Leolaia! I never read any of that in the Watchtower and Awake! magazines!
So much for my college equivalent education based on reading the Awake!
--VM44
Ex 32 - The Golden Calf: sources, intertexts, ideology
by DeusMauzzim 14 Replies latest watchtower bible
-
-
DeusMauzzim
Hmm.. I read an article (Hayes, "Golden Calf Stories: The Relationship of Exodus 32 and Deuteronomy 9-10", 2004) which makes the following plausible:
Ex 32 as a unity of original J material, Levite-good-guys, 'these are your gods' and all
Deut 9,10 as D mining Ex 32 for 'what the Israelites did wrong' in an argumentative context
1 Kings 12 as using Ex 32 and Deut 9,10 for lampooning Jerobeam by putting Aaron's words in his mouth
This is getting tricky...
- Deus Mauzzim
P.S Thanks Leoleia, very interesting to read, esp. the growing-up allegory... I did some research on bovine imagery in the bible in connection with my Ugaritic studies but I'm not that acquainted with Akkadian and Sumerian material as I do not read those languages (yet:). Still there is the connection Asherah / Atirat (the consort of El in Ugarit). Seems like YHWH, as a son of El, was the first Oedipus, and Adam imitated him :)
-
JCanon
I tend to agree with AlphaOmega in that the golden calf was a compromised version of YHWH since they knew no other. The command not to make any graven images hadn't come down in the Ten Commandments as yet.
But based upon some aspects of Akenaten's sun worship and the association with a bull, I'm wondering if there was some contextual belief that the bull was associated with what they understood to be the comming messiah. After all, they did sacrifices all kinds of animals including sheep and bulls and they all represented/prefigured the coming messiah, not YHWH; it wasn't YHWH being sacrificed but his son. That also thus warrants further investigation of "gods' (plural); that is, did the Israelites become aware of "God's angel" that was considered a god that assisted in bringing them out of Egypt? That is, was there some common thread belief that the bull/sun was associated with a chief son of God? In gospel parables about the second coming a bull is sacrificed (i.e. rather than a lamb). I'm wondering if the god/goddess pantheons were more clearly defined back then.
Another question. Was Baal ever considered to be a calf? In Egypt Horus is associated with he calf and the sun, the son of Isis/Hathor, born every morning at sunrise through her vulva, repesented by two sycamore trees:
...
"The sycamore itself was a tree of particular mythical significance. According to Chapter 109 of the Book of the Dead, twin 'Sycamores of Turquoise' were believed to stand at the eastern gate of heaven from which the sun god Re emerged each day, and these same two trees sometimes appear in New Kingdom tomb paintings with a young bull calf emerging between them as a symbol of the sun. While the cosmic tree could thus take on a male aspect as a form of the solar god Re-Herakhty, the Sycamore was especially regarded as a manifestation of the goddesses Nut, Isis and Hathor- who was given the epithet "Lady of the Sycamore." (p.117, "Tree." Richard H. Wilkinson. Reading Egyptian Art, A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Egyptian Painting and Sculpture . London. Thames & Hudson. 1992) Hathor/Nut was at times portrayed in myths not only as the sky giving birth to the Sun, but also in tomb paintings as a Sycamore tree, providing food and drink in the Afterworld to the Righteous Dead. So the rising Sun and Bull-Calf associated with the Sycamore trees in this mural may be alluding to Hathor giving birth to the rising sun and bull-calf. Hathor was also the "Goddess of Turquoise" and honored with shrines at the Copper Mines in the Sinai (the mining camps of Serabit el Khadim and Timna in the Arabah). (cf. p.28, Tomb of Arinefer, Thebes, 20th Dynasty. Robert Boulanger. Egyptian and Near Eastern Painting . New York. Funk & Wagnalls. 