Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 18/09/2004 23:21, Michael Banyai wrote:

> Dear Peter Kirk,
>
> I can hardly understand how you bring under a hat the otherwise not so shameful attitude of the age of Moses and later versus something like a golden calf and the treatment given it in the Sinai story. 
>  

I simply treat the text of Exodus as a coherent description of events 
taking place within a community. I don't even insist that it is 
historical - the same principles could apply if it was a novel or a 
myth. But what I utterly reject is the view of the text implied by 
yourself and by at least cruder versions of the Documentary Hypothesis, 
that it is an incoherent mess made up from fragments of unrelated 
documents and other stories. (I don't utterly reject versions of the DH 
in which different sources were used as the basis for a careful literary 
composition.) The text as it stands is not incoherent, but tells a 
coherent and powerful story. And I seek to understand the place of the 
golden calf incident within that story.

I'm not quite sure what you consider shameful about the golden calf 
story as it stands. Moses saw the need to separate the Israelites 
completely from Egyptian customs including worship of bovines, and would 
allow no compromise. To him it was as necessary as has been the banning 
of certain symbols and customs in your own country, because there is a 
need to ensure that bad history is not repeated.

> Furthermore there exists no such divine interdiction to the Israelites to 
> wear gold jewels to feature as a deuteronomic law. ...

Of course not. Exodus 33:4-6 was not a generally applicable law but a 
reaction to a particular situation, in fact a case of mourning. I 
presume that not wearing jewellery was a regular mourning custom then, 
as indeed in western societies at least until recently.

> Besides, once one has rejected the current reading of this text, there is no 
> need to explain how the bible redactor envisioned the posibility to drink 
> gold. He certainly ...

?? This is *possible,* but certainly not *certain.*

> ... took Numbers 5,11-31 as a model for a divine ordeal, but to make this function with gold and on such a scale, one ought have lots of fantasy. Beg your pardon, I don´t have the fantasy to imagine such a grotesque scene. I see you all try to make function the practically impossible. 
>  

It is a grotesque scene, I agree, but someone had the imagination to 
dream it up, whether to actually put it into practice or just to write 
about it as fiction.

> Do you have an idea how long it would take by artisanal bronze age methods to 
> transform a gold statue into fine powder instead only molting it (should 
> somebody just want to destroy it)? Perhaps up to a week or so. The reverse 
> process would take much lesser.
>  

Well, how many people do you think were doing this? And how large was 
the image? Was it solid gold or only plated? You need to answer these 
questions before you can even guess how long it would have taken to 
grind it to powder. I suppose that Moses didn't do all the grinding 
personally, and the Israelites had hand mills in which to grind it, 
Numbers 11:8.


--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/