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The Gospel According to Freud.

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
The strength which this new faith derived from its source in historical truth enabled it to overcome all obstacles; in the place of the enrapturing feeling of being the chosen ones, there came now release through salvation. [The] original sin [murdering God] and salvation through sacrificial death became the basis for the new religion founded by Paul. . . After the Christian doctrine had burst the confines of Judaism. . . Only part of the Jewish people accepted the new doctrine. Those who refused to do so are still called Jews. Through this decision they are still more sharply separate from the rest of the world than they were before. They had to suffer the reproach from the new religious community---which besides Jews included Egyptians, Greeks, Syrians, Romans, and lastly also Teutons--- that they had murdered God.

In its full form this reproach would run: "They will not admit that they killed God [or that God is dead], whereas we do and are cleansed from the guilt of it." Then it is easy to understand what truth lies behind this reproach. Why the Jews were unable to participate in the progress which this confession to the murder of God betokened . . . might well be the subject of a special investigation. Through this they have, so to speak, shouldered a tragic guilt. They have been made to suffer severely for it.

Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. 175-176.​

Lonely, exiled, and dying, Sigmund Freud penned the words above as his last will and testament; a Gospel testament as it were. All the brilliant insight from a lifetime of precise navigation through the Sea of Lethe, never shipwrecked by the siren song coming from the shores of the collective unconscious, gave Freud the preternatural vision to pen words that will come to be seen as a door into the deepest streams flowing out of his Jewish brother John's own Gospel account.



John
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
Lonely, exiled, and dying, Sigmund Freud penned the words above as his last will and testament; a Gospel testament as it were. All the brilliant insight from a lifetime of precise navigation through the Sea of Lethe, never shipwrecked by the siren song coming from the shores of the collective unconscious, gave Freud the preternatural vision to pen words that will come to be seen as a door into the deepest streams flowing out of his Jewish brother John's own Gospel account.

These are no lathery words meant to eulogize one of the modern world's great thinkers. They're a call not only to realize Freud's brilliance as it relates to understanding the formative archetypes in the sub, and collective, unconscious (where man's truth lies and sometimes tells untruths), but also to see that with his dying breath ---his final words --- Freud justified a lifetime of scientific inquiry into the source of man's deepest self-understanding. As we shall see, when Freud writes that the Gospel derived from "historical truth" he's indulging a brilliant Freudian slip of his own wrist since his personal search for truth was less "historical" and more "psychic."

From his last will and testament we can know not that the Gospel's veracity comes from "historical truth," though if might rest there too, but that in his latter days Freud came to realize that the Gospel was the very source, the lighthouse, on the far shore of the collective unconscious, that had been guiding his journey all along. With his last will and testament Freud had earnestly, tenderly, come home.



John
 
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Gargovic Malkav

Well-Known Member
. . . Is that a prophetic utterance or a statement subject to evaluation and discussion?



John

Make of it what you think is right. If what I said isn't useful to you, you may have a good reason to talk back. Know though, that I don't identify myself as a Christian, because I don't get all my religious inspiration from the biblical canon, but also from apocryphal/pseudepigraphical books and the quran(which inevitably leads to some canonical conflicts). I've also read tao te ching once in which I found a similar message as in the Abrahamic scriptures, although it has nothing to do with the history of the Jewish and the Christian peoples.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
I have read Dr. Freuds book Moses. A little different from your post.

. . . I have something to say about the broad outlines of Freud's final thoughts that hopefully won't be hurt too bad by my paraphrase of his thoughts. And I hope not to do any damage to the spirit of Freud's final thoughts by my handling of them. I'm not trying to, I'm trying not to, mishandle them.



John
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
Make of it what you think is right. If what I said isn't useful to you, you may have a good reason to talk back. Know though, that I don't identify myself as a Christian, because I don't get all my religious inspiration from the biblical canon, but also from apocryphal/pseudepigraphical books and the quran(which inevitably leads to some canonical conflicts). I've also read tao te ching once in which I found a similar message as in the Abrahamic scriptures, although it has nothing to do with the history of the Jewish and the Christian peoples.

. . . I'm the last person who'd have a problem with a universal understanding of God. . .Though, for me, any canonical conflicts between sacred texts come from the interpreter and not the texts themselves.



John
 

1213

Well-Known Member
...that they had murdered God.

...

It is interesting why people think so, when Bible tells Jesus is the image of God and God is greater than Jesus, who is the temple of God, who is the one who raised Jesus from the death. Maybe people should read carefully what Bible tells.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
It is interesting why people think so, when Bible tells Jesus is the image of God and God is greater than Jesus, who is the temple of God, who is the one who raised Jesus from the death. Maybe people should read carefully what Bible tells.

