Description
Trade ReviewWinner of the 1996 National Jewish Book Award (in the category of Jewish Thought)
Winner of the 1996 Heinz Hartmann Award given by the New York Psychoanalytic Institute
Winner of the best book in cultural anthropology from the American Anthropological Association
Winner of the 1996 Boyer Prize given by the Society for Psychological Anthropology
"This very important book is a fascinating psychoanalytic reading of the Torah that frequently illuminates texts that have been quite mysterious."—Daniel Boyarin, University of California, Berkeley
"In Moses and Civilization Robert Paul confronts a baffling intellectual puzzle which, in a tour de force, he tackles with the skill of a master puzzler. Although not everyone will agree with his proposed solution, no one, whether Freudian or anti-Freudian, will deny that it is achieved with rare insight and intelligence. It is a genuine intellectual treat."—Melford Spiro, University of California, San Diego
"Were the murders of the primal horde repeated in the saga of Moses, and did they lead to the birth of civilization and Judeo-Christian morality? Paul's hypothesis to this effect offers new understandings of the Bible, of Freud, of Western civilization, and of the primal horde as mythic paradigm rather than discredited reconstruction of ancient history."—M.D. E. Moore, m.d., co-editor with Bernard Fine of Psychoanalysis: The Major Concepts and Psychoanalytic Terms and Concepts.
