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.
...
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.
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