pour over the idol-aters. Some poignant verses in Deutero-Isaiah and Ps. 115 develop into whole

chapters in th e apocryphal Sapientia Salomonis long sections in Philo s De decalogoand De legibus specialibus th e Mishnaic tractate Avodah zarah and Tertullian s book

De idololatria.But th e hatred was mutual and th e idolaters did not fail to strike back.

Remarkably enough most of them were Egyptians. The priest Manetho for

example wh o under Ptolemy wrote a history of Egypt, represented Moses asa rebellious Egyptian priest who made himself the leader of a colony o f lepers.Whereas the Jews depicted idolatry as a kind o f mental aberration or madness

th e Egyptians associated iconoclasm with a very contagious and disfiguring epi-demic. The language of illness has been typical of the debate on th e Mosaic dis-tinction, from its beginning up to th e days o f Sigmund Freud . Manetho writesthat Moses and his lepers formed an alliance with th e Hyksos, the enemies of

50 REPRESENTATIONS

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Egypt, and tyrannized Egypt for thirteen years. All of the images of the gods were

destroyed and th e sanctuaries were turned into kitchens where the sacred animals

were grilled. We are dealing with a s tory of mutual abomination: the activities ofth e iconoclasts are rendered with th e same horror as those of th e idolaters by th e

other side. Moses' laws are thus reduced to two:1. Thou shalt not worship any gods nor r ef ra in f rom eat ing their

sacred animals.2. Thou shalt no t mingle with people outside thine own group.

In Tacitus, the characterization of Jewish monotheism as a counterreligion isalready complete. Moses founded a religion opposed to th e rites of other people:

the Jews consider everything that we keep sacred as profane and permit everything that for us is taboo [profana illic omnia quae apud nos sacra, rursum con

cessa apud illos quae nobis incesta]. In their temples they consecrate a statue of adonkey and sacrifice a ra m in contumeliam mmonis in order to ridicule the go d

Amun. For th e same reason, they sacrifice a bull because the Egyptians worship

Apis. As th e inversion of Egyptian tradition, Jewish religion is totally derivativeof and dependen t on Egypt.

It is important to realize that we are dealing here with a mutual loathing

rooted no t in some idiosyncratic aversions between Jews and Egyptians but in th e

Mosaic distinction that, in its first occurrence, was Akhenaten s distinction. I t istrue that many arguments of the idolaters have lived on in th e discourse of antiSernitism. ' In this sense, th e struggle against th e Mosaic distinction had anti

Semitic implications. However, it is also t rue t ha t many of those (such as JohnToland or Gotthold Ephraim Lessing) who in the eighteenth century attacked the

distinction fought fo r tolerance and equality for th e Jews; in this sense, the s trug

gle against th e Mosaic distinction assumes th e character of a struggle against antiSemitism. The most outspoken destroyer of the Mosaic distinction was, after all,aJew, Sigmund Freud. Moreover, in the debate between iconoclasts and idolaters,th e Christian church sided with th e Jews and inherited the repudiation o f idolatry

by continuing to denigrate pagan religion. Attacks, therefore, against th e Mosaicdistinction concerned th e Christian church as well as Judaism and Islam.F

These attacks took the form of a redefinition that a t tempted to relativize orminimize the distinction. Normative inversion, which explains one field as justthe inver ted reflection of its opposing field, is the earliest of these redefinitions.

Strangely enough, however, th e principle of normative inversion is no t onlyevoked by pagan writers who had their reasons to destroy the distinction. It alsorecurs about a millennium later in th e exact center of the Jewish tradition, as anelement of Jewish self-definition and self-interpretation. Starting from this sur

prising reemergence of th e principle of normative inversion, th e following para

graphs outline some of th e more important redefinitions to which the Mosaic

The Mosaic Distinction 51

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distinction was exposed in the history of Enlightenment from Moses Maimonides

to Freud.

ormative nversion

The principle of normative inversion provides the main method oflegal interpretat ion for Maimonides in his Guide the Perplexed. Maimonides did

not speak of Egypt. Instead, he invented a community called th e Sabians. I t ismentioned twice or three t imes in the Koran, but nobody knows exact ly to which

group this text refers. 4 Maimonides Sabians are an imagined communi ty t ha t h e

created by apply ing Manetho s princ ip le of normative inversion in the opposite

direction. I f the Law prohibits an activity x th is is because the Sabians practiced

and vice versa, if th e Law prescribes an activity y thi s is because y was a tabooamong th e Sabians.

Maimonides-who l ived in Egypt and wrote his book in Arabic -had excellent reasons fo r choosing th e Sabians instead of th e historically more appropr iate

ancient Egyptians in his reconstruction of a historical context for Mosaic Law. Itis precisely th e complete insignificance of th e Sabians that serves his purpose. Hefigures them as a once power fu l community that had since fal len i nto a lmos t

complete oblivion. He explains th e function of normative inversion as a kind of ars oblivionalis 5 a withdrawal therapy for Sabian idolatry, which he understands

as a kind of collective or epidemic addiction. The most eff icient way to erase amemory is to superimpose a countermemory; hence, th e best way to make people

forge t an idolatrous rite is to replace it with another rite. The Christians followedthe same principle when they built their churches on the ruins of pagan temples

and observed their feasts on th e dates of pagan festivals. For the same reason,

Moses (o r divine cunning and wisdom, manifesting itself through his agency)had to ins ta ll all kinds of dietary and sacrificial prescriptions in order to occupy

t he t er ra in h el d by th e Sabians and their idolatrous ways, so that all these ritesand cults that they practiced for the sake of the idols, they no w came to practice

in th e honor of god. 17 The divine strategy was so successful that the Sabians andtheir once mighty community fell into complete oblivion.

Maimonides was no historian. He was interested in th e historical circum

stances of the Law only insofar as they elucidated its meaning, that is, the intention

of the legislator. He contends that the original intention of th e Law was to de

stroy idolatry and demonstrates this by reconstructing th e historical circumstantiaeof the Sabians. Then he generalizes th e crime of idolatry to fit metahistorical

problems and arrives at his well-known, purely philosophical, and ahistorical con

cept of idolatry. Fo r Maimonides, th e Law remains enforced, despite its historicalcircumstances, because of th e timeless danger of idolatry.

