Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Banyai AT t-online.de (Michael Banyai)]

Dear Peter,

we have several mentions of "idolatric golden calf" adoration in the bible 
between Moses and Jerobeam but no attestation of an iconoclastic movement 
till Jerobeam.

Since the Judahite iconoclasm is no movement developing isolated but gets its 
counterpart in Israel, while both states holding to Jahwism, it is most 
probable that similar to Judah who derived its rejection of idolatry from the 
autority of a Jahweh oracle, Israel too brought a Jahweh oracle to support 
their view of the cult.

Should this have happened, I can not imagine an alternative to this, would 
such a Jahweh positive oracle, commanding the Israelites to make the initial 
calf at Sinai have sounded: "now take down your (golden) rings and make me a 
calf". Exactly what we see at the end of the Sinai calf story. So we can 
assume that the Judahite text we posess is just reacting and argumentating 
that only the interpretation of the oracle by the Israelites was wrong. Point.

The Northern kingdom had at least as good access to the Sinaitic tradition 
even in its centers of "idolatric" cult like Dan, where the high priests 
derived themselves from Gershom the son of Moses. And like between any 
opposing clerics, like the Aaronites in Jerusalem and the Gershomites in Dan 
the arguments where most derived from oracles pro or con, and from the 
tradited law.

So what you are dealing with are ahistorical scenarios, made like this 
judahite text might have developed in vacuum beyond theologic dispute.

That the bible is tendentiously calling the adepts of the (older?) Jahweh 
cult in the mean-time typical for the north, Baal-priests should not mean we 
have to take this serious. They were as Jahwists as their counterparts in 
Judah in the way catolicism and protestantism are both belonging to the same 
religion. 

Best regards,

Bányai Michael
Stuttgart