1965 [Note: Wilkinson dates this mural to the 19th Dynasty, cf. p.116, Reading Egyptian Art) Yahweh-Elohim as the "Golden Calf" (the rising Sun at dawn, honored by the Egyptians) :Below, a Bronze Bull covered in Gold Leaf, from a Phoenician Temple at Byblos, Phoenicia. The Bull was associated with the Syrian (Ugaritic) gods El, called Bull-El, and Baal, also called Baal-Hadad. Thunderclouds which brought rain, lighting and thunder, were called "Hadad's CALVES". Yahweh- Elohim's manifestation at Mt. Sinai was as a Thundercloud, shortly thereafter Aaron makes a Golden Calffor Israel to adore. (cf. for the photo, p.80. Reader's Digest. The Great People of the Bible and How They Lived. Pleasantville, New York. 1974). Below, a Silver plated over bronze, bull-calf from Ashkelon, Canaan.Literary sources reveal that the bull and calf were attributes of El and Baal, the chief gods of the Ugaritic pantheons..." (p.59. "Chalcolithic and Canaanite Periods." Irene Lewitt, et al. Editors. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. New York. The Vendome Press. 1995. ISBN 0-86565-960-5. Note that Ashkelon WAS NOT a Philistine city ca. 2000-1500 BCE. The Philistines arrived ca. 1174 BCE and destroyed Ashkelon (later rebuilding it), dispossessing the native Canaanites of their lands. I have argued that the Golden Calf is not an Egyptian phenomena so much as a Canaanite god, it being a form of Baal-Hadad and of Yahweh (Hebrew: Egel-yah, "bull-calf Yah"). Yahweh was also called Baal according to Hosea 2:16. I suspect, along with other scholars, that Yahweh absorbed the epithets and characteristics of the Canaanite gods Bull-El and Baal-Hadad. In erecting a Golden Calf in Yahweh's temples at Dan and Bethel, Jeroboam was merely honoring Yahweh as Egeliah, "the bull-calf iah" (as in Hezekiah). Syrian and Canaanite Bull Gods : Illustrations of Genesis 1-9 (Creation to Flood) Yahweh-Elohim's Prototype, the Sumerian god Enki or Ea I understand that Genesis' God, Yahweh-Elohim, is to some degree, a reformatting and transformation of the Sumerian god called Enki, "Lord-Earth," later called by the Babylonians Ea, "House of Water," according to some scholars. Enki/Ea shares several attributes with Yahweh-Elohim: 1) Both are credited with creating man. 2) Both make man naked and leave him in that state for an undetermined period of time. 3) Both place man in their fruit-tree garden to tend and till it. 4) Both create man in a place whose names are similar in sound, Enki makes man in the city of Eridu in edin-the-floodplain, Yahweh in Eden. 5) Both warn a pious man of a Flood which will destroy mankind, telling this individual to save himself, family and animals by building a boat. 6) Both cause the one language of mankind to be transformed into a babel of languages. 7) Both deny man immortality. 8) Both deny man knowledge of right and wrong ("good and evil"). 9) Both provide man with bread to eat. "Enki speaking to the goddess Ninmah: "Of him whom thy hand has fashioned, I have decreed the fate, Have given him bread to eat; Do thou decree the fate of him whom my hand has fashioned, Do thou give him bread to eat." (p. 71. "The Creation of Man." Samuel Noah Kramer. Sumerian Mythology, A Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B. C. Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania Press. 1944, 1961, 1972. ISBN 0-8122-1047-6 paperback) Aaron declared at Mount Sinai, after making the Golden Calf, that the morrow would be a celebration to the Lord, which in Hebrew is rendered Yahweh, NOT "the Lord," suggesting he is associated with the calf (Ex 32:4-6). In Mesopotamian hymns the god Enki declares he the first-born of a wild Ox, the supreme god, An or Anu. This suggests to me that Enki may have been envisioned at times as a bull-calf in his being the "first-born" of An the wild ox. Mesopotamian art forms show Enki wearing a crown composed of several layers of bull's horns stacked atop each other. On one seal his foot rests on the back of a recumbant bull. Enki also in some hymns declares himself a mighty bull. So, to the degree that Enki was likened to a bull-calf and a bull, and shares a number of attributes with Genesis' Yahweh-Elohim, I believe the Aaronic association of the Golden Calf with Yahweh is probably correct. Enki, magnifying himself (emphasis mine): "I am the true seed engendered by the GREAT WILD OX, the eldest son of An..." (p. 94. "Enki and the World Order." Samuel Noah Kramer. History Begins At Sumer: Twenty-seven "Firsts" in Man's Recorded History. Garden City, New York. Doubleday Anchor Books. 