REPRESENTATIONS

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Translation: Hieroglyphs in to Laws

Five hundred years after Maimonides, his project of a historical expla

nation of the Law was explicitly taken up by th e Christian scholar who opens th esecond section of our story. John Spencer (1630-93) was a scholar of Hebrew

and, after 1667, master of Corpus Christi College at Cambridge. In his book on

th e Ritual Law, Spencer mentions Maimonides always with the greatest admira

tion. ? He fully agrees with Maimonides in seeing th e principle and overall purpose of th e Law as the destruction of idolatry, which he also views as an addiction

to be cured by a withdrawal program. He even applies Maimonides principle ofnormative inversion in a considerable number of cases. But he deviates from

Maimonides in two respects. First, he draws altogether different conclusions fromthis kind of historical explanation, since he makes his m et ho d t ha t o f historical,no t legal, reasoning . For him, not only th e circumstances, but also the intentions

or reasons of th e Law are historical and belong to th e past. Maimonides took theLaw's destruction of idolatry to be a timeless (o r metahistorical) task; only th e

circumstances of its first formulation and application were historical. Fo r Spencer,

t he reason for the Law is historical as well. 2 With th e cessation of idolatry, th e

Law lost its validity and th e Mosaic distinction changed its character. This is, ofcourse, the Christian idea of progress.

The second divergence from Maimonides is m uc h m ore revolutionary anddepends o n th e principle of translation. 2 This paradigm shift shattered the foun

dation of th e Mosaic distinction between true and false in religion. Like Maimon

ides, Spencer held tha t G od d id not inscribe his Law on a tabula rasa but , rather,that he carefully overwrote an existing inscription. Unlike Maimonides, however,Spencer takes this original inscription to be Egyptian rather than Sabian: it is moreof an intended subtext, or even a kind of golden ground, fo r th e Law, than an

antitext to be wiped out or covered up . The idea is that God intentionally broughtIsrael into Egypt in order to give His people an Egyptian foundation, and thatHe chose Moses as His prophet because he was brought up in all the wisdom ofthe Egyptians. Moses translated a good deal of Egyptian wisdom into his lawsand institutions, which ca n only be explained if reintegrated into their original

context. r nsl tio ( transfer, borrowing ) refers not to texts, but to rites andcustoms t ha t a re received from Egypt in order to be preserved as containers o foriginal wisdom, rather than to be supplanted an d eventually overcome. Spencersubscribed to th e conventional theory about hieroglyphic writing based on Hor

apollon's two books on hieroglyphs; and especially on Athanasius Kircher s de

cipherments. 24 According to this theory, hieroglyphs were iconic symbols that

referred to concepts. They were used exclusively fo r religious purposes, such ast ransmi tt ing the mystic ideas that were to be kept secret from th e common

people. Similarly, fo r Spencer, a good many of th e laws, rites, and institutions that

The Mosaic Distinction 53

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God, by the mediation of Moses, gave to his people, show this hieroglyphic char

acter. The Law appears here as a veil velum), a cover involucrum), or a shellcortex) that transmits a truth by hiding it. In this same context, Spencer adduces

one of those passages f rom Clement of Alexandria that become crucial to Karl

Leonhard Reinhold s and Friedrich Schiller s view of Egypt:

In adyto veritatis repositum sermonem revera sacrum, Aegyptii quidem per ea, quae apud ipsos vo-cantur adyta, Hebraei autem per velum significarunt. Occultationem igitur, quod attinet, sunt He-braids similia Aegyptiorum aenigmata.

[The Egyptians indicated th e really sacred logos, which they kept in th e innermost sanc-tuary of Truth, by what they called Adyta, and th e Hebrews by means o f t he cur ta in (inth e temple). Therefore, as fa r as concealment is concerned, th e secrets aenigmata) of th eHebrews an d those of th e Egyptians ar e very similar to each other.]

These sentences open the door to a totally different understanding of th e rela-t ionship between Egypt and Israel.

Mystery: Natu re into Scrip tu re

At t he s am e time and even at the same place that Spencer did his re-search on Egyptian rites, Ralph Cudworth, Regius Professor of Hebrew, pub

lished his True Intellectual System of the Uniuersei There is every reason to su ppose

that Spencer and Cudworth knew each other well, but their books are worldsapart . Spencer worked on th e Mosaic distinction as a historian. He wanted to showhow much is derived from Egypt and, in doing so, he reduced revelation to trans

lation an d transcodification. Cudworth was a Cambridge Neoplatonist whose

thinking transcended the Mosaic distinction in its biblical expression. His god wasthe god of th e philosophers, and his enemy was not idolatry but atheism ormaterialism.

Cudworth wants to confute atheism by proving t ha t t he recognition of oneSupreme Being constitutes t he true intellectual system of th e universe be-cause-as L or d H er be rt of Cherbury had a lready shown in 1624- the notion that there is a Supreme God is the most common not ion of all. 27 Even atheism

conforms with this notion: t he g od whose existence it negates is precisely this oneSupreme God and not one or all of th e gods of polytheism. This notion, common

to theists and atheists alike, can be defined as: A Perfect Conscious UnderstandingBeing (o r Mind) Existing of it self from Eternity, n the Cause of all other things. 28Especially interesting fo r our concern is Cudworth s claim that t he idea of oneSupreme Being is also shared by polytheism. In this context, Egypt becomes im-portant f or t he simple reason that it was by f ar the best known polytheistic religionat th e time. Even though the hieroglyphs were not yet deciphered and t he m on

u me nt s n ot yet excavated and published, t he b od y of Greek and Lat in sources

REPRES E N TATI ONS

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(including t he Corpus Herme ti cum and th e writings of Plotinus, Porphyry, Iam-blichus, Proclus, and Horapollon, which were bel ieved to be f i rs thand Egyptian

sources) easily outweighed the available information about other religions.Cudworth distinguishes between self-existing gods and gods whose existence

is dependent on o th er gods. No polytheism, he concludes, ever believed in th e

existence of several self-existent gods. There is always only one from whom allth e other gods derive. Every polytheism thus includes a monotheism. The form

of inclusion is mystery or secrecy: polytheism is fo r the many, while monotheism

is f or t he few. This unequal distribution of knowledge does no t follow from some

malicious strategy of the priests who wan ted to keep their knowledge secret for

their agrandissement but from the difficulty of monotheism and t he natural differences in mental capabilities. Truth, by this reasoning, is a natural mystery thatca n only be approached by the very few. Cudworth accordingly reconstructs what

he calls th e arcane theology of ancient Egypt and shows that it is the theology

of th e One and th e All, hen kai pan He takes his evidence from a number ofsources, but especially f rom the Corpus Herme ti cum, which he holds to be a late

but authentic codification of ancient Egyptian wisdom and theology.The chapter of Hermes Trismegistus seemed closed once and for all in 1614,

when Isaac Casaubon exposed the Corpus Hermeticum as a late compilation anda Christian forgery.29 Since then, the Hermet ic tradition survived only in occult

undercurrents such as Rosicrucianism, alchemy, theosophy, and so for th . This , atleast, is the picture Frances Yates has drawn of the Hermetic tradition.P Indeed,

Yates proclaimed th e year 1614 a watershed separat ing the Renaissance world

f ro m t he modern world because Casaubon s dating of the Hermetic texts shat-tered the basis of all attempts to build a natural theology in Hermeticism. > I twas no easy task to vindicat e t he C or pu s Hermeticum against so devastating averdict. Cudworth, however, did so with such brilliant success (although with notaltogether valid arguments), that natural theologies built on t he Hermet ic textscontinued to flourish. Hermes Trismegistus had, in fact, a t r iumphant comeback

in the e ighteenth century due to Cudworth s rehabilitation, which inaugurated anew phase of t he H er me ti c tradition coinciding in Germany with a wave ofSpinozism.