We should read the Bible and Freud better. Freud wasn't talking about Jesus when he claimed Jews were guilty of killing God.



John
 

Gargovic Malkav

Well-Known Member
We should read the Bible and Freud better. Freud wasn't talking about Jesus when he claimed Jews were guilty of killing God.



John

I haven't read that book of Freud, so I can't say anything about that myself. But if you say he wasn't talking about Jesus when he claimed the Jews were guilty of killing God, are you perhaps referring to how Jesus and his followers possessed and expressed a divine knowledge that was hated and rejected by the Jewish authorities, therefore "killing" God in their hearts?
 

eik

Active Member
With his last will and testament Freud had earnestly, tenderly, come home.
A bit late in the day for a genuine religious conversion. If you put off acknowledging the mere possibility of "historical truth" in the gospels until the day of death, it may be too late and not unequivocal enough: the thief on the cross had showed himself as certain that Jesus was the son of God, when Jesus admitted him to paradise. However perhaps we can allow Freud in these words to be actually confessing to Jesus as the son of God.

[From Freud] "Through this [the Jews] have, so to speak, shouldered a tragic guilt. They have been made to suffer severely for it."
I could agree that for Jews high trinitarianism must have been pretty obnoxious to live with whenever trinitarian bigotry came to the fore, but on the other hand Jews have often had it relatively good down the ages in being protected by Christians, given their unequivocal antipathy to Christianity, and in doing so have accumulated great wealth too. It is too trite to pretend that they suffer for the guilt of their ancestors. As well as from trinitarian bigotry, they also suffer on account of their continuing defamation of Christ, as is, or at least used to be, found in their unredacted Talmuds, and which brought them no friends.

We should read the Bible and Freud better. Freud wasn't talking about Jesus when he claimed Jews were guilty of killing God.
That's a very profound point. Jesus accused the Jews of killing or rather denying God before he was crucified, when he cast them as blasphemers of the Holy Spirit. It is in this declared-as-unforgivable sense of denying God that perhaps that some "Jews" continue to "murder God" (taken as a metaphor for blaphemy against the Holy Spirit where by definition of the concept God is not killable).
 
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John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
I haven't read that book of Freud, so I can't say anything about that myself. But if you say he wasn't talking about Jesus when he claimed the Jews were guilty of killing God, are you perhaps referring to how Jesus and his followers possessed and expressed a divine knowledge that was hated and rejected by the Jewish authorities, therefore "killing" God in their hearts?

Freud equates "original sin" with killing god in some sense. So in his reasoning Jews and Judaism reject that they're guilty of "original sin," and thus reject that they're born already condemned and in need of redemption.

He says most of the rest of humanity confesses to the sin, and thus acknowledge the need for redemption, while Jews deny what, in Freud's mind, so to say, is a universal guilt buried deep in the collective unconscious, but a guilt based on some real, original, crime.



John
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
A bit late in the day for a genuine religious conversion. If you put off acknowledging the mere possibility of "historical truth" in the gospels until the day of death, it may be too late and not unequivocal enough: the thief on the cross had showed himself as certain that Jesus was the son of God, when Jesus admitted him to paradise. However perhaps we can allow Freud in these words to be actually confessing to Jesus as the son of God.

Freud might say, and I would agree with him if he did, that salvation isn't based on historical truth, but that the history of salvation is based on Christ. For Freud, Christ's historicity is less important than his reality in the collective unconscious of the human race.

Men from every ethnicity, race, nationality, and creed, can, and do, acknowledge the truth of Christ since that truth, though buried deep in the psyche of the human race, is there nevertheless.

Many Jews accept Christ just like everyone else. It's Judaism that denies the need, the creed, and the reality such that in this sense one might say that Jews, of every creed and nationality, have been made to pay severely for Judaism's rejection of a universal truth they believe they have no part in. It's this duality, established through Judaism, between Jews and everyone else that's in the cross hairs of this and a number of other examinations.


John
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
I could agree that for Jews high trinitarianism must have been pretty obnoxious to live with whenever trinitarian bigotry came to the fore, but on the other hand Jews have often had it relatively good down the ages in being protected by Christians, given their unequivocal antipathy to Christianity, and in doing so have accumulated great wealth too. It is too trite to pretend that they suffer for the guilt of their ancestors. As well as from trinitarian bigotry, they also suffer on account of their continuing defamation of Christ, as is, or at least used to be, found in their unredacted Talmuds, and which brought them no friends.

. . . Both testaments of the scripture imply that there's a parallel between killing one's brother, and killing God. To hate your brother is to hate God. To kill your brother is to kill God.

