Page 10

NEUROTIC MOSES

This certainly is not the first time anyone has suggested that Moses was a closeted homosexual. To many people this assertion might seem sacrilegious and shocking. Let me try to outline briefly why, objective grounds exist to encourage the idea that Moses was gay and why any shock lover that notion is inappropriate.

The Hebrew taboo against homosexuality originates in the Nomadic tribal conditions of the early Semites. These original wanderers who foraged and pillaged for their sustenance experienced a high rate of male mortality as a result of nearly constant warfare, as well as high infant mortality characteristic of mobile primitive peoples. Consequently, the early Hebrews suffered under enormous social pressure to produce large numbers of children. In fact, the problems associated with human reproduction dominate the myths of the Old Testament.

No wonder that a prominent and ambitious tribal chieftain such as Moses should undergo considerable emotional trauma

at his own inexplicable homosexuality. It is clear from the Mosaic record that Moses endured psychological stresses as a result of his own sexual inadequacy. While Moses gives tedious attention to the lineages of Hebrew patriarchs and to the families of his contemporaries, he makes only one brief mention of his wife and the birth of their one son. This is in itself immediate cause for suspicion. Is it possible that Moses was sexually incapable of generating the massive genealogies so typical of the Scriptures?

Moses' paranoia crystalizes in innumerable stories, laws and situations, betraying a psyche which could not cope with the contradiction of child bearing vs homosexuality. As is well known, Moses was a womanhater. The fault of his sexual frustrations was, like the forbidden fruit, passed on to women. Moses consistently punishes the women of his Pentateuch. Starting with Eve, he proceeds to impugn his. fictive women. Instead of assigning impotence to Abraham, a true reflection of Moses himself, he leaves Sarah barren until her old age. Abraham's (Moses') sexual disinterest in Sarah is revealed in the fact that he does not hesitate to offer his wife both to the Pharoah of Egypt and to a Canaanite king for sexual purposes without calling upon some miracle to rescue him from the predicament, as he does liberally elsewhere.

In another instance, Moses relieves Jacob of guilt for sexual indifference to Rachel by leaving Rachel barren. And when Joseph is seduced by

|

Potiphar's wife, he uses a vague moral principle to cover his inability to satisfy the woman.. Subsequently, Moses turns Lot's wife into salt and prescribes severe restrictions, penalties, and ritual disgrace for women in

the Mosaic code.

The Old Testament Yahweh is. clearly a reflection of Moses' own homosexual personality. God is a male and he is surrounded only by male heavenly persons. He is jealous when his angels have sexual intercourse with women (Genesis 6:1-4). And Ihis relationship is not open enough even to share them with the promiscuous gays of Sodom and Gomorrah whom he exterminates. As the First Commandment indicates, he is jealous of other gods (goddesses do not rate) as well..

Moses ascends Mount Sinai. not with the original intention of receiving the Ten Combut mandments, to see Yahweh face-to-face. To Moses' disappointment Yahweh permits the prophet only to see his back. Is Yahweh perhaps Moses' ideal lover? Is his yearning to be physical with Yahweh unveiled when he in the person of Abraham wrestles with the angel and makes covenants by having a man place his hand behind another's thigh (Genesis 24:12)? Moses is also privileged, when unlike any other patriarch, he is transported from Mount Nebo to the person of Yahweh without being buried.

On a more terrestrial level, Moses' guilt surfaces in his pronounced embarrassment over male nudity. For example, Noah's son Ham is punished for viewing his father's nakedness and the Israelites are enjoined. not to build steps to Yahweh's altars so as not to expose their groins while climbing bulky stone-age steps.

At the risk of sounding Freudian, there is extensive phallic imagery in the Torah: which accentuates Moses' preoccupation with the male organ. These symbols range from heavy emphasis on male circumcision to frequent emblems such as rods, serpents (Exodus 21:9), pillars and columns of fire and smoke.

The distorted love affair between Moses and Yahweh is the result of repressed desires of a highly competitive shepherding and maurading culture. Of course, we might be tempted to dismiss the above evidence as circumstantial, only because we have been inculcated with the neurotic fantasies of an almost neolithic desert dweller.

If, however, these legends and ceremonies were the lore of some tribes in New Guinea or South America, would we not forth-rightly analyze them as has been done here?

HIGH GEAR

DECEMBER 1976

EeeE

БОМО

one 960