Cudworth showed that Casaubon made two mistakes. First, he was wrong int rea ting the whole corpus as one coherent text. His criticism affected only threeof th e seventeen independent treatises and his verdict of forgery applied at most

to these three, but no t to the corpus as a whole. Second, he was wrong in equating

text and tradition. The text is late, t ha t m uc h C ud wo rt h is ready to admit. Butaccording to him, this must be taken as a terminus ad quem a nd not a quo; the text

shows only how long th e tradition was alive, no t ho w late it came into being. Andeven the three forgeries must contain a kernel of truth; otherwise they would

no t have been successful. In this way, Cudworth was able to represent the doctr ine

The Mosaic Distinction 55

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o f All-Oneness or hen kai p n as th e quintessence of Egyptian arcane theology.Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato, and others initiated into the Egyptian mysteriesbrought this doctrine to Greece; Stoic and Neoplatonic philosophy transmitted itto th e Occident.

Sixty years later, William Warburton, a well-known Shakespeare scholar, anAnglican bishop, and a friend of Alexander Pope, combined the ideas of Spencerand Cudworth in his ivine legation o Moses which appeared in three volumes

between 1738 and 1741. Warburton integrated Cudworth s ideas into his refor-

mulation of the Mosaic distinction, which appears now as mystery versus revelation. The truth is present on both sides: quite a revolutionary admission for

a bishop. But th e Egyptians and all th e other religions deriving from Egypt were

able to recognize and to transmit this truth only in t he f or m of mystery, that is, assomething reserved f or th e very few who were deemed able to grasp t n o t as a

permanent possession but as a quality known through rites that were bound tocalendaric observances. Moses, o n t he other h an d, m ad e t he truth the possessionof th e whole people and cast it in t he f or m of a permanent Scripture.:

Warburton s parallel to Giambattista Vico is striking. Vico, who, like Warbur-

ton, wanted to preserve th e Mosaic distinction, interpreted it in th e terms of sacred and profane history. He asked how profane society and history were possible,and even worked well, when th e various Gentile peoples were guided by reason

(o r natural law ) alone and were n ot g ra nt ed t he guidance o f revelation.: Both

reason and revelation must therefore contain the truth. Reason, however, wasinsecure, always endangered by error, and the result of a long and winding pro-

cess o f evolution, whereas revelation was pristine, permanent, and secure. Beyond

preserving th e Mosaic distinction, though, Vico and Warburton had still anothertrait in common: their interest was focused on th e pagan side, profane history

and mystery religion. The first step of secularization was n ot t he abolition of th edistinction, but a shift of emphasis from th e sacred to th e profane.

dentity Jehovah sive sis

The s tep f rom mystery to identity might seem slight, because alreadyin th e paradigm of mystery th e truth is recognized on both sides o f the Mosaicdistinction. The new paradigm o f identity does no t claim t ha t the re is revelation

o n bo th sides, bu t tha t the re is secrecy on both sides. Secrecy persists; even Mosesd id n ot reveal th e full t ruth . Hence Lessing s idea of universal freemasonry: therehave always been a few initiates or illuminates who sough t the t ru th , which could

be uncovered even after Moses revelation, bu t only through a secret quest. 35 Thetruth is th e same on both sides, but it is th e possession of no one.

Karl Leonhard Reinhold published his book on The Hebrew Mysteries or the

56 REPRESENTATIO N S

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Oldest Freemasonry first in 1786 in two issues o f th e ourn l fur Freymaurer and thenas a monograph in 1788 at Leipzig.? At th e ag e of 25, h e e nt er ed th e famous

Viennese lodge True Concord (1783). Still a Jesuit, he passed all three grades butfled in th e same year from th e Jesuit order to Leipzig, where he con tinued hisphilosophical studies. H e m arried a daughter of Chr is toph Mar tin Wieland,

joined him in edi ti ng the journal Teutscher Merkur, became well known for hisLetters on Kant s Philosophy, and was appointed professor o f philosophy at Jena in1787. There he befriended Schiller, whom he induced to read Immanuel Kant.:

In his book on the Hebrew mysteries, Reinhold identifies t he G od o f the Bibleas Isis, th e Egyptian Supreme Being, by comparing God s self-presentation inExodus 3.14 ( I am who I am ) and Isis s self-presentation on th e veiled image atSais: Brethren Reinhold exclaims, Wh o among us does not know the ancient

Egyptian inscriptions: the one on t he pyramid at Sais: I am all that is, was, andwill be, and no mor ta l has ever lifted my veil, and that other on the s tatue of Isis: I am all that is ? Who among us does not understand as well as the ancient Egyp

tian initiate himself d id t he m ea ni ng of these words and does not know that they

express th e essential Being, t he meaning of th e name Jehova? 38 While the saiticinscription is reported by Plutarch and (in a slightly different, thus independent,

version) by Proclus, they speak only of one such inscription. The second one wasprobably invented by Voltaire, whom Reinhold is closely paraphrasing in this passage.? It serves Reinhold's purpose because it makes th e equation more striking:

I am all that is and I am who I am.The equation, however, does not seem so convincing to us. On th e contrary,

one proposit ion negates the other. When Isis says I am all that is, she identifiesherself with the world and abolishes the distinction between God and world.

