In both works—in Schoenberg's even more than Freud's—the tragic aspect of the Moses figure and, in close connection with this, the ambivalent, even problematic, character of monotheism is expressed.1 It would be appealing to compare these two Moses works, but since this Sigmund Freud lecture is on Freud's birthday today, I want to emphasize and start with Freud's Moses book. In this essay, he interprets Moses' gaze and gesture from the scene of the dance around the golden calf, where according to the biblical account, Moses smashes the tablets of the law in anger. According to Freud, this Moses is an Egyptian, and indeed a follower of Akhenaten, that heretic king who abolished the traditional religion in Egypt and introduced the new cult the one God of Sun and Light, Aton. Akhenaten discovers the sun as the one and only origin of all life; Moses represents the covenant of God and the principle of exclusive faithfulness to this one, in full recognition of the existence of other gods (otherwise the commandment of faith would have no meaning).