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(All parts in English)

André CAQUOT

Well, I will not say that I am introducing Professor André Caquot to you, who is a director of studies at the Fifth Section, known as the Religious Sciences section, at the École des Hautes Études, where, as you know, I am in charge of lectures. I will not say that I am introducing him because I cannot introduce him to you. I am introducing myself as having been, through his grace and kindness, entirely dependent on him during this time that has passed—I would say about two days after… before our last meeting, that is, from the moment I set out to finally… grasp a word of it, to approach the question of Sellin’s book.

I have spoken to you about it for quite some time, so you know the importance of this book, don’t you? For those who might happen to be here for the first time, it is a book that arrived, if I may say so, just in time… or, as I once put it, like a ring on a finger… for Freud, allowing him to support this theme of Moses’ death being a murder—that is, that Moses was killed.

It is clear that everything I have been able to learn, thanks to Monsieur Caquot, about the situation of this book—first in relation to the exegesis embedded in the efflorescence of what we might call textual criticism as it was established, especially from the 19th century onward, in German universities—

It was necessary, it was necessary to situate this Sellin among those who preceded him and then those who followed him, after Eduard Meyer and Gressmann, before many others, in order to grasp precisely the impact he brought and whose dimension was given by this text that I managed to obtain, as I pointed out last time—not without difficulty—since, in fact, this book was truly unobtainable in Europe.

I finally—through the efforts of the Alliance Israélite Universelle—I finally received it from Copenhagen and thus had a text that I presented to Monsieur Caquot, who was one of the few people who had not only heard of it but had already held it in his hands for some time before I came to him with my request. And so, we examined this text, particularly at the point where it allows Freud to situate something that, evidently, is dear to him, though not necessarily for the same reasons—Do you have something to say?—not necessarily for the same reasons as Freud.

This, of course, could not fail—because it is in the very text of Sellin itself—to compel us to enter a field in which I am profoundly ignorant. You cannot imagine how much I do not know! Fortunately, indeed, because if you knew everything I do not know, you would know everything!

And it is here that, when put to the test, an attempt I made to organize what I had been able to learn from M. Caquot, I suddenly became aware of this: that there is a very great difference between knowing—knowing what one speaks of and believes one can speak of—and then what it is that I shall call, with a term that will serve to clarify what we are going to do here: there will be, for the second time, a rupture in the way I address you.

Last time, you endured a harsh ordeal, even to the point where some hypothesized that it was to provide some ventilation for the room—I see that the result was mediocre [Laughter]. Well, this time, I think you will rather have reasons to stay because if I offer you once again what, thanks to Monsieur Caquot, I can do today, it will be in a different manner.

And let’s say that, all things considered, I felt, at the thought of handling what we were forced to handle—namely, Hebrew letters—if last time I inserted into the text I read to you the definition of Midrash, which is that of a relationship to writing, subjected to certain laws that concern us eminently, since, as I mentioned to you in the meantime, it is a particular relationship to writing, to a spoken intervention that relies on it, that refers to it.

The entire analysis—I mean analytic technique—can, in a certain way, be elucidated from this reference, be considered as this game, let’s call it, in quotation marks, “interpretation”, since the term has been used indiscriminately ever since we began hearing about “conflicts of interpretations”, for instance.

As if there could be a conflict between interpretations! At most, interpretations complement each other. Interpretations precisely play upon this reference, and what matters is what I told you last time: falsum, what falls from it with all the ambiguity that can arise around this word regarding fall and falsehood—falsehood, I mean, as the opposite of truth. I said that even, on occasion, this falsehood in interpretation can have the effect of shifting discourse.

What we are going to do is this, which I believe is the best we can hope for: to transmit to you what it is about, which for me cannot, in any way, in this field, correspond to knowledge, but rather to what I have called this “acclimatization.” And here, I will continue the process before you, I will continue trying to acclimatize myself, in a form that is in no way fictional, through questions that necessarily remain unresolved—the same ones I have posed to M. Caquot in recent days.

And in this regard, I will be in the same position as you, in this relationship of “acclimatization” to a certain kind of knowledge, which is very precisely that of biblical exegesis… Do I need to tell you that M. Caquot holds his position in this Fifth Section under the title of Comparative Semitic Religions? …I believe, from the experience I have had, that no one in this field could be more adequate… in the sense that I myself found him to be… to help you grasp what is at stake in Sellin’s approach when he draws from the texts of Hosea… and you will see by what process… when he draws from the texts of Hosea something that he himself is quite intent on bringing forth.

He has his reasons for doing so, and his reasons matter to us. In this regard, what M. Caquot has brought to me is also precious. I was speaking earlier of ignorance. To be a father… I mean: not only a real father but a father of the real… there are certainly things one must fiercely ignore.

One would, in a certain way, have to ignore everything that is not part of what I attempted, in my text last time, to establish as the level of structure—this level being properly defined as belonging to the order of the effects of language.

It is here that one falls, if I may say so, upon truth… the upon could just as well be replaced by from: that one falls from truth… namely that—something singular—considering this absolute reference, one might say that whoever held to it—but of course, it is impossible to hold to it—would not know what he was saying.

This certainly does not mean something that in any way specifies or could serve to specify the analyst. That would, of course, be placing him—I must say… or more precisely, you are quite ready to tell me… placing him at the same level as everyone else, that is: “Who knows what he is saying?”

But that would be a mistake: it is not because everyone speaks that everyone says something. It pertains to an entirely different reference… to knowing in what discourse one is inserted… that this might concern, at the limit, this somewhat fictitious position.