When Yahveh says I am who I am, he explicitly draws the distinction between

himself and the world and forecloses every link o f identification. But Reinhold

read th e Bible in Greek. The Septuagint renders th e divine name as Ego eimi hoon [I am the Being one], which Reinhold understands (and which has always been

understood) as meaning I am essential Being. 40 Reinhold was, in fact, followingan ant ique tradition; in one of the so-called Sibyllinian Oracles, th e biblical God,

with his self-presentation I am who I am [ £hj £h asher £hj £h], is interpreted inth e sense of the cosmic Go d of the Hermetists: I am th e being one (eimi d egogeho on), recognize thi s in your spi ri t: I donned heaven as my garment, I clothed

myself with th e ocean, the earth is ground fo r my feet, air covers me as my body

and the stars revolve around me.?This is already Isis. But t he point that Reinhold wants to make is that the true

Go d has no names, neither Jehovah nor Isis. Both th e saitic formula and the

Hebrew formula are to be understood not as th e revelation of a name, bu t ra the ras its witholding, or as th e revelation of anonymity. Go d is all; every name falls short

because it distinguishes Go d from something that is no t God. Being all, God can-

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no t have a name. With this, we come back to Hermes Trismegistus. The pertinentfragment is preserved in Lactantius. Nicholas of Cusa quotes this passage in Dedocta ignorantia some decades before Marsilio Ficino s edition of th e Hermetica:

It is obvious that no name ca n be appropriate to th e Greatest One, because nothing can bedistinguished from h im. All names ar e imposed by distinguishing on e from th e other.Where all is one, there cannot be a proper name. Therefore, Hermes Trismegistus is rightin saying: because Go d is th e totality of things [universitas rerum] he has no proper name,otherwise he should be cal led by every name or everything should bear his name. For hecomprises in his simplicity th e totality of all things. Conforming with his proper n a m e -

which fo r us is deemed ineffable an d which is th e tetragrammaton h i s name shouldbe interpreted as on e and all or all in one, which is even better [ unus et omnia sive omniauniter quod melius est] 42

In this text , written in t he m id dl e of th e f if teenth century, we already find the

equation of the Hebrew tetragrammaton with Hermes Trismegistus s anonymousgod, wh o is unus et omnia One and All, or hen kai pan as this idea will be referredto by Cudworth and Lessing.

i l novi sub sole? It is true that we will f ind most of the leading ideas of th e

eighteenth century concerning the Mosaic distinction, nature and revelation,truth and religious tolerance, already present in th e fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But we are no t asking for first occurrences. The point is that these ideasd id not d isappear in the seventeenth century, as is generally believed. Althoughthe seventeenth century was an ag e of orthodoxy that destroyed the harmonistic

and eclectic dreams of th e Renaissance, and although most of this period s religious and philosophical movements went occult or disappeared under the per-secution of orthodox censorship, Spencer s, Gerardus Vossius s (1577-1649),43John Marsham s (1602-85),44 and Cudworth s reinventions of E gypt led to astrong and mostly unknown revival of Hermeticism, pantheism, a nd o th er forms

of Egyptophilia. These rehabilitations of th e Egyptian tradition, furthermore,

had th e immense advantage of answering orthodox and historical criticism.The enlightened Egyptophilia of the e ighteenth century reached its climax

around 1780 when it merged with the ideas of nature and th e sublime. Duringthese years Lamoignon de s Malesherbes coined th e term cosmotheism to describe

th e Stoic worship of cosmos as a god. Cosmotheism more or less explicitly abolishes the distinction between Go d and world. Friedrich Jacobi applied it to Ben-

edict Spinoza s deus sive natura and Lessing s hen kai pan 45 a formula that Cudworth

(1678) had shown to be th e quintessential expression of ancient Egyptian theology. The ancient Egyptians were thus cosmotheists just as th e Stoics, the Neo platonists, the Spinozists were. This idea, always present, returned in th e years between 1785 and 1790 with an overwhelming force.

In this new cosmotheistic movement, Isis was generally interpreted as Na-

ture. Here is ho w Ignaz von Born, th e Grand Master of True Concord and th e

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model of Sarastro in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart s Magic Flute, summarized the

ultimate aim of the Egyptian mysteries and of freemasonry:

The knowledge of nature is th e ultimate purpose of our application. We worship thisprogenitor, nourisher, and preserver of all creation in th e image of Isis. Only he wh oknows th e whole extent of her power and force will be able to uncover her veil withoutpunishment.

This passage combines Plutarch with Clement of Alexandria, wh o says: Thedoctrines delivered in the Greater Mysteries conce rn the universe. Here all instruction ends. T hi ng s a re seen as they are; and Nature, and th e workings ofNature, are to be seen and comprehended. 47 On th e last step of initiation, the

adept is speechless in the face of nature. This idea inspired Schiller s ballad TheVeiled Image at Sais an d his essay The Legation o f Moses. : Like Warburtonand Reinhold, Schiller constructed the Mosaic distinction as th e antagonist ic re-

lationship between official religion and mystery cult. In his opinion, secrecy wasnecessary to protect both th e political order from a possibly dangerous t ru th a ndth e truth from vulgar abuse and misunderstanding. For this reason, hieroglyphic

writing and a complex ritual of cultic ceremonies and prescriptions were invented

to shield th e mysteries. They were devised to create a sensual solemnity sinnlicheFeierlichkeit and to prepare, by emotional arousal, th e soul of the initiate to receivethe truth.

At this point Schiller introduced t he not ion of the sublime, associating itwith the Hermetic idea of God s namelessness: Nothing is more sublime than thesimple greatness with which th e sages speak of th e creator. In order to distinguish

hi m in a truly defining form, they refrained from giving hi m a name at all. ?Appearing in t he s am e y ea r 1790 , Kant s Kritik der Urteilskraft associates th e

idea of the sublime with th e second commandment, that is, with t he idea o f God simagelessness: There is perhaps no more sublime passage in th e law-code o f th eJews than th e commandment thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image . . . . 5 0 But in a footnote Kant mentions th e veiled image at Sais and its inscription as the highest expression of th e sublime:

Perhaps nothing more sublime was ever said or no sublimer thought ever expressed thanth e famous inscription on th e temple of Isis (mother nature): I am all that is and that shallbe, and no mortal has l ift ed my veil. Segner availed himself of this idea in a suggestivevignette prefixed to his Natural Philosophy, in order to inspire beforehand the apprenticewhom he was about to lead into the temple with a holy awe, which should dispose his mindto solemn attention.

Kant uses Schiller s language of initiation in describing Segner s vignette: holy awe heiliger Schauer , solemn attention feierliche Aufmerksamkeit . Themain point of Kant s observation is to emphasize the initiatory function of the

sublime. The sublime inspires in humans a holy awe and terror that only the

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strongest are able to withstand, so as to prepare soul and mind fo r the apprehension of a t ruth that can be grasped only in a s ta te of exceptional fear and attention.

