Biblical Hebrew Forum

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

Hallo Peter,

I don´t state the position you defend would be essentially yours. Now to:


> Although Halpern is being somewhat speculative, he does not share your 
> flights of fancy about calf worship being normal during the Judges and 
> United Monarchy periods.

This is perfectly normal. Halpern deals with the 7-th century BC as no more 
"calfs" were left. So any polemic of the period would go about other 
questions. 

We have however the testimony of Judges regarding the calf at Dan in 
connection with the high-priest family of Gershom son of Moses, and the other 
mention of Gideon. So would Jerobeam making out of Dan one pillar of his 
kingdom, a renewal of the golden calf cult, and mean the cult got the royal 
authority. We must suppose similar things about the cult in Beth-El. We are 
not said in Judges, that the son of Gershom in Dan was anything else as a 
priest of Jahweh. Or that Beth-El was not a cult place of Jahweh. Even if we 
don´t exactly know the antecedents of Beth-El (we are said in the story of 
the Benjaminites it was an important Jahweh sanctuary) we may assume, that 
the calf-cult looked like here on a similar antiquity like the one in Dan. So 
is Jesebel here still far out of reach to put the blame on her. 

Furthermore does the bible take care to relate how the original calf came to 
Israel (Genesis - the rape of Europe in biblical version: Rachel riding the 
bull). 

Even if this story is ridiculed in its version as it arrived us, it must have 
been a very important religious tradition to become such a prominent place in 
Genesis. As you now read it (Rachel riding upon a camels saddle the teraphim) 
of course looks like an anecdote. The story is however just a Judahite 
version of an important story as related by some northern kingdom "historian" 
and has its place among all those sacred stories in Genesis about creation of 
sacrifice altars by the patriarchs in places of later great fame. These are 
all important temple foundation myths.

So for a northern kingdom idolatrist preceded the tradition of the golden 
calf even the Sinai event (which, I restate, may have looked different from a 
northern view). 

I recall the sherd found in Samaria, naming the bull-calf of Jahweh 
"egeliah", a clear association in a city with an important Jahweh cult, 
according to the inscription of Kuntillet Adjrud mentioning Jahweh of 
Samaria. Once more would the calf find place in a Jahweh temple as a minor 
god. We know from several extra-biblical sources (Ugarit, Hurritic myths, 
Sanchunaton, etc) that Baal was the turtenu of El (who at a later stage 
rebelled against him). There is therefore possible that the Jahweh believer 
imagined his invisible god riding on the golden "calf". Since the divine 
story of kingship and rebellion was considered cyclical, one was looking at a 
still in this mythical cyclus. This gave however the Judahite monotheists 
good ground to view both Baal and Jahweh as permanent enemies.

Best regards,

Bányai Michael
>From peterkirk AT qaya.org  Thu Sep 23 05:23:50 2004
Return-Path: <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
X-Original-To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Delivered-To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
Received: from pan.hu-pan.com (hu-pan.com [67.15.6.3])
        by happyhouse.metalab.unc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 855192000D
        for <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>; Thu, 23 Sep 2004 05:23:50 -0400 
(EDT)
Received: from [213.162.124.237] (helo=[127.0.0.1])
        by pan.hu-pan.com with esmtpa (Exim 4.42)
        id 1CAPpM-0007bM-L1; Thu, 23 Sep 2004 10:23:48 +0100
Message-ID: <4152962E.9090700 AT qaya.org>
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 10:23:58 +0100
From: Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US;
        rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040803
X-Accept-Language: en-gb, en, en-us, az, ru, tr, he, el, fr, de
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Michael Banyai <Banyai AT t-online.de>
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] The Golden Calf & the Hathor Cult of Sinai ?
References: <1CACOX-0yaoAi0 AT fwd03.sul.t-online.com> 
<4151FE3F.1040508 AT qaya.org>
        <1CANRw-0lJmnA0 AT fwd07.sul.t-online.com>
In-Reply-To: <1CANRw-0lJmnA0 AT fwd07.sul.t-online.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-cPanel-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more information
X-cPanel-MailScanner: Found to be clean
X-cPanel-MailScanner-SpamCheck:
X-MailScanner-From: peterkirk AT qaya.org
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse,
        please include it with any abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - pan.hu-pan.com
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - lists.ibiblio.org
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [47 12] / [47 12]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - qaya.org
X-Source:
X-Source-Args:
X-Source-Dir:
Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
X-BeenThere: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.4
Precedence: list
List-Id: Hebrew Bible List <b-hebrew.lists.ibiblio.org>
List-Unsubscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew>,
        <mailto:b-hebrew-request AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=unsubscribe>
List-Archive: <https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/b-hebrew>
List-Post: <mailto:b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
List-Help: <mailto:sympa AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=HELP>
List-Subscribe: <http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew>,
        <mailto:b-hebrew-request AT lists.ibiblio.org?subject=subscribe>
X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 09:23:51 -0000

On 23/09/2004 07:50, Michael Banyai wrote:

> ...
>
>We have however the testimony of Judges regarding the calf at Dan in 
>connection with the high-priest family of Gershom son of Moses, and the 
>other mention of Gideon. ...
>

According to the text, these idols were not calves but "ephod"s. I know
the meaning of "ephod" is unclear in these contexts. But do you have any
evidence that they were calves? Or are you making a speculative link
between these ephods and the calves set up much later by Jeroboam?

>...
>Furthermore does the bible take care to relate how the original calf came to 
>Israel (Genesis - the rape of Europe in biblical version: Rachel riding the 
>bull).
>
>

The biblical story is Rachel riding a camel. Any link with Europa riding
a bull is entirely speculative. The only similarity between the two
stories is a woman riding an animal.

>...
>
>I recall the sherd found in Samaria, naming the bull-calf of Jahweh 
>"egeliah", a clear association in a city with an important Jahweh cult, ...
>

Of what date? Presumably during the northern kingdom period, when it is
well known that calves were worshipped at Bethel and Dan as if they were
images of Yahweh, or perhaps the idea was that Yahweh was riding the
calves as you mention.

>... There is therefore possible that the Jahweh believer imagined his 
>invisible god riding on the golden "calf". ...
>

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