There is someone who responds to this position, someone whom I will name without hesitation, because he appears essential—essential to the interest that we, as analysts, must take in what concerns Hebrew history and what makes it so that analysis may not have been conceivable as having originated anywhere other than within its tradition.

And someone who was born into it, and who, as I have pointed out to you, insists on this: that he has properly no trust… to advance in the field he has discovered… except in those Jews who have known how to read for quite some time and who, for quite some time, have lived—this is the Talmud—by reference to a text.

The one, or rather what I am going to name, which realizes this radical position of fierce ignorance, has a name: it is Yahweh himself. The characteristic of Yahweh in his call to this chosen people is precisely this: that he fiercely ignores everything—everything that exists—at the moment he makes himself known, certain practices, certain relationships, which belong to the already existing and flourishing religions, and of which we must say they are founded upon a certain kind of knowledge—specifically, sexual knowledge.

And when we speak of Hosea shortly, we will see to what extent it is precisely in this regard that he inveighs against them—all that pertains to a relationship that, in a way, blends nature itself, which in some way depends on it, with supernatural forces. By what right do we—what right do we have to say that this was based on nothing, that the method of moving Baal, who in return fertilized the earth, did not correspond to something that, just as well, could have had its effectiveness—and why not?

Simply because there was Yahweh and because a certain discourse was inaugurated, which I am trying this year to isolate as the reverse of psychoanalytic discourse—namely, the discourse of the Master. Precisely because of this, we know nothing about it anymore.

Is this the position that the analyst must take? Surely not! The analyst… and what I am about to say, I have been able to experience for myself… the analyst does not have this fierce passion, which so greatly surprises us when it comes to Yahweh.

Yahweh is situated at the most paradoxical point when viewed from another perspective, such as that of Buddhism. Of the three fundamental passions from which it is recommended to purify oneself—love, hatred, and ignorance—you can observe—this is what is most striking in this history of a unique religious manifestation—that he is devoid of none of them. Love, hatred, and ignorance—these are, in any case, passions that are in no way absent, strictly speaking, from his discourse.

What very clearly distinguishes the position of the analyst… and today I will not go so far as to write it on the board using my little diagram, the one where the object (a) is at the top left… the position of the analyst, very clearly… this is the only meaning that can be given to “analytic neutrality”… is to not partake in these passions.

This is what makes him, what constantly makes him, exist in this uncertain zone where he is vaguely in search of an acclimatization, an acclimatization to what knowledge entails, knowledge that he nevertheless must, strictly speaking, repudiate.

It is indeed from this perspective of Yahweh’s dialogue with his people that the matter at hand today arises—namely, what could have gone through Sellin’s mind, and also what may be revealed to us by the encounter that is thereby established between what Freud is searching for, which properly belongs to this line of thought, but where he stops, as I have told you, where he fails, where he turns the theme of the father into this sort of mythical knot—which is, strictly speaking, one of the aims of what I now have to develop for you—where he short-circuits it, and, to put it plainly, botches it.

I have told you, the Oedipus complex is Freud’s dream, and like every dream, it requires interpretation, and very precisely an examination of where this effect of displacement occurs—which must, in the strictest sense, be conceived as akin to the shift that can occur in a written text.

That the real father… if one can attempt to reconstruct it from Freud’s articulation… is properly articulated with what concerns only the imaginary father, namely the prohibition of jouissance, and that, on the other hand, what constitutes his essence is thereby masked—namely, this castration, properly speaking, which I was referring to just a moment ago when I said there exists here an order of fierce ignorance—I mean in the position of the real father—this is what I hope to demonstrate to you all the more easily, as today we will, in relation to Sellin, have clarified a certain number of things.

That is why, first of all, you will allow me to pose a few questions to Monsieur Caquot.

Certainly, he knows well—from what I have expressed to him in a thousand ways—that the core of our problem, here at this point, is: how, why did Freud need Moses? It is evident that, for the sake of knowledge, it is still essential to have at least some idea of what “Moses” meant. And Sellin’s text indeed begins with this question: Wer war Mose?—”Who was Moses?”—and by summarizing all those who preceded him, as well as the various positions taken by those working alongside him.

It is certain that these positions… that it is impossible for them to be clarified other than in relation to knowing since when Yahweh existed. If Yahweh was already “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” and if this was a tradition of which we can be certain, then this is obviously quite different from the idea that this tradition may have been, in some way, retroactively reconstructed—and this by the founder of a religion who would then be Moses, in that, at the foot of Horeb, or more precisely on Horeb itself, he would have received—the crucial point—written tablets of the law.

Sellin’s book revolves, strictly speaking, around this: Mose und seine Bedeutung für die israelitisch-jüdische Religionsgeschichte.

Why did Sellin have to present us with a murdered Moses?

That is a question. I would not even wish to address it; I want to leave the entire field to Monsieur Caquot.

It is certain that this is closely linked to the fact that Moses is considered a prophet. Why is it that, as a prophet, he must be killed? Or, more precisely, why does Sellin conceive of him as having suffered a martyr’s death precisely as a prophet?

This, I believe, is what Monsieur Caquot will already be willing to clarify for us.

André CAQUOT

If you allow me to first introduce the figure we are discussing—since we are not here to explain texts from Hosea, as I believe we would have to dedicate an entire year to that—but rather to explain an opinion on Hosea, which is that of Ernst Sellin.

Ernst Sellin is the very type of those German university professors of the early 20th century. He was born in 1867 and had an absolutely straightforward career as a professor of the Old Testament in the Protestant theological faculties of Germany.

At that time, in 1920, I believe, he was a Professor ordinarius of the Old Testament at the University of Berlin. It may not be useless to know something about his ideology. Sellin was a rather typical representative of Protestantism—evangelical, or what we would rather call liberal today—in late 19th-century Germany.

