Golden calf

According to the Torah and the Quran, the golden calf (Hebrew: עֵגֶל הַזָּהָב, romanized: ʿēḡel hazzāhāḇ) was a cult image made by the Israelites when Moses went up to Mount Sinai.

In Egypt, whence according to the Exodus narrative, the Israelites had recently come, the bull-god Apis was a comparable object of worship, which some believe the Hebrews were reviving in the wilderness.

[2] Alternatively, some believe Yahweh, the national god of the Israelites, was associated with or pictured as a sacred bull through the process of religious assimilation and syncretism.

[5] When Moses went up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments (Exodus 24:12–18), he left the Israelites for forty days and nights.

Moses burnt the golden calf in a fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on water, and forced the Israelites to drink it.

For forty years you sustained them in the wilderness; they lacked nothing, their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet become swollen.The language suggests that there are some inconsistencies in the other accounts of the Israelites and their use of the calf.

As the version in Exodus and 1 Kings are written by Deuteronomistic historians based in the southern Kingdom of Judah, there is a proclivity to expose the Israelites as unfaithful.

[6] The episode of the golden calf is also mentioned in the New Testament, by the apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, as a warning against idolatry.

Scholars are divided on other intertextual references to the golden calf in the Torah, notably the ordeal of the bitter water in the Book of Numbers 5:17–24.

Specific elements of the ritual, such as the powder mixed into water and being forced to drink, echo similar language in the aftermath of Moses punishing Israel at the end of the narrative.

Richard Elliott Friedman says "at a minimum we can say that the writer of the golden calf account in Exodus seems to have taken the words that were traditionally ascribed to Jeroboam and placed them in the mouths of the people."

Friedman believes that the story was turned into a polemic, exaggerating the throne platform decoration into idolatry, by a family of priests sidelined by Jeroboam.

[10] In Legends of the Jews, the Conservative rabbi and scholar Louis Ginzberg wrote that the worship of the golden calf was the disastrous consequence for Israel who took a mixed multitude in their exodus from Egypt.

Thus, the Tabernacle was built by the good points found in each person; this was sufficient to counteract the blemish of the golden calf.

Only forty days before, full of holy fear, they had heard His voice and had repeatedly promised obedience to His Commandments; and now they transgressed the first and most important of them, and forsook God to worship idols.

"[15] The incident of the worship of the golden calf is narrated in the second chapter of the Quran, named Al-Baqarah, and other works of Islamic literature.

The Quran narrates that after they refused to enter the promised land, God decreed that as punishment the Israelites would wander for forty years.

Current historiography considers that this episode was introduced into the Exodus account in the time of Josiah (late 7th century BCE) or later to discredit the custom rooted in the Kingdom of Israel (North) of identifying Yahweh with a bull.

A bronze bull has also been found in an Israelite sanctuary east of Tel Dothan, in the mountains of Samaria, dated to around the 11th century BCE.

[28] Albertz says that when we read in 1 Kings 12:28 that the first monarch of the northern kingdom, Jeroboam, had introduced the worship of golden calves in Bethel and Dan, we must interpret that what Jeroboam really does is to return to the traditional Israelite religion, as opposed to the syncretistic innovations introduced by David and Solomon in centralizing the cult in Jerusalem.

[30] He cites Exodus 32:4–5 as evidence: He [Aaron] took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!"

[30] In the chronology of Exodus the commandment against the creation of graven images had not yet been given to the people when they pressed upon Aaron to help them make the calf, and that such behavior was not yet explicitly outlawed.

[30] The reason for this complication may be understood as The documentary hypothesis can be used to further understand the layers of this narrative: it is plausible that the earliest story of the golden calf was preserved by E (Israel source) and originated in the northern kingdom.

When compiling the narratives, P (a later Priest source from Jerusalem) may have minimized Aaron's guilt in the matter, but preserved the negativity associated with the calf.

Friedman states that the smashing of the Ten Commandments by Moses when he beheld the worship of the golden calf, is really an attempt to cast into doubt the validity of Judah's central shrine, the Ark of the Covenant.