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 | This article uses texts from within a religion or faith system without referring to secondary sources that critically analyze them. (June 2024) |
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 bull-god Apis was a comparable object of worship. 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.[2] Among the Canaanites, some of whom would become the Israelites,[3] the bull was widely worshipped as the sacred bull and the creature of El.[4]
- ^ Exodus 32:4.
- ^ Day, John. Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan. 2002. pp. 36ff.
- ^ 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!
- ^ 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.