The religion of Israel is seen above all by this tendency as—if you will—a lesson in morality. There is always an emphasis on the ethical elements in revelation. Now, these ethical elements are found, according to the most common opinion of Sellin’s time:

— On the one hand, in what are called the Great Prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and also the Minor Prophets, the twelve minor prophets, among whom Amos and Hosea are the oldest representatives.
— On the other hand, this moral revelation is found in the Decalogue—the Decalogue, particularly what is called the ethical Decalogue of Exodus 20, what you know as the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments, Sellin attributes them—and he is not the only one—to Moses himself. And then, how can one connect the two peaks of Old Testament revelation?

Sellin then posits what is essentially a postulate: the prophets, the great literary prophets, are the heirs of the Mosaic tradition, of the true tradition originating from Moses, which contains and transmits authentic elements regarding the fate and life of the old Moses, who is the first prophet.

Thus, there would be—if you will—a continuity between Moses and Hosea, since we are speaking of him.

The second element that shaped his thinking in Mose und seine Bedeutung and led him to put forward this thesis—extremely peculiar, I hasten to say—is that the thesis of Moses’ death had never been proposed before him, except by Goethe, in a passage that I do not know, but which was identified, and which Sellin himself was unaware of. It was only a few years later that Karl Budde, one of Sellin’s colleagues, pointed out that the idea of Moses’ death had already been introduced by Goethe.

So, why the death of Moses?

If I may, I will present Mose und seine Bedeutung by Ernst Sellin in reverse order, so to speak.

There is a rather significant fact. At the time when Sellin was writing Mose und seine Bedeutung, which was published in 1922, he had just completed a commentary on the twelve minor prophets, naturally including the book of Hosea, which was published that same year, 1922, in a series of exegetical commentaries known as K.A.T.: Kommentar zum Alten Testament, Die zwölf Propheten Buch—the book of the twelve minor prophets.

In this commentary on Hosea, there is not a single mention of the death of Moses. He glosses over the passages that he later discusses at length in Mose und seine Bedeutung, providing an entirely different exegesis.

At that point, he had not yet made—if we may say so—this discovery, he had not yet conceived this hypothesis of Moses’ death.

And so, I believe that after completing the writing of his commentary on Moses, Sellin returned—or rather, came—to this idea while reflecting on something else.

And this “something else” is another biblical passage entirely different from Hosea but also prophetic: Deutero-Isaiah—the chapters 40 and following of the book of Isaiah, particularly the end of chapter 52, the beginning of chapter 53—a collection from a 6th-century prophet, which speaks of a servant of Yahweh whose sufferings have an expiatory value for the sins of the people. This passage has been regarded by Christian tradition, as well as by this Protestant exegetical tradition, as one of the pinnacles of Old Testament revelation, since it introduces the idea of redemptive death. Certainly, in the Gospel and other Christian writings, there is an appropriation of the figure of the Suffering Servant onto the person of Jesus.

That is indisputable.

So from there, consider the importance he attributes to Moses, the importance he gives to the prophets…

Hosea up to Deutero-Isaiah, who is also a prophet…

…the importance he attaches to the prophets as successors and heirs of Moses.

Sellin, I believe, made this discovery: the Suffering Servant of Deutero-Isaiah, whose death has redemptive value, is Moses himself. And from there, he sought—he endeavored to find—in earlier prophetic books, allusions to the death of Moses. And it is there that he reinterpreted a number of passages from Hosea in such a way as to make them say—I emphasize, to make them say—that they referred to the death of Moses.

Hosea, is he not? One of the oldest prophets, guardian of the prophetic tradition—that is, of the true tradition concerning Moses—would have expressed, in veiled words—it must be said, words so veiled that they are probably not there—the death of Moses.

Lacan: Not that they are not there, but that they had never been read that way before.

Caquot:

…that they had never been read, never been read before Sellin, and have never been read since Sellin. But you can see, I believe, that this is obviously a very particular discourse—a kind of study, let’s say, a type of approach with which you may not be familiar. But it is rather amusing to see how Sellin proceeded, and it gives us an idea.

Moreover, one should not cast stones at him; the exegetes of that time considered, in some way, that the scribes of the Bible did not know Hebrew. What I am saying is a bit crude, but ultimately, that is the case. They would say: “This is bad Hebrew, so we must correct it.”

As for the results: they would take a sentence—obviously enigmatic, very difficult, because this Hebrew from the 6th century was… practically, above all, poetic Hebrew… it had become a dead language. And the rabbinical commentaries from the rabbis and Jewish authors of the early Christian era, the translation of the Septuagint, for example, was done by Jews who knew Hebrew, yet they understood no more than we do.

They often had the same text. From this, they would say: “The text of the Hebrew Bible is corrupted, let us correct it, let us replace a word that seems strange with a well-known word.” And in this way, sometimes—this is the general rule—they would banalize the text, make the Bible say trivialities, and at times, they would make it say—this is the case with Sellin—exactly what the exegete wanted it to say.

Lacan: The Septuagint would have had a text that predates the text we have?

Caquot:

Predates, yes, since the oldest Hebrew manuscripts—the complete Bible—date from the 9th century AD, whereas the Septuagint version was certainly established before the Christian era. But it appears that… of course, this is not always the case, but I personally believe—I have a certain experience—that the Greek version of the Septuagint very often had before its eyes or in its ear the same text as the printed Bible, the Masoretic Bible, the traditional Bible. But at times, not understanding it, they would interpret it.

