Golden Calf - Criticism and Interpretation

Criticism and Interpretation

Despite a seemingly simplistic façade, the golden calf narrative is complex. According to Michael Coogan, it seems that the golden calf was not an idol for another god, and thus a false god. He cites Exodus 32:4–5 as evidence: He 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!” When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.” Importantly, there is a single calf in this narrative, though the people refer to it as representative of the “gods.” While a reference to singular god does not necessarily imply Yahweh worship, it does not rule out the possibility that it is Yahweh that the people are worshiping, as the reference to a plurality of “gods” would. Additionally, the festival “to the Lord” in verse 5 is sometimes translated as “to Yahweh”. It should also be noted that “in the chronology of the narrative of the Ten Commandments” 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.

Amateur biblical scholars often forget that when compared in context to the rest of the sentence (in a Torah verse which indicates singular usage), the Hebrew term "gods" is actually a Semitic elative meaning the one God YHWH (see the original term in Hebrew, Elohim); thus, Aaron's famous response to the unruly Israelites after he is forced to cast the Golden Calf could be seen as a bitterly sarcastic condemnation of their assumption of God's likeness, even after he consents to their demands.

Another understanding of the golden calf narrative is that the calf was meant to be the pedestal of Yahweh. In Near Eastern art, gods were often depicted standing on an animal, rather than seated on a throne. This reading suggests that the golden calf was merely an alternative to the ark of the covenant or the cherubim upon which Yahweh was enthroned.

The reason for this complication may be understood as 1.) a criticism of Aaron, as the founder of one priestly house that rivaled the priestly house of Moses, and/or 2.) as “an attack on the northern kingdom of Israel.” The second explanation relies on the “sin of Jeroboam,” who was the first king of the northern kingdom, as the cause of the northern kingdom’s fall to Assyria in 722 BCE. Jeroboam’s “sin” was creating two calves of gold, and sending one to Bethel as a worship site in the south of the Kingdom, and the other to Dan as a worship site in the north, so that the people of the northern kingdom would not have to continue to go to Jerusalem to worship (see 1 Kings 12.26–30). According to Coogan, this episode is part of the Deuteronomistic history, written in the southern kingdom of Judah, after the fall of the Northern kingdom, which was biased against the northern kingdom. Coogan maintains that Jeroboam was merely presenting an alternative to the cherubim of the Temple in Jerusalem, and that calves did not indicate non-Yahwehistic worship.

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 E and J (Judah source) were combined after the fall of northern kingdom, “the narrative was reworked to portray the northern kingdom in a negative light,” and the worship of the calf was depicted as “polytheism, with the suggestion of a sexual orgy” (see Exodus 32.6). 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.

Alternatively it could be said that there is no golden calf story in the J source, and if it is correct that the Jeroboam story was the original as stated by Friedman, then it is unlikely that the Golden Calf events as described in Exodus occurred at all. 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. "The author of E, in fashioning the golden calf story, attacked both the Israelite and Judean religious establishments."

As to the likelihood that these events ever took place, on the one hand there are two versions of the ten commandments story, in E (Exodus 20) and J (Exodus 34), this gives some antiquity and there may be some original events serving as a basis to the stories. The Golden Calf story is only in the E version and a later editor added in an explanation that God made a second pair of tablets to give continuity to the J story. The actual Ten Commandments as given in Exodus 20 were also inserted by the redactor who combined the various sources.

Archaeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman say that while archaeology has found traces left by small bands of hunter-gatherers in the Sinai, there is no evidence at all for the large body of people described in the Exodus story: "The conclusion – that Exodus did not happen at the time and in the manner described in the Bible – seems irrefutable... repeated excavations and surveys throughout the entire area have not provided even the slightest evidence."