ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis will become of real aid to history only if it becomes interested in scientific verification, which means not mere confirmation but genuine search for experiments which may refute Jews hypothesis. Sigmund Freud’s attempt to explain the antagonism between Christians and Jews will convince neither Jewish nor Christian scholars. For Freud’s whole account of the life of Moses Mendelssohn and his influence on the development of monotheism rests, in the end, on nothing more substantial than Breasted’s dubious etymology for the Hebrew word MSH, and Sellin’s fantastic interpretation of some passages in the book of Hosea. Dr. Freud’s method in proving that Moses got his monotheism from Ikhnaton is no better than the one by which it is proved that Roger Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Freud is aware that many historians see no convincing reason for believing that Moses was more than a legendary figure.