Sublime secrets require a sublime environment. The connection of the sublime

with wisdom, mystery, and initiation occurs again and again in the l i te rature on

th e Egyptian mysteries. But I would like to quote a text to which Carlo Ginzburgdrew my attention: th e thenian Letters anonymously published in London (174143). The following is a description of the Hermetic cave at T he be s, w he re t he

Egyptian initiates were supposed to be taught the doctr ines of Hermes Trisme

gistus as inscribed on th e pillars of wisdom:

The strange solemnity of th e place must strike everyone, that enters it, w ith a rel igioushor ro r; and is th e most proper to work you up into t ha t f rame of mind, in which you willreceive, with th e most awful reverence and assent, whatever th e priest, wh o attends you,is pleased to reveal.

Towards th e farther en d of th e cave, or within the innermost recess of some prodigiouscaverns, that run beyond it, you hear, as it were a great way off, a noise resembling th edistant roarings of th e sea, and sometimes like th e fall of waters, dashing against rocks withgreat impetuosity. The noise is supposed to be so stunning and frightful, if you approachit, that few, they say, are inquisitive enough, into those mysterious sportings of nature

Surrounded with these pillars of lamps a re each of those venerable columns, which Iam now to speak of, inscribed with the hieroglyphicalletters with th e primeval mysteriesof th e Egyptian learning From these pillars, and th e sacred books, they maintain, thatall th e philosophy and learning of th e world has been derived.?

This is th e proper setting f or the storage and transmission of secret wisdom.The more well-to-do among th e Freemasons of the t ime even tried to construct

such an ambiance in their parks and gardens. The scenography for the t rial byfire and water in th e finale from th e second act of Mozart s Magic Flute envisagessuch a cave, where water gushes out with a deafening r oa r a nd fire spur ts for th

with devouring tongues. It is modeled not only upon Abbe Terrasson s description

of Sethos s subterranean trials and initiation but also upon masonic garden ar

chitecture, such as th e grotto in the park at Aigen, near Salzburg, owned by Mozart s friend and fellow mason, Basil von Amann.? The idea of th e subl ime-soimportant f or t he aesthetics of th e t ime-and th e interpretation of ancient Egyptian art and architecture were practically inseparable from notions of mystery and

initiation.According to Reinhold and Schiller, nature was th e go d in whose mysteries

Moses was initiated during the course of his Egyptian education. But this was notthe God Moses revealed to his people. In th e school o f the Egypt ian mysteries,Moses not only learned to contemplate the truth but also collected a treasure ofhieroglyphs, mystical symbols and ceremonies with which to build up a religionand to cover th e truth under the protective shell of cultic institutions and pre

scriptions-sub cortice legis as Spencer had already formulated it. Schiller replaced

Maimonides and Spencer s idea of God s accommodation of the Law with the idea

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of Moses accommodation of God. Religion and revelat ion, in this scheme, ar e

only forms of accommodation.

Among the readers of Schiller s essay was Ludwig van Beethoven, who wrote

out th e two saitic inscriptions and a quotation f ro m th e Orphic hymn on a leaf

of paper and had this p u t u n de r glass and in a frame. It stood on his writing tableduring th e last years o f his life:

I am all that is.I am all that was, is, an d will be; and no mortal has ever lifted my veil.He is th e One who exists by himself, and to this single One all things

owe their existence. 55

These sentences were held to be quintessential expressions of enlightened religion and, at th e same time, of ancient Egyptian wisdom and theology. Equally

emblematic of Egyptian theology was t he Greek formula hen k i p n that Lessing

wrote as his personal religious manifesto in th e guest-book of a friend on 15August 1780. 56 When Jacobi published his conversations with Less ing in 1785, hel au nc he d t he p an th ei sm debate that held sway in G er ma ny f or almost fiftyyears. ? Cudworth could have launched th e same debate a hundred years earlier.But it was only on th e eve of Napoleon s expedition to Egypt th at the returnof Egyptian cosmotheism and th e abolition of the Mosaic distinction assumed

th e dimensions of a sweeping revolution. One might call it th e return of th e

repressed.

Latency, or the Return of th eRepressed

Sigmund Freud was another reader of Schiller s essay. It s impact on his oses n onotheism is evidenr. But fo r all th e still-growing literature on thisbook, nobody seems to notice that Freud s work on th e Mosaic distinction contin

ues the discourse of th e eighteenth century. ? It is, of course, important to readFreud s book in the context of his other scientific writings. Nevertheless, th e fullimport of the book only becomes c le ar w he n s ee n in the context of the Enlight

enment tradition.? When, under th e pressure of German anti-Semitism, Freud

started to write his book, remarkably e no ug h, h e d id no t ask how t he Germans

came to murder th e Jews, but h ow th e Jews came to attract this undying hatred.

He sought t he a ns we r in th e Mosaic distinction and in Moses himself , who, bydrawing this distinction, Freud believed ha d created th e Jews. Freud s project wasthus to dissolve or deconstruct th e Mosaic distinction by historical analysis: pre

cisely the project of th e seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Freud s Moses wasan Egypt ian who brought to th e Jews an Egyptian religion. Every attempt, how-

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ever, to abolish th e Mosaic distinction had similarly focused on th e Egyptian background of Moses. Already in 1709, John Toland, basing himself on Strabo, even

went so fa r as to make Moses an Egyptian and th e prince of the province ofGoshen, who founded a new religion in th e spirit of Spinoza, and left Egypt to

gether with the Hebrews in order to realize it.When Freud resumed, in th e 1930s, th e discourse on Moses and Egypt , he

was able to avail himself of an archaeological discovery that was inaccessible to allprevious autho rs f rom Manetho to Schiller: that is, the discovery of Akhenaten

and his monotheistic revolution. He was spared the trouble of inventing Egyptian

mysteries in order to project Hermetic or Spinozistic theology back into Moses'times, and instead could point to an Egyptian monotheistic counterreligion as ahistorical fact. But even in his reconstruction secrecy returns, namely, in th e formof latency. Freud s Moses di d n ot translate or accommodate his t ruth to the ca

pacities of th e people but imposed it without compromise. Therefore he was murdered. Yet it was precisely by being murdered and by becoming a traumatic andencrypted memory t ha t he was able to create the Jewish people. This creation wasa slow process, taking centuries and even millennia. His truth worked from withinand manifested i tselfas a return of the repressed. In Freud s words, it must firsthave undergone th e fate of being repressed, th e condition of lingering in th e

unconscious, before it is able to display such powerfu l effects on its r et ur n a ndforce th e masses under its spell. 62 In this way, Moses the Egyptian and his mono

theism returned to t he m em or y of his people. This repression is how Freudexplains th e coercive power that religion has over the masses. Fo r Freud, religionis a compulsory neurosis that ca n only be treated by remembering, repeating,working through Freud s version of Baal Shem Tov's famous sentence: th e secret

of redemption is remembering. In th e case of th e Mosaic distinction, this remem

bering has always turned toward Egypt.In this situation, it may be important to rediscover the Egypt of the eighteenth

century repressed by nineteenth-century positivism and historicism-just as the

Egypt of the Renaissance had been rediscovered by th e eighteenth century aftera period of suppression, and as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries rediscovered

pris th ologi in th e Egypt (and its syncretistic cosmotheism) of late antiquity.

