Abraham and his discovery of God in Thomas Manns "Jakob und seine Brüder"

in general. We find it also reflected in the already highly developed polytheistic societies, like Babylon or Egypt, which have a dense system of canonized religious norms. In Mann’s novel these societies are pictured as completely rooted in the mythical realm; here myth works here as collective memory, an a- historical source of decent; further they deliver a system to explain the world and the role of humans in it. Gods play a dominant role in this system, as they function as symbols and explanations of superior, underlying and also outer-cultural experiences such as nature or death; they are often closely related to natural appearances. These gods, though they are often related to natural phenomenae.g. the sun god of Charran - already represent abstract constructions of the human mind; admittedly it is only to a limited degree the gods themselves, but the cult and the appendant norms, which developed around them, as they form the religious foundation. Nevertheless, the gods are considered to have a very real existence, as we can see throughout the novel, and are even physical like Laban’s Theraphim (p.252) ¹ - these are active gods and they virtually hold all the power that is ascribed to them. This forms the cultural background of Mann’s Abram, where in the novel he first needs to arrive; but he goes further than this. He is not satisfied to accept gods in natural phenomena or gods that only have a limited realm of influence - he is unwilling to accept the common god-cults, which we can see in his departure from Charran and his following wanderings; it is also shown by his nomadic life, which is a consequence of Abram’s reluctance to settle down in a city, as cities are the places of these god-cults. This also includes Abram’s departure from the ‘old’ cultural system, as he breaks with tradition. Abram’s discovery of God happened through a process of abstraction, too: from the visible world he attains an abstract concept, which ends with his discovery of an ultimate causal factor. He comes to the conviction that there is a “Lenker und Herr” who stands above all things. The discovery of the existence of a higher order happened out of a “Drang” (p. 426) or “Gottesnot”. It goes on:”So hatte Abraham Gott entdeckt aus Drang zum Höchsten, hatte ihn lehrend weiter ausgeformt und hervorgebracht und allen Beteiligten eine grosse Wohltat damit erwiesen“ (p.426). This sentence is a source for further speculation about the relationship be tween Abram and man. Consequently one can consider Abram’s God merely as a product of his mind and we are even told that

¹ This and all further page numbers refer to the Stockholmer Gesamtausgabe

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“gewissermaßen war Abram Gottes Vater”. The narrator uses a word play, when he says: “Er hiess Abiram, was heissen mochte: >>Mein Vater ist erhaben<<, oder auch mit recht wohl:>>Vater des Erhabenen<< (p.428)“. Therefore the narrator gives us no clear answer on the question.

Mannesmann in her approach elaborates that God is a projection of Abram. With that, she is rejecting the argument that Abram represents a “neuzeitliches Individuum, das im Bewusstsein seiner personalen Identität von einer philosophischen Fragestellung aus zu einem völlig neuartigen Gottesbegriff gelangt“(Mannesmann 30). She claims that the concept of a “gegen die Umwelt isoliertes Ich” is non-existent for Abram; the creation of God is a “unbewusster Akt der Projektion”(Mannesmann 31) out of the necessity to find a new collective self- consciousness after the departure from Charran. Mannesmann’s approach ignores the discovery of God as such: it requires the premise that God is not existent as an autonomous being but is exclusively a product of Abram’s mind. This excludes the possibility of any development towards a self-conscious being or, as she puts it, Abram is unable “sich als Individuum (…) gegen das ”mythische Kollektiv abzugrenzen”(Mannesmann 32). Here Abram is a figure completely rooted in a a-historical and by religious “Vorstellungen” dominated reality. Abram’s creation of God through unconscious projection - tha t is, the exclusion of a conscious, contemplative process that ends in the discovery of God - is a consequence of his departure from the previous collective, here represented through the city of Charran, its king and its sun god. Therefore, because he can’ t overcome his basic “Vorstellungen”, the old schemes which form identity, a new god is an inevitable necessity for the creation of a new collective and its self-consciousness. This entails that Abrams “Seelengroesse” is the instrument for his projection (Mannesmann 34). The passages

^{Gottes gewaltige eigenschaften waren zwar etwas sachlich Gegebenes ausser Abraham, zugleich aber waren sie auch in ihm und von ihm; die Macht seiner eigenen Seele war in gewissen Augenblicken kaum von ihnen zu unterscheiden (...) (p.428)} and

Gott war da, und Abraham wandelte vor ihm, in der Seele geheiligt durch seine

Aussennähe. Sie waren zwei, ein Ich und ein Du, das ebenfalls >Ich< sagte zum anderen

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>Du<. Schon richtig, dass Abram die Eigenschaften Gottes mit Hilfe der eigenen Seelengroesse ausmachte - ohne diese hätte er sie nicht auszumachen und zu benenne gewusst, und sie wären im Dunkeln geblieben. Darum blieb Gott aber doch ein gewaltig Ich sagendes Du ausserhalb von Abraham und ausserhalb der Welt. (p.431)

seem to confirm it. But one can also disagree and see in the same passages Abram’s discovery of the human self, as we shall see later.

Mannesmann points out correctly that Abram is not a real figure in the novel but a figure of narration in a “legendäre Form” in the “schöne Gespräche”; this implies that Abram himself is a a-historic, mythical figure. What we know about him comes from the stories of Eliezer. He represents the collective memory and reflects the active self-consciousness of the collective, which is mediated in the “schöne Gespräche”(compare herefore Mieth 64). He is the bearer of collective identity and of course Abram is a vital part of that. The stories of Eliezer, however, are narrated to us by a quite an ironic narrator; he comments on Eliezer that he narrates with “gespaltener Zunge” concerning Abram. Indeed, through Eliezer’s stories Abram becomes the mythical figure he is. That Abram is “the object to a number of myths” is Murdaugh’s starting point. She points out, as well as Mannesmann, that Abram’s descent is unsure and that he can’t be seen as one single person (Mannesmann 34; Murdaugh 39). Murdaugh’s approach to Abram is contrary to Mannesmann’s, however. For her the double-existence of Abram is a decisive factor. This double-existence consist s in Abram being “half in the super-natural and half in the natural, half in the timeless absolute and half in the historical”(Md 40). Murdaugh refers to the passage in which Abram defeats the kings from the east only with the help of his servant Eliezer and the stars. “ In Abram wurde Fleisch, was vorher sternenhaft gewesen war, und auf dem Göttlichen fusste er (...)“ (p.422/423). But the double-existence is very clear in the comparison of the chapters Wie Abraham Gott entdeckte and Der Herr des Boten. In the first one Abram appears more as a historic figure, though it doubtless already belongs to the realm of legends. In the second one we find a listing of all the various myths that are ascribed to Abram. When the narrator tells us that Eliezer varies in his description of Abram, he makes it clear that Abram is a mythical and legendary figure, but nevertheless with a historical core; the narrator also makes it clear that Abram is not a single person but, like Eliezer himself, was institutionalized: they are a

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