Golden calf

For other uses, see Golden calf (disambiguation).
The Adoration of the Golden Calf – picture from the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg (12th century)

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 Hebrew, the incident is known as "the sin of the calf" (Hebrew: חֵטְא הָעֵגֶל, romanized: ḥēṭəʾ hāʿēḡel). It is first mentioned in the Book of Exodus.[1]

Bull worship was common in many cultures. In Egypt, whence according to the Exodus narrative, the Israelites had recently come, the 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.[3] Among the Canaanites, some of whom would become the Israelites,[4] the bull was widely worshipped as the sacred bull and the creature of El.[5]

  1. ^ Exodus 32:4.
  2. ^ Chung, Youn Ho (2010). The Sin of the Calf: The Rise of the Bible's Negative Attitude Toward the Golden Calf. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. p. 3. ISBN 978-0-567-21231-3.
  3. ^ Day, John. Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan. 2002. pp. 36ff.
  4. ^ Finklestein, Israel; Silberman, Neil Asher (2002). The Bible Unearthed. Touchstone. p. 118. ISBN 0-684-86913-6. Most of the people who formed early Israel were local people—the same people whom we see in the highlands throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. The early Israelites were—irony of ironies—themselves originally Canaanites!
  5. ^ Friedman, Richard Elliott (2019) [1987]. Who Wrote the Bible?. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-9821-2900-2. The calf, or young bull, was often associated with the god El, the chief god of the Canaanites, who was in fact referred to as Bull El.