The eighteenth century reopened a dialogue with an ancient Egypt ian (or generally pagan ) cosmotheism that had been suppressed by orthodox and rationalistic fundamentalism. In the nine teenth century, this dialogue was again, andapparently forever, brought to an end by th e decipherment of hieroglyphic writin g and th e rise of modern Egyptology, which relegated all Egyptophilic ideas toth e museum of inventions and misunderstandings. Only recently has it become

clear t ha t the re is a genuine Egyptian cosmotheistic tradition that ha s been op

posed by th e Mosaic distinction but has persisted as a countercurrent through allthe different stages of Western monotheism until the e ighteenth century and be-

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yond. Those wh o referred to ancient Egypt in combating orthodox and funda

mentalist distinctions were not completely mistaken. And many of those who en

gaged in the project of a scientific discovery of ancient Egypt and wh o opposedEgyptophil ic tradi tions were ultimately, and more or less unwittingly, followingth e same agenda of natural religion and reason. I t is always good to remember.

Perhaps, however, this remembrance is not, after all, the secret of redemption, b ut r ath er a technique of translation. I think that our ai m cannot be toabolish distinctions and to deconstruct the spaces that were severed or cloven bythem. What we need instead is the development of new techniques of intercultural

translation, not in order to appropriate t he other, but to overcome th e stereo

types of otherness that we have projected o nt o t he other by drawing distinctions.We are no longer dreaming of returning to Egypt or to the eighteenth century,

with its ideas of tolerance. While this concept of tolerance was based on integration

or generalization, what we need is a tolerance of recognition, which depends upon

what is still beyond our reach: a real understanding of those religions that wererejected as idolatry by the Mosaic distinction.

o t s

The following essay is based on research completed during my stay at th e J. Pau l Get tyCenter fo r th e History of Art an d the Humanit ies at Santa Monica in 1994-95. The

results of this research will be published in a book titled Moses the Egyptian: An Essay inMnemohistory forthcoming from Harvard University Press.

1. George Spencer Brown, Laws of Form (New York, 1972), 3.2. See, e.g., Erik Hornung, Echnaton: Die Religion des Lichtes (Zurich, 1995); Jan Assmann,

Akhanyati s Theology of Time an d Light, Israel Academy of Sciences an d the HumanitiesProceedings 7 (1992): 143-76.

3. See, e.g., Sanford Budick an d Wolfgang Iser, eds., The Translatability of Cultures: Figu-rations of the Space Between Stanford, 1996).

4. Peter Artzi, T he Birth of th e Middle East, Proceedings of the th World Congress of jewish

Studies Jerusalem, 1972), 120-24. For polytheism, see my contribution, TranslatingGods: Rel ig ion as a Factor of Cultural (Un)translatability, in Budick an d Iser, Trans-

latability 25 -3 6.5. Plutarch, De Iside an d Osiride trans. J. G. Griffiths (Cardiff, 1970),223

6. See Michael Walzer, Exodus an d Revolution (New York, 1985).7. See Moshe Barasch, Icon: Studies in the History of an Idea (New York, 1992); Moshe

Halbertal an d Avishai Margalit, Idolatry Cambridge, Mass., 1993).8. The sources have been collected by Menahem Stern , Greek and Latin Authors on jews

an d judaism , 3 vols. Jerusalem, 1974-1984).9. W.G. Waddell, ed. an d trans., Manetho Cambridge, Mass., 1940).

10 Stern jews an d judaism 2: 17-63. A. M. A. Hospers-Jansen, Tacitus over de joden (Gro-ningen, 1949); Heinz He inen , Agyptische Grundlagen des antiken Antijudaismus:

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Zu m J udenexkurs des Tacitus, Historien V. 2-13, Trierer Theologische Zeitschrift 101,no. 2 (1992): 124-49.

11. See, e.g., John G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism (New York, 1983); Pie r CesareBori, Immagini e stereotipi del po polo ebraico nel mondo antico: asino d oro, vitellod oro, in L estasi del profeta (Bologna, 1989), 131-50 (with rich bibliography). For th epolemical impact of this tradition, see especially Peter Schafer, Judaeophobia: The Attitude Towards theJews in the Ancient World (Cambridge, Mass., 1997).

12. See Silvia Berti , Il trattato dei tre impostori: La vita e lospirito del signor Benedetto de Spinoza(Turin, 1994).

13. Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago, 1963).Spencer quotes Maimonides in Hebrew and only occasionally in the original Arabic.

14. Koran 2.59, see also 5.73 and 22.17. Some thought of t he Mandaeans or a s imilarmovement ; Amos Funkenstein sees in them th e small remnants of a gnost ic sect ofthe second or third century A.D.; see his Perceptions of Jewish History (Berkeley, 1993),144. From A.D. 830 on, th e term refers to t he people at Harran who had managed toremain pagans and who still adhered to th e cult of Sin, th e Mesopotamian moon god.Threatened by persecution, they claimed to be Sabians, and re fe r red to t he Hermeti cwritings as their sacred book; see Wal ter Scott, ed. and trans., Hermetica: The ncient

Greek an d atin Writings Which Contain Religious or Philosophic Teachings Ascribed to HermesTrismegistus (1929; reprint, Boston, 1993) ,97-108. In t he seven teen th century, th eSabians were generally identified with th e Zoroastrians; see, e.g., Edward Stillingfleet,Origines sacrae or a rational account of the grounds of Christianfaith as to the truth an d divineauthority of the scriptures and the matters therein contained (1662; reprint, Oxford, 1797),1:49-51. Theophile Gale held that t he Rites of th e Zabii ar e th e same with those ofthe Chaldaeans an d Persians, who all agreed in this worship of th e Sun, an d of Fire,&c. ; see The Court of the Gentiles 2 vols. (Oxford, 1669-71),2:73.

15. Umberto Eco, An Ars Oblivionalis? Forget It PM 103 (1988): 254-61. Umberto

Eco might be right in postulating t ha t there is no possible art of oblivion on th e levelof individual memory. But Eco's arguments do not apply on the level of collectivememory.