This is how the study of ancient translations of the Bible should be considered. So I do not know if we should continue…

Lacan:

I really believe that if you could convey to this assembly an idea of the manipulations around some truly key words…

Caquot:

Now, regarding the subject that concerns us—that is, Sellin’s Moses—one must begin with two texts:
– Texts from Hosea,
– And another text that I will first briefly introduce to you, which is Numbers 25: chapter 25 of Numbers.

A very curious text, very difficult, certainly reworked by ancient traditions before, of course, being fixed in writing in the Bible. It recounts, as you know, “the idolatry of the Israelites in the plains of Moab,” the cult of Baal Peor, which takes place in a place called Shittim. The text is very difficult.

I will allow myself to reread the end of Numbers 25. I am reading a translation—the text is simple, and we can take any translation:

וַיֵּשֶׁב יִשְׂרָאֵל, בַּשִּׁטִּים; וַיָּחֶל הָעָם, לִזְנוֹת אֶל-בְּנוֹת מוֹאָב.

“While Israel was staying at Shittim, the people began to commit harlotry with the daughters of Moab.”

I will skip over this, shall I? [Laughter]
Well, in short, I will skip in the text… [Laughter]
Moreover, the text is extremely…

X from the audience: Censorship!

וַיִּצָּמֶד יִשְׂרָאֵל, לְבַעַל פְּעוֹר; וַיִּחַר-אַף יְהוָה, בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל.

“And Israel yoked itself to Baal Peor; and the anger of the Lord flared up against Israel.”

וְהִנֵּה אִישׁ מִבְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל בָּא, וַיַּקְרֵב אֶל-אֶחָיו אֶת-הַמִּדְיָנִית, לְעֵינֵי מֹשֶׁה, וּלְעֵינֵי כָּל-עֲדַת בְּנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל; וְהֵמָּה בֹכִים, פֶּתַח אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד.

“Then an Israelite man came and brought a Midianite woman to his brothers before the eyes of Moses and before the eyes of the entire assembly of the children of Israel.”

וַיַּרְא, פִּינְחָס בֶּן-אֶלְעָזָר, בֶּן-אַהֲרֹן, הַכֹּהֵן; וַיָּקָם מִתּוֹךְ הָעֵדָה, וַיִּקַּח רֹמַח בְּיָדוֹ.

“At that moment, Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, arose from within the assembly and took a spear in his hand.”

וַיָּבֹא אַחַר אִישׁ-יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶל-הַקֻּבָּה, וַיִּדְקֹר אֶת-שְׁנֵיהֶם–אֵת אִישׁ יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְאֶת-הָאִשָּׁה אֶל-קֳבָתָהּ; וַתֵּעָצַר, הַמַּגֵּפָה, מֵעַל, בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל.

“Phinehas followed the Israelite man into the chamber and thrust both of them through—the Israelite man and the Midianite woman—through her belly. And the plague against the children of Israel was halted.”

This plague—we do not really know what it was. It probably seems to have been a pestilence, but we are not very sure, and the text glosses over it…

In any case, the plague, which had been triggered as a punishment for idolatry in the plains of Baal Peor, was stopped.

Well, this text is very important, but for another reason: because it establishes—I note this in passing—the election of a priestly dynasty that claims descent from Phinehas.

Phinehas receives, at this moment, a covenant of priesthood—that is, the guarantee of the perpetuation of the priesthood in his lineage in return for the zeal he displayed in punishing the Israelites who had sinned in the plains of Moab.

וְשֵׁם אִישׁ יִשְׂרָאֵל הַמֻּכֶּה, אֲשֶׁר הֻכָּה אֶת-הַמִּדְיָנִית–זִמְרִי, בֶּן-סָלוּא: נְשִׂיא בֵית-אָב, לַשִּׁמְעֹנִי.

וּשֵׁם הָאִשָּׁה הַמֻּכָּה הַמִּדְיָנִית, כָּזְבִּי בַּת-צוּר: רֹאשׁ אֻמּוֹת בֵּית-אָב בְּמִדְיָן, הוּא.

But here—starting from verse 14—another piece of information appears, which seems to be a kind of incidental detail.

“The Israelite man who was killed with the Midianite woman was named Zimri, son of Salu; he was a prince, a Simeonite. And the Midianite woman was named Kozbi, daughter of Zur; he was the leader of a tribal house in Midian.”

Sellin’s Hypothesis: The text has been distorted. An attempt was made to erase the memory of something entirely different. And that entirely different thing was this: in this place called Shittim, in the plains of Moab, the man who had been put to death to expel the plague—the pestilence that struck Israel—was not this character named Zimri of the tribe of Simeon—who is mentioned nowhere else—but rather Moses himself!

It was Moses, and here we have it: the redemptive death of Moses.

Indeed, Sellin adds a few arguments: it is quite evident—who was it that married a Midianite? It was Moses, since in tradition, Moses’ wife, Zipporah, is the daughter of a Midianite priest.

So, this husband of a Midianite, whose name has also been concealed—since she is called Kozbi… and not Zipporah (if it had been Zipporah, it would have been too easy)—Kozbi, which is an insulting nickname derived from a word meaning “falsehood.”

So, you see, the priests—the priestly tradition that is at the origin of Numbers 25 as we know it—would have erased Moses and replaced him with this kind of placeholder named Zimri. But if one reconstructs the tradition that Sellin believes to be authentic, this was about a murder of Moses at Shittim.

I am presenting all of this, but once again: what Sellin says is absolutely arbitrary.

And from there, we can examine the passages from Hosea. There are three particularly significant passages.

The first is in chapter 5, verses… Hosea, chapter V, verse 2.

Now here, I must say: I give up trying to translate the Hebrew of Hosea V,2. Hosea, chapter V, verse 2: I could read the Hebrew to you, but let’s acknowledge it—it is unintelligible, and the most honest approach is to translate it with ellipses.

