Ernst Sellin and the death of Moses (2 of 3): The Sellin mystery

This is the second of three posts on the book, Geschichte des israelitische-jüdischen Volkes (1924) by Ernst Sellin. Part 1 is Freud's use of Sellin's material.

Freud’s and Sellin’s view that Moses was murdered by the Hebrews he led never gained broad acceptance among Biblical scholars, an issue which is discussed further in Part 3 tomorrow.

Freud’s close collaborator and biographer Ernest Jones added a more recent mystery in The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 2: The Last Phase, 1919-1939 (1957). Sellin’s argument was “immediately rejected by all Jewish scholars”, Jones writes. As Freud’s version of Moses in Moses and Monotheism was also, for the most part. One of the arguments Jewish scholars made is that Sellin himself later repudiated his argument, “some say ten years later and some seven”, according to Jones. That would presumably be seven or ten years after Sellin’s 1922 book on Moses. Jones relates:

Yahuda [presumably Abraham Shalom Yahuda], another great scholar, told Freud this when he visited him in 1938, and Freud could only shrug his shoulders and say "It might be true all the same." It was Sellin's suggestion that made Freud decide to write his book; it fitted so well with his views on the importance of parricide.

There is a curious postscript to this story. I have made all possible endeavors to find out the truth about Sellin's supposed withdrawal, and have been given a number of different references to it, in his writings, in his addresses before Congresses and so on. All of them proved to be false. On the contrary, in a book Sellin published thirteen years later he not only adhered to his opinion, but stated that he had found "further confirmation" of it in a number of allusions to the murder, which he listed, in the writings of other prophets. In spite of all that, however, there appears to be a certain basis for the rumor. A friend of Sellin's, Professor Rust of Berlin, has been good enough to answer my inquiries, and he informs me that on one occasion Sellin, when hard pressed in private talk, was willing to admit that he might have been mistaken in his interpretation of the passage in Hosea which had been the starting point of his theory.

The book to which he refers as having been published 13 years later than 1922 is Geschichte des israelitische-jüdischen Volkes, which was originally published in 1924; Jones’ endnote cites a 1935 date. Additional mystery, because the original publication puts it two years after the 1922 book, so a repudiation seven or ten years after the 1922 book wouldn’t be contradicted by the first publication of Geschichte des israelitische-jüdischen Volkes in 1924.

And Jones adds cryptically:

Sellin's hypothesis could be supported by numerous suggestive passages in the Torah and other apocryphal literature hinting mysteriously at various legends concerning the death of Moses, but it would be impertinent to discuss them here.

“Impertinent” is an odd choice of words in the context, it seems to me. Here he cites three sources: Meyer Abraham, “La Mort de Moïse,” Legendes juives aprocryphes sur la vie de Moïse (1925); Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (1947); and, M. Rosenfeld, Der Midrasch über den Tod des Moses (1899).

Ernest Jones (1879-1958)

It does seem that Jones’ account of this aspect of Freud’s work on Moses is too dismissive. Sellin had identified a number of passages in the Hebrew Bible which he read as a tradition that said Moses had been killed. Jones himself then cites material from the Jewish midrash that also, by his own account, lend credence to Sellin’s argument and also demonstrate the existence of Jewish traditions about the death of Moses at variance with the main view presented in the Hebrew Bible. Yet his account, quoted above, leaves the impression that Freud picked up the idea based on Sellin’s 1922 book and that he picked it up because “it fitted so well with his views on the importance of parricide,“ even lightly dismissing the news from a leading scholar that Sellin himself had rejected his own theory.

But, as I noted before, it seems odd that Freud would not have been familiar with Sellin’s later work on Moses. He was not a specialist in Biblical scholarship as such. But he was no dilettante, either. He was familiar with some of the cutting-edge work on Near East archaeology and Biblical criticism. It makes more sense to me that Freud was familiar with Sellin’s case he made two years after the original book, but cited the 1922 book in Moses and Monotheism because, as he wrote in it, “In 1922 Ernst Sellin made a discovery of decisive importance.” Moses and Monotheism cites only a limited number of sources; it’s entirely plausible that Freud cited only the one that originally contained Sellin’s “discovery”.

Unfortunately, Jones also does not give a date for Professor Rust’s reported conversation with Sellin, a fact which has obvious relevance to the question of whether Sellin later rejected his own argument on the death of Moses. And what Jones relates of Rust’s account of his private conversation with Sellin doesn’t have Sellin rejecting the whole notion; instead it has Sellin “willing to admit that he might have been mistaken in his interpretation of the passage in Hosea which had been the starting point of his theory.”

But as we’ve seen, Sellin cited at least five passages in Hosea in support of his view of the murder of Moses, and well as numerous others from other books of the Hebrew Bible. The fact that Sellin in a long conversation with a friend and fellow scholar may have mused out loud that his interpretation of one of those passages may have been mistaken in some way isn’t exactly the same as retracting an elaborate argument made in print on more than one occasion. (Not even close, actually.) And, again, in the context it’s puzzling that Jones didn’t give any indication of when that conversation took place.

Part 3 tomorrow: Is Sellin’s theory of the murder of Moses plausible?

Tags: ernst sellin, ernest jones, freud, moses