16. Talattuf alallah wahakhmatah th e cunning (or 'practical reason') of God and his wis-dom, an expression that Funkenstein very interestingly links with Hegel's concept of t he cunning of reason ; see Funkenstein, Perceptions 141-44, esp. 143 n. 38, referringto Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed; and G. W.F. Hegel, Philosophie der Geschichte(Stuttgart, 1961), 78 £ John Spencer speaks of God's using honest fallacies and tortuous steps, methodis honeste fallacibus et sinuosis gradibus quoted after Gotthard VictorLechler, Geschichte des englischen Deismus (1841; reprint, Hildesheim, 1965), 138.

17. Ut omnes isti cultus au t ritus quifiebant in gratiam imaginum fierent in honorem Dei: Spencer s

translation of Rabbi Shem Tov be n Joseph ibn Shem Tov's commentary on Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed.

18. He was following a principle of Roman legal exegesis. The R om an s s tu di ed t he his-torical circumstantiae of a law with th e same purpose of finding out about its originalintention. The second step then was to generalize the intention in such a way that itcould be applied to th e case in point. History was studied in order to save th e law, no tto abolish it. A law was saved by generalizing th e original intention, or th e set of factsto which it was originally applied, and by finding out their timeless relevance. This isalso th e method of Maimonides.

19. John Spencer, De legibus hebraeorum ritualibus et earum rationibus libri tres (The Hague,1686).

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20. Spencer speaks of th e cessation of t he reason of th e Law, De legibus, 3: 12: Christus)Mosis Leges, earum ratione iam cessante, penitus abrogaverit [{Christ} abolished the Law ofMoses, because its reason had become inexistent].

21. Translatio in Latin means transfer, no t interpretation. Spencer conceives of a translatio Legis on the model of translatio imperii an d translatio studii. Yet transferimplies, of course, interpretation. Besides translatio, Spencer uses mutatio, borrowing,an d derivatio, derivation.

22. Acts 7.22. Note that this information about Moses is given only in th e New Testament.It never occurs in th e Hebrew Bible.

23. George Boas, The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo (New York, 1950); Erik Iversen, The Myth

of Egypt an d Its Hieroglyphs (Copenhagen, 1961),47-49.24. On Athanasius Kircher, see Liselotte Dieckmann, Hieroglyphics: The History of a Literary

Symbol (St. Louis, 1970); Iversen, Myth of Egypt, 92-100.25. Spencer combines two distant passages from Clement s Stromata (5.3.19.3 and 5.4.41.2);

see Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata Buch 1-6, ed. Otto Stahlin (Berl in , 1985), 338,354.

26. Ralph Cudworth, The true Intellectual System of the Universe: the first part, wherein ll theReason an d Philosophy of Atheism is confuted an d its Impossibility demonstrated (1678; reprint,London, 1743).

27. Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, De veritate (Paris, 1624).28. Cudworth, Intellectual System, 195.29. Isaac Casaubon, De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI d Cardinalis Baronii

prolegomena in annales (London, 1614).30. Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago, 1964).31. Ib id ., 398.32. Wil liam Warburton, The divine legation of Moses demonstrated on the principles of a religious

deist, from the omission of the doctrine of a future state of reward an d punishment in theJewishdispensation, 2 vols. (1738-41; reprint, London, 1778).

33. For this in teres t ing theory of writing, Warbur ton refer s to Flavius Josephus as hissource: [Josephus] tells Appion sic) that that high an d sublime knowledge, which th eGentiles with difficulty at ta ined unto , in th e r ar e a nd temporary celebration of theirMysteries, was habitually taught to th e Jews, at all times. See Warburton, Divine legation,1: 192-93.

34. See also John Selden s distinction between ius naturale ( the Noahidic laws) an d dis-ciplina Hebraeorum ; John Selden, De iure naturali et gentium iuxta disciplinam hebraeorumlibri septem (London, 1640); Friedrich Niewohner, Veritas sive Varietas: Lessings Toleranz-para bel und das Buch von den drei Betriigern (Heidelberg, 1988), 333-36. The discoveryof t he na tu ral law of nations is th e object of Giambattista Vico s new science. Vicomentions Hugo Grotius, John Selden, and Samuel Pufendorf as t he l eading theoristsof natural law. See Leon Pompa , ed. and trans., Vico: Selected Writings (Cambridge,1982),81-89.

35. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Ernst und Falk: Freimaurergesprache [1778], in Ges-ammelte Werke (Leipzig, 1841), 9:345-9l.

36. Karl Leonhard Reinhold [Br(uder) Decius, pseud.], Die Hebriiischen Mysterien, oder dieiilteste religiose Freymaurerey (Leipzig, 1788).

37. On Reinhold, see Gerhard W. Fuchs, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Illuminat un d Philosoph:eine Studie tiber den Zusammenhang seines Engagements als Freimaurer un d Illuminat mitseinem Leben un d philosophischen Wirken (Frankfurt am Main, 1994) where, however,Reinhold s book on th e Hebrew mysteries is no t mentioned.

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38. Reinhold, Hebriiischen Mysterien, 54.39. Voltaire, Essay sur le moeurs des peuples, in Oeuvres de Voltaire, ed. M. Beuchot (Paris,

1829), 15: 102-106; se serait fonde sur l ancienne inscription de la statue d ls is , Jesuis ce qu i est ; et cet te autre, Je suis tout ce qu i a ete et qu i sera; nu l mor te l ne pourralever mo n voile (103).

40. Vico also paraphrases the divine name as what I am an d what is ; Vico, SelectedWritings, 53 On the Ancient Wisdom of the Italians, chap. 2).

41. R. Merkelbach an d M. Totti, Abrasax: Ausgewiihlte Papyri religiosen un d magischen Inhalts(Opladen, 1991),2:131.

42. Nicolaus Cusanus, De docta ignorantia, ed. Paulus Wilpert (Hamburg, 1967),96-97.Bernhardine von Olfen an d Aleida Assmann drew my attention to this importanttext.

43. Gerardus Joannis Vossius, De theologia gentili et physiologia christiana: sive de origine acprogressu idololatriae, ad veterum gesta, ac rerum naturam, reductae; deque naturae mirandis,quibus homo adducitur ad Deum (Francfort, 1668).

44. John Marsham, Canon chronicus aegyptiacus, hebraicus, graecus (London, 1672).45. Emmanuel J. Bauer, Das Denken Spinozas un d seine Interpretation durch Jacobi (Frankfurt

am Main, 1989), 234

46. Ignaz von Born, Uber die Mysterien der Aegyptier, Journal fur Freymaurer 1 (1784):17-132, esp. 22. He quotes Plutarch as his source.

47. Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata, cited in Warburton, Divine legation, 1:191.48. Friedrich Schiller, Die Sendung Moses, ed. H. Koopmann, Siimtliche Werke IV : Historische

Schriften (Munich, 1968), 737-57.49. Nichts ist erhabener, als die einfache Grobe, mi t der sie von dem Weltschopfer

sprachen. Urn ih n auf eine recht entscheidende Art auszuzeichnen, gaben sie ih m ga rkeinen Namen; Schiller, Die Sendung Moses, 7 5

50. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J. M. Bernard (New York, 1951), 115.Translation altered slightly after Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft in Werke, ed . W. Weischedel(Darmstadt, 1968),8:417.

51. Ibid., 160. The German reads: Vielleicht ist nie etwas Erhabeneres gesagt oder ei nGedanke erhabener ausgedriickt worden als injener Aufschrift i iber de m Tempel derIsis (der Mutter Natur): Ic h bi n alles was da ist, was da wa r und was da sein wird, undmeinen Schleier ha t kein Sterblicher aufgedeckt. Segner benutz te diese Idee, durcheine sinnreiche, seiner Naturlehre vorgesetzte Vignette, urn seinen Lehrling, den erin diesen Tempel einzufiihren bereit war, vorher mit de m heiligen Schauer zu erfullen, der das Gemiith zu feierlicher Aufmerksamkeit stimmen solI.

52. See, e.g., Abbe Jean Terrasson, Sethos. Histoire ou vie, tiree des monuments, Anecdotes del ancienne Egypte; Ouvrage dans lequel on trouve la description des Initiations aux Mysteres

Egyptiens, traduit d un manuscrit Crec (1731; reprint, Paris, 1767).53. Athenian letters or, the Epistolary Correspondence of an Agent of the King of Persia, residing at

Athens during the Peloponnesian war. Containing the History of the Times, in Dispatches to theMinisters of State at the Persian Court. Besides Letters on various subjects between H im a nd HisFriends, 4 vols. (London, 1741-43), 1:95-100 (l et ter 25 by Orsames , f rom Thebes).Carlo Ginzburg drew my attention to this extraordinary history of t he Eas te rn Medi-terranean at th e end of th e fifth century B.C. The letters by Orsames add up to a fairsummary of th e knowledge of th e time concerning Ancient Egypt.

54. Magnus Olausson, Freemasonry, Occultism, and the Picturesque Garden Towardsth e End of th e Eighteenth Century, Ar t History 8, no. 4 (1985): 413-33. lowe this toAnnette Richards.

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55. See Anton F. Schindler, The Life of Beethoven ed . and trans. Ignace Moscheles (Matta-pan, Mass., 1966),2: 163:

If my observation entit les me to form an opinion on th e subject, I should sayhe [Beethoven] inc lined to Deism; in so fa r as t ha t t erm may be understoodto imply natural religion. H e ha d written with his own hand two inscriptions,

said to be taken from a temple of Isis. These inscriptions, which were framed,an d fo r many years constantly lay before h im on his writing-table, were asfol lows:-

I . I AM THAT WHICH Is I AM AL L THAT IS , ALL THAT WAS, AN D AL L THAT

SHALL B E . N o MORTAL MAN HATH MY VEIL UPLIFTED

I I . H E IS O N E ; SELF-EXISTENT, AN D T O T HAT O N E AL L THINGS OW E T H E I R

EXISTENCE.

Beethoven s German text is shown in facsimile an d reads: Ic h bin, was da ist / / Ic hbi n alles, was ist, was war, und was seyn wird , kein sterblicher Mensch ha t meinenSchleyer aufgehoben / / Er ist einzig von ih m selbst, u. diesem Einzigen sind aIle Dingeih r Daseyn schuldig. The sentences ar e separa ted from each other by double slashes.

The third seems to have been addedlater; th e writing

issmaller

and moredeveloped.

See also E. Graefe, Beethoven und die agyptische Weisheit, Gbttinger Miszellen 2(1971): 19-21.

56. The inscription, which is now lost, has been seen by Johann Gottfried von Herder; seeErich Schmidt, Lessing: Geschichte seines Lebens un d seiner Schriften 2 vols. (Berlin, 188486), 2:804; Gotthold Ephraim Lessings Siimtliche Schriften ed. Kar l Lachmann, vol. 22, bk.1 (Ber lin, 1915), ix; Karl Chr is t, Jacobi und Mendelssohn: i ne Analyse des Spinozastreits(Wiirzburg, 1988),59

57. See Gerard Vallee et aI., trans., The Spinoza Conversations Between Lessing an d jacobi: Textswith Excerpts from the nsuing Controversy (Lanham, Md., 1988).

58. Sigmund Freud, Der Mann Moses un d die monotheistische Religion (1939), vol. 16, Gesammelte Werke ed. Anna Freud (Frankfur t am Main, 1968); in English: Moses an d Monotheism in Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud vol. 23, trans.James Strachey (London, 1959). E. Blum, Uber Sigmund Freuds: D er M an n Mosesund di e monotheistische Religion, Psyche 10 (1956-57): 367-90, holds t ha t F re udknew Schiller s text, even if he does no t mention it (375). See Yozef Hayim Yerushalmi,Freud s Moses: Judaism Terminable an d Interminable (New Haven, 1991), 114 n. 17.

59. See Brigitte Sternberger, 'Der Mann Moses in Freuds Gesamtwerk, Kairos 16 (1974):161-225; Marthe Robert, D Oedipe Moise: Freud et la conscience juive (Paris, 1974); E.Amado Levy-Valensi, Le Moise de Freud ou la reference o ult (Monaco, 1984); PierCesare Bori, II Mose di Freud : Per un a prima valutazione storico-critica, in L estasi179-222, esp. 179-84; lIse Grubrich-Simitis, Freuds Moses-Studie als Tagtraum (Weinheim, 1991); Emanuel Rice, Freud an d Moses: The LongJourney Home (New York, 1990);Yerushalmi, Freud s Moses; Bluma Goldstein, Reinscribing Moses: Heine Kafka Freud an dSchoenberg in a European Wilderness (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); Carl E. Schorske, Freud 's Egypt ian Dig, New York Review of Books 27 May 1993, 35-40; P.C. Bori, Moses, t he G re at Stranger, in From Hermeneutics to Ethical Consensus mong Cultures(Atlanta, 1994), 155-64.

60. See Peter Gay, The Last Philosophe: Our Go d Logos, in A GodlessJew: Freud Atheisman d the Making of Psychoanalysis (New Haven, 1987),33-68.

61. John Toland, Adeisidaemon sive Titus Livius a superstione vindicatus (Hagae-Comitis,1709),99-199.

62. Freud, Standard Edition 23: 101.

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