Hosea V,2—I will read a translation. It is one of the most recent ones published in French, the so-called Ecumenical Bible translation, which in principle is extremely… that is at least the guideline: to remain as close as possible to the Hebrew text.

So here is Hosea V,1:

אשִׁמְעוּ-זֹאת הַכֹּהֲנִים וְהַקְשִׁיבוּ בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל, וּבֵית הַמֶּלֶךְ הַאֲזִינוּ–כִּי לָכֶם, הַמִּשְׁפָּט: כִּי-פַח הֱיִיתֶם לְמִצְפָּה, וְרֶשֶׁת פְּרוּשָׂה עַל-תָּבוֹר.

“Hear this, O priests! Give heed, O house of Israel! And you, O house of the king, listen! It was for you to administer justice, but you have been a snare at Mizpah and a net spread upon Tabor.”

That is to say, “you have trapped people,” in a way.

Lacan: Do we not know more about what happened at Mizpah?

Caquot:

Oh yes, that is an allusion to episodes of… Mizpah was a place of… in the pre-monarchical period, Mizpah was a gathering place, if you will, where justice was administered.

As for Tabor, that is more mysterious.

Now, our Bible—translated as faithfully as possible—says this in Hosea V,2:

וְשַׁחֲטָה שֵׂטִים, הֶעְמִיקוּ; וַאֲנִי, מוּסָר לְכֻלָּם.

“The faithless have dug a deep pit.”

Literally, there are so few words that I will transcribe them for you. I will transcribe them—well, if any of you read Hebrew: shahata settim heeinikou.

— The verb heeinikou: “they have dug deeply,” “they have made something deep.”
— This word settim, translated as “faithless,” the subject of heeinikou: “The faithless have deepened, have made something deep”—that works…
— But shahata—all we can say is that this noun is a substantive whose function in the sentence is unclear, but it is linked to a verbal root shahat, which means: “to slaughter, to massacre.”

Here is what this becomes in Sellin’s interpretation. Yes, now I will read the up-to-date translation:

“The faithless have dug a deep pit.”

Misinterpretation: yes, one can say “the faithless have dug,” but “the deep pit,” no. There is no “deep pit” in this text, because shahata and shahat with a tav—that is, an emphatic consonant and a simple consonant—have been confused.

There is no “deep pit” in this text.

And now here is what Sellin made of it—I will write it below:

“shahathasshitim heeinikou”

which gives: “They have dug deeply a pit, or the pit (shahat with a tav) of Shittim.”

And here we find the Shittim of Numbers 25, verse 1, which, according to Sellin’s hypothesis, is the place where Moses would have been murdered.

That’s it!

The first example.

That is not all, because we must also look at—if it does not bore you too much—the other two passages that Sellin cites in support of his hypothesis.

The next passage is Hosea IX, verses 7 to 14.

The Book of Hosea IX—this passage is somewhat easier, whereas, frankly, verse 2 of chapter V of Hosea I will not translate for now. It is not worth it; it is certain that there is a word that, as the commentary states, evokes a massacre: they dug, or the faithless have dug (or deepened)—but we do not know what. I do not know if the text is corrupted or if, quite simply, we no longer understand it—and the Septuagint did not understand it any better.

The second passage, as we were saying: Hosea IX, 7-14.

Hosea IX, 7-8

זבָּאוּ יְמֵי הַפְּקֻדָּה, בָּאוּ יְמֵי הַשִּׁלֻּם–יֵדְעוּ, יִשְׂרָאֵל; אֱוִיל הַנָּבִיא, מְשֻׁגָּע אִישׁ הָרוּחַ–עַל רֹב עֲוֹנְךָ, וְרַבָּה הַמַּשְׂטֵמָה.
ח צֹפֶה אֶפְרַיִם, עִם-אֱלֹהָי; נָבִיא פַּח יָקוֹשׁ, עַל-כָּל-דְּרָכָיו–מַשְׂטֵמָה, בְּבֵית אֱלֹהָיו.

This is a passage that seems to speak of the contempt in which the prophet is held:

“The days of punishment have come, the days of reckoning have arrived. Let Israel know it! The prophet is a fool, the man of the spirit is mad, because of the greatness of your iniquity and the great hostility against you. The watchman of Ephraim is with my God—it is the prophet. A snare is set for him on all his paths, hostility pursues him even in the house of his God.”

Verse 7 refers to a prophet. This prophet, I believe that almost everyone—and this seems to be the most obvious interpretation—recognizes as Hosea himself, designating himself as a victim of the hostility or contempt of his contemporaries.

For Sellin, as soon as he sees the word “prophet,” he pounces on it: it is Moses.

And here is how he rearranges verse 8, which is not easy either. I will again present the biblical text on one line and what Sellin made of it on the other.

Original text:
“Tshofe Ephraïm im elohai. Navi pahi yaqush al kol derekhai.”

“The watchman of Ephraim is with my God, and the prophet is a snare set on all his paths.”

It is a nominal sentence, without a copula. Well, here is what it becomes in Sellin’s version:

“Ephraim looks toward the tent of the prophet”

(implicitly to do him harm). That is, he inverts two words and transforms elohai (“my God”) into the noun ohel or its plural ohelai, meaning “tent” or “tents.”

Later, in the following verse, he finds the word Shittim again—still in this chapter IX.

There is a word mastema which means “adversary”: “mastema be-beit elohav”, “someone who attacks, an adversary, in the house of his God.”

This is in parallel with the snare on the paths that we saw earlier. It is the end of verse 8.