Which segues into the parable of the good Samaritan where Judaism queries Jesus concerning who is one's brother (or neighbor)?

Judaism intuited Jesus' words and mission more clearly in some senses than his own disciples. They saw Paul's teachings in Jesus' very words. In this they were more discerning of Jesus' words and his mission than they're given credit for.

Which segues into the parable of the good Samaritan since Judaism realized Jesus was opening up Judaism to the world, transforming it, as Paul later realized, into a universal religion for all men and not a religion selecting one race, creed, ethnicity, or religion, for divine favor, as the ancient pagans were wont to believe was the nature of their god and gods.

In this respect, in killing Jesus (or seeing to it), Judaism was rejecting all of their brother's outside of Jerusalem and the Jewish religion. They were hating their brothers such that they hated the one who was threatening to unite then with their brothers.

How ironic then that the Jew's brothers, whom they wanted no part of, consider Jesus God, so that Judaism killed God in their hatred for God threatening to unite them with the goyim outside of Jerusalem. . . . And consequently, it can be pointed out that modern Judaism hates Paul even more than they hate Jesus since Paul explained to Gentiles the message of Jesus that Judaism had already intuited from Jesus' own words: the vineyard Judaism considered theirs and theirs alone, was originally intended to be merely tended to by Jews until it was opened up to the whole world.

Freud implies that all men killed god but that the ringleaders are the one most desiring of covering up the crime. The irony inherent to the Gospels.



John
 
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Gargovic Malkav

Well-Known Member
Freud equates "original sin" with killing god in some sense. So in his reasoning Jews and Judaism reject that they're guilty of "original sin," and thus reject that they're born already condemned and in need of redemption.

He says most of the rest of humanity confesses to the sin, and thus acknowledge the need for redemption, while Jews deny what, in Freud's mind, so to say, is a universal guilt buried deep in the collective unconscious, but a guilt based on some real, original, crime.



John

I see. Could this be said for the Jewish faith in general though? I mean, among each other they can have quite different opinions about their religion as well. I do think that they had to suffer a lot of hardships because of the pride, greed, and stubbornness of some of their leaders(and the people that support them). And as the Jewish communities are remarkably close-knit, Jews with no ill intentions may feel obliged to support the bad ones because otherwise they feel they are letting their people as a whole down(and may fear judgment from them), which means they will also reap the bad fruits of their corrupt leaders. I don't think God judges them for their preference for exclusivity though, as it seems to me that the scriptures do acknowledge that God has appointed a special role for them compared to other peoples. But He forsakes those who believe that God loves them for being Jewish, instead of being righteous. This is also a meaning I get from the parable of The Samaritan; God loves a helpful stranger that doesn't really know Him more, than someone who does know Him, but acts as if God only has love and respect for him and the people that look up to him.
 
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eik

Active Member
Freud might say, and I would agree with him if he did, that salvation isn't based on historical truth, but that the history of salvation is based on Christ. For Freud, Christ's historicity is less important than his reality in the collective unconscious of the human race.
John
In which case, if he thought it, Freud was not saved, because what is required for salvation is not an appreciation of the history of salvation being based in Christ, but to participate in his salvation by belief in his historicity. A psychoanalysis of the human race's approach to salvation is not a substutute.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
In which case, if he thought it, Freud was not saved, because what is required for salvation is not an appreciation of the history of salvation being based in Christ, but to participate in his salvation by belief in his historicity.

. . . Wouldn't that create something of a problem for those who required salvation prior to Jesus' historicity; like say Adam and Eve, or Isaiah?



John
 

eik

Active Member
. . . Wouldn't that create something of a problem for those who required salvation prior to Jesus' historicity; like say Adam and Eve, or Isaiah?
John
It's a question of recognition. Those before Christ had no Christ to recognize, but per John the Baptist, who was the greatest of all prophets, and said to represent Elijah, it can be assumed that they would all have instantaneously recognized Christ as the savior.

The Christ is clearly not something mankind is capable of inventing for itself. Although capable of inventing pagan gods by the thousand after the deist mould, a human saviour from heaven presenting a blood atonement for sins is either going to be historical, or a pagan faerie tale. There's nothing in between.

When blood atonement is peculiarly jewish, or at least Old Testament, it is very strange that a Jew providing such a atonement on a permanent basis in fulfillment of the prophecies, is not recognized historically by fellow Jews purporting to believe in God. After all, the Jews do not assert that Jesus never existed. Thus belief in the concept must be linked to belief in the man. The present non-Christian Jews do not believe in the concept, and so do not believe in the man.

As Jesus said, it was only those "who eat [his] flesh and drank [his] blood who have eternal life" John 5:64.
 
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