Hosea IX, 9:

טהֶעְמִיקוּ שִׁחֵתוּ, כִּימֵי הַגִּבְעָה; יִזְכּוֹר עֲוֹïנָם, יִפְקוֹד חַטֹּאותָם. {ס}

And verse 9: heeinikou.

And now we find something we saw earlier: shiheitou.

“They have gone to the depths of corruption,” says our translation. That is, they have done something profoundly—“heeinikou”, “shiheitou”, they have corrupted themselves.

Now, for Sellin, this mastema he reads as hasshitim—always the same story—the Shittim of Numbers XXV, 1.

“Heeinikou”—”they have deepened.”

And instead of shiheitou, he naturally keeps the consonants but reads shahato instead of shiheitou.

“Shiheitou” is a third-person plural verb meaning “they have corrupted themselves,” while shahato is a noun, accompanied by the third-person masculine suffix, meaning “his grave.”

“At Shittim, they dug his grave.”

Moses’ grave, of course!

And that is not all. Here is the passage from Hosea which, if not exactly convincing, at least is interpreted by Sellin somewhat less weakly than the others.

This is at the end of chapter XII, the beginning of chapter XIII of Hosea.

Moses is unquestionably mentioned in this passage, and Moses is called a prophet.

I will read the end: the preceding verses referred to the patriarch Jacob, and then the passage shifts to Moses.

Lacan:

What is still striking is that the transformation of elohim—that is, “God”—into ohel, “tent,” has been done by other modern commentators.

Caquot:

Yes, that is possible, but you know, Sellin is not the only one of his kind to work this way. He just went a bit further than the others—except that they do not draw such bold conclusions.

Hosea XII:

וַיִּבְרַח יַעֲקֹב, שְׂדֵה אֲרָם; וַיַּעֲבֹד יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּאִשָּׁה, וּבְאִשָּׁה שָׁמָר.

“Jacob fled to the fields of Aram.”

An allusion to the episode in Genesis 29.

“…Israel—that is, Jacob, since it is the same name repeated—served, worked for a woman—and here it is Rachel—and for a woman, he became a shepherd—literally, he kept watch (shamar).”

“But by a prophet, the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet, Israel was guarded (mishmar).”

There is a wordplay here, drawing a comparison between God’s action through Moses and Jacob’s actions in securing his wives.

You have the constructions of verses 13 and 14, which form a very beautiful and deliberate parallelism, both ending with the verb shamar and mishmar. But here, it is certain that navi, the prophet mentioned in verse 14, is Moses—he is the one who brought Israel up from Egypt. Moreover, this is not the only instance where Moses is called a prophet; it is characteristic of this passage in Hosea as well as the translation in Deuteronomy. And it is well known that there are certainly links between Hosea and Deuteronomy, which is slightly later.

And now, verse 15:

טו הִכְעִיס אֶפְרַיִם, תַּמְרוּרִים; וְדָמָיו, עָלָיו יִטּוֹשׁ, וְחֶרְפָּתוֹ, יָשִׁיב לוֹ אֲדֹנָיו.

You will see that, in the end, the liberties Sellin takes with this text do not make it any more convincing than the interpretations he drew from chapter V and chapter IX.

“Hik‘is Ephraïm tamrourim”

“Ephraïm”—so, the subject—“Ephraïm has provoked… tamrourim.”

Now, this is troublesome. It is something that could be understood: Ephraïm has provoked tamrourim bitterly. Tamrourim is obviously a plural noun that can be used adverbially: in a bitter manner. There is certainly the root of bitterness in this word.

Lacan: Is it a rare word?

Caquot:

Yes, yes, rare!

“V’damav alav yitosh v’herfato yashiv lo adonav.”

“He will shed, he will pour back his blood upon him,”

“yashiv lo adonav”—“and his disgrace will be returned to him by his master.”

It is not an easy verse, but it can still be understood: Ephraïm—Israel—has grieved or afflicted tamrourim, bitterly. A complement must be inferred: he has afflicted someone, who is probably his master—“adonav”, which is the last word of the verse but which, as often happens, can be taken as a common factor in both hemistichs.

The Ecumenical Bible translates: “Ephraïm has caused God bitter grief.”

Then the following verse:

“Yitosh”—“he will reject.”

Subject: probably adonav, his master, who is the common subject of the two verbs in hemistich 14b: “his master will reject his blood upon him.”

To reject blood upon someone is a fixed legal formula. It indicates a punishment.

And “yashiv lo”: “he will return to him”, the master will return to Ephraïm “v’herfato”, his disgrace—the shameful act he has committed. He will repay him for his disgraceful conduct.

Hosea XIII, 1

אכְּדַבֵּר אֶפְרַיִם רְתֵת, נָשָׂא הוּא בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל; וַיֶּאְשַׁם בַּבַּעַל, וַיָּמֹת.

This follows from the previous development according to Sellin:

“Kedabber”—“when he spoke.”

“Kedabber Ephraïm reteit”—“when Ephraïm spoke.”

“Reteit”—this is a difficult word. Literally, when Ephraïm was speaking, reteit—a rather surprising noun that appears only once in the Bible and means trembling.

What we understand is: “When Ephraïm spoke—reteit—there was terror, trembling.”

It is an elliptical expression, but one that is entirely conceivable in Hebrew poetry and archaic Semitic poetry in general. It is one of those extremely concise formulas where not a single word is superfluous.

“When Ephraïm spoke, there was terror, trembling.”

“Nasa hou b’Israel.”

This verb nasa means to bear, to lift: “he bore in Israel,” but sometimes it can be an ellipsis meaning, as in the expression nasa kol, “to lift the voice”, which comes back to meaning to speak.

“When Ephraïm spoke, there was terror, and he lifted…” God knows what… “he lifted his head, he lifted his voice… in Israel.”

And then XIII, 1b:

“Vayasham b’Baal vayamot.”

“But he sinned through Baal, and he died.”

The idea of verse XIII is quite clear: formerly, Ephraïm was a feared figure, but he sinned through Baal and died.

And here is what it becomes in Sellin’s interpretation. It is quite complicated because, in addition to correcting every other word, he even rearranges verses and hemistichs!

First, instead of reteit…

This word seemed strange to him—understandably, since it appears only once in the Bible. And since it appears only once, there is a tendency to believe that it has no right to exist…

So he simply reads torati—“my law.”

“When Ephraïm said ‘my law’…”

Moreover, this correction was taken up five years ago by Father Tournai(?) in an article—he re-adopted Sellin’s correction, which really was not necessary. Instead of nasahou eb Israel, he reads nasi—this is a minor correction. And it becomes: “he was a prince in Israel.”

But more importantly, he rearranges verse XIII. The way he corrected it, he moves it after the previous phrase. He swaps XII, 15b—he moves XII, 15b after XIII, 1a.

And here is what it gives, with other corrections. I will read Sellin’s translation:

“But by a prophet, I led Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet, he was guarded.”

This is more or less the Hebrew text.

“Ephraim angered him, he made Israel bitter.”

And then, this is where he places XIII, 1a:

“As long as Ephraim said my law: Ephraim torati”—instead of reuteit—

“he was a prince in Israel.” (nasi hou eb Israel instead of nasa hou eb Israel).

Now XIII, 1b. The verb that Sellin—for some reason I do not understand—translates as “he atoned”, even though it means “he sinned.”

“He atoned because of Baal and was killed.”

I do not know why—nor have I even looked into it—but he translated iesham, which simply means “he committed a sin,” and he reversed it, turning it into “he atoned for his sin because of Baal.”

And instead of iamot (“he died”), he read iumat, changing the vowels—“he was killed.”

And of course, it is about Moses!

And now we return to XII, 15b, which Sellin corrects once again.

He corrects the third-person yitosh—“he will pour back, let fall his blood upon him.”

Sellin changes it to:

“I will pour back his blood upon you!”

In the Hebrew text, it is the blood of Ephraim, but in Sellin’s interpretation, it becomes the blood of Moses!

“I will pour back his blood upon you and will hold you accountable for the disgrace he suffered.”

This means that in this passage from Hosea XII, 14–XIII, 1, there would be a reference to the assassination of Moses, for which God will hold the Israelites accountable.

But you can see by what artifices—because there is no other word for it—by what artifices Sellin managed to make the text of Hosea say something that it most certainly never meant to say and that had never been found in the text of Hosea, neither by ancient translators nor by modern commentators as a whole—except for Sellin.

And I believe that this is the most characteristic place in Mose und seine Bedeutung for understanding this exegete’s approach.

Of course, one can debate the Servant of Isaiah—there are features that could indeed be understood as alluding to Moses; that is undeniable. But I get the impression that Sellin overestimated them.

Similarly, when he makes much of it, he also wants to see an allusion to Moses’ assassination in a figure from Deutero-Zechariah, from the Prophet Zechariah, in chapter XIII, if I am not mistaken, where a pierced figure is mentioned. That is certainly not Moses—at best, it is ambiguous, it is vague.

Here, you see where Sellin could latch onto his explanation—it was in these three passages from Hosea. And you see how he proceeded.

Once again, it is not his fault; it was of his time. It was common practice in his time to take such liberties with the text.

And what happened, given Sellin’s authority, is that he was able to be taken seriously by people who were not entirely of his profession.

Lacan:

What seems remarkable to me is that in the 1928 article, from which you have one of the pages here, he started working in a different way. He worked through the Septuagint version, and he ultimately arrived at an entirely different type of corrections.

Caquot

Here is the interpretation that Sellin gives of our passage in 1928:

“By a prophet, I led Israel out of Egypt, and by a prophet—Moses, of course—he was protected.”

That is perfectly fine.

“Ephraim bitterly provoked him, each time Ephraim uttered quarrelsome words.”

Now, this time, it is reuteit…

Lacan: …which is tampered with differently.

Caquot:

…which is tampered with differently, as you say. Once, he corrected it to “my law,” and now to “quarrelsome words,” Sellin’s final correction in his 1928 article. Through the incredible detour of a word from the Septuagint…

Yes, it is perfectly possible, but that does not mean that the Septuagint actually read it that way.

“Each time Ephraim uttered quarrelsome words, he had to endure it in Israel.”

“Anasahou”, he endured it… in Israel.

This time, he retained the verb nasa.

“He atoned because of Baal and suffered death.”

“I will pour his blood back upon you, and his disgrace, I will repay you.”

This is exactly the same solution as in 1921. I could spend more time analyzing how Sellin proceeded, but it would likely become tedious.

In Sellin’s thinking, nowhere is it stated…

…that if we assume the text holds numerical significance and thus restores a text with a certain meaning…

…nowhere is it stated that this text, so to speak, or this vocalization, could be understood by anyone.

Because to claim, for example, that Numbers 25 conceals the event of “the murder of Moses,” we are dealing here with sheer ambiguity…

Lacan: …with a sheer postulate.

Caquot: Yes, that’s it. At the level of Sellin’s thinking, I do not believe he invokes the categories of the unconscious.

Lacan

Ah, no! The idea of concealing the event at Shittim with an entire fabricated story—though it is probably not a fabricated story, actually—it would be one if it were truly replacing it.

Here, we are at a point where something wavers in a completely untenable manner within the framework of Sellin’s own thinking.

And I believe that is, obviously, the interest in the matter: it is, in a way, to see the extraordinary latency that such a method entails.

To a certain extent, one can understand why Freud found support in this, reinforcing his idea that this was something that emerged despite all intentions, despite the strong resistance to remembering that his framework would presume.

But what remains undeniably strange is that this is sustained by writings, and that it is through these writings that it can be re-deciphered.

For there is one thing that Jones attests: that Freud would have had—it is a would have—would have had, by Sellin’s own admission—Jones refers to it—the communication of the fact that, after all, he was not so sure.

That is, the very thing you pointed out earlier, that in the second edition of the K.A.T., he would more or less…

Caquot

In the 1929 edition, he abandoned the exegesis that I outlined from 1922 for chapter V and chapter IX.

The case of the death of Moses…

Lacan: So he kept chapter XII?

Caquot

He kept chapter XII, and Moses is mentioned.

However, on the other hand, I believe he gave up on promoting his hypothesis of Moses’ death because it is in his works on the famous Suffering Servant of Deutero-Isaiah, the Servant of Yahweh.

The Mosaic hypothesis that Sellin supported in 1922, he abandoned it himself—I specify, around 1929—and since then, he has changed his mind twice about the Servant.

He completely abandoned it: the Servant is not Moses.

He may have kept the idea of Moses’ death, but he gave up using it, if you will, to interpret the Servant theme.

I wonder if Freud was not a victim of Sellin’s academic prestige…

Lacan: The question I ask myself is whether Freud read it very attentively…

Caquot: Oh, I believe so. The book Mose und seine Bedeutung is clear and rigorous.

Lacan: That is entirely true…

Caquot: It is false, but it is true!

Lacan

But on the other hand, Freud does not base anything on this articulation. He merely points out that there is a certain Sellin who recently put forward the acceptable hypothesis that Moses was killed. And he mentions it in this very brief note, which simply references Mose und seine Bedeutung, opus 22, and nothing more.

Now, I pointed out earlier—because I had forgotten to do so until now—that Jones mentions that in a book from 1935—that is, even later than what we ourselves have been able to verify—in a book from 1935, he would have maintained his position.

Caquot: Yes, I might be able to find the text, and I will send it to you.

Lacan

Listen, if I have not already taken too much of your time with what I have led you to do—which I thank you for, and for which everyone here can be grateful—I think it would simply be interesting, for the continuation of what I have to say, if you could still give us an idea that Hosea has a meaning that has absolutely nothing to do with what Sellin tells us.

And that Hosea—well, the important point, the use of “Ish”, which we were discussing the other day, is truly connected and close to what… well, the novelty in Hosea, if I have understood correctly, is essentially this appeal, a very particular kind of appeal.

I hope that after this, everyone will go and pick up a small Bible—any Bible, for that matter—just to get an idea of the tone of Hosea.

That kind of furious, almost stamping invective that is the voice of Yahweh speaking to his people in a long discourse, which I already referred to when I spoke about Hosea, before I had read Sellin’s book.

I read Hosea, and I never found anything, even remotely, resembling this.

However, I did point out in passing the importance of the invective, of the references to rites of sacred prostitution, from one end to the other.

So, in opposition to that, we find this kind of invitation, where Yahweh declares himself the husband—and we can say that this marks the beginning of a long tradition, one that is rather mysterious in itself and whose meaning, I must admit, has not seemed entirely clear to me.

For example, this is what makes Christ the bridegroom of the Church and, conversely, the Church the bride of Christ. It starts here.

And yet, this idea—this connection—does not appear in Hosea.

And the term used for husband, which we examined together, is “Ish”, the very term employed in the second chapter of Genesis, when the “Ish” in question names his counterpart—not the first one mentioned, that is, in 1:27, where God creates them male and female, but in the second version, since things are always repeated twice in Genesis—it is “Ish” who names the being made from his rib, what I call the partial object, and he names her “Isha”.

As if by chance, it was necessary to add an a!

This “Ish”, when used to designate the term husband, does it refer to something even more devoid of sexuality…?

Caquot

“Ish” is not at all gendered. The conjugal meanings are only a small part of the possible uses of “Ish”, which means “man” in general.

Lacan

That is no more surprising than in German, where one says “mein Mann” for “my husband”, whereas in French, “mon homme” is rather colloquial.

And in the next verse, what could be called “my husband” is placed directly in opposition to the rejection of the term Baal, which, on occasion, can have the same meaning: lord and master, in the sense of husband, which is even more precise in this context.

Caquot

Although Baal means “master,” it is worth noting that the feminine form, Beulah, refers to a woman in the power of a husband.

All of this is extremely fluid. These vocabulary questions in Hosea are narrowed down to emphasize the contrast: Yahweh is the Baal, in opposition to the other Baals being worshipped.

“I am your Baal, so you have no need to chase after other Baals!”

Lacan

There is a very clear distinction being made here—one that remains, in a way, quite opaque despite centuries of commentary.

Caquot

It is the metaphor of marriage. This is the first time it appears in the Bible.

And this is what later allows for the allegorization of the Song of Songs.

It is Hosea that made it possible to allegorize the Song of Songs.

I have even wondered if this is not a form of demythologization—that is, a transfer onto the collective entity of Israel of the goddess figure, who, in Semitic religions, is the consort or wife of Baal.

At times, Israel is described almost as a goddess.

This has never been explicitly stated, but it fits within the mindset of ancient Semitic religions, which do not conceive of a god without a goddess.

But surely, prophetic religion replaces the goddess with Israel.

That would be the case in Hosea, for instance.

Lacan

Well, I think that given the late hour, we can stop here, thanking Mr. Caquot.