1959 reprint of 1956 History Begins at Sumer by The Falcon's Wing Press) Kramer later in 1989 re-translated the above verse (emphasis mine): "Lord who walks nobly on heaven and earth, self-reliant, father Enki, engendered by A BULL, begotten by a WILD BULL, prized by Enlil, the Great Kur, Loved by holy An." (p. 39. "Enki and Inanna: The Organization of the Earth and Its Cultural Processes." Samuel Noah Kramer & John Maier. Myths of Enki,The Crafty God. New York. Oxford University Press. 1989. ISBN 0-19-505502-0) Kramer's explanation, below, of how the ancient Sumerians sought to explain the creation of the world and man, _for me_ applies just as well to Genesis' fanciful explanation of the creation of the earth and man: "...modern thinking man is usually prepared to admit the relative character of his conclusions and is skeptical of all absolute answers. Not so the Sumerian thinker; he was convinced that his thoughts on the matter were absolutely correct and that he knew exactly how the universe was created and operated." (p. 82. "Man's First Cosmogony and Cosmology." Samuel Noah Kramer. History Begins At Sumer: Twenty-seven "Firsts" in Man's Recorded History. Garden City, New York. Doubleday Anchor Books. 1959 reprint of 1956 History Begins at Sumer by The Falcon's Wing Press) "The mythographers were scribes and poets whose main concern was the glorification and exhaltation of the gods and their deeds...The aim of the myth-makers was to compose a narrative poem that would explain one or another of these notions and practices in a manner that would be appealing, insipring, and entertaining. They were not concerned with proofs and arguments directed to the intellect. Their first interest was in telling a story that would appeal to the emotions. Their main literary tools, therefore, were not logic and reason, but imagination and fantasy. In telling their story, these poets did not hesitate to invent motives and incidents patterned on human action which could not possibly have any basis in reasonable and speculative thought. Nor did they hesitate to adopt legendary and folkloristic motifs that had nothing to do with rational cosmological inquiry and inference...The mature and reflective Sumerian thinker had the mental capacity of thinking logically and coherently on any problems, including those concerned with the origin and operation of the universe. His stumbling block was the lack of scientific data at his disposal. Furthermore, he lacked such fundamental intellectual tools as definition and generalization, and had practically no insight into the the processes of growth and development, since the principle of evolution, which seems so obvious now, was entirely unknown to him." (pp. 80-81. "Man's first Cosmogony and Cosmology." Samuel Noah Kramer. History Begins At Sumer: Twenty-seven "Firsts" in Man's Recorded History. Garden City, New York. Doubleday Anchor Books. 1959 reprint of 1956 History Begins at Sumer by The Falcon's Wing Press) Below, a cylinder sea impression showing Enki seated on a throne. a king approaches to request on behalf of his people, freshwaters for the irrigation-fed gardens of Lower Mesopotamia. Enki as the god of freshwaters, presents him a pot with a stream of waters and fish . At Enki's feet is a goat-fish, one of his symbols. Enki in myths lived beneath the earth in the abyss called the Abzu or Apsu and sent up via springs and fountains, freshwaters for rivers, which in turn were accessed via canals and irrigation networks for the "gardens of the gods" maintained by man on the gods' behalf, near Sumerian cities. Enki had made man to tend and till the gardens of gods, including his own garden at Eridu in edin-the-floodplain. Enki wears a crown of layered bulls' horns. Behind him, lions guard his portals or doors to his mythical Apsu abode at the city of Eridu (for the photo. cf. p.123. "The Enthroned Enki." Samuel Noah Kramer & John Maier. Myths of Enki,The Crafty God. New York. Oxford University Press. 1989. ISBN 0-19-505502-0) Below, another cylinder sealing showing Enki with two streams gushing from his shoulders (perhaps symbolizing the Tigris and Euphrates ?). In Hymns he is credited as filling these rivers with his sperm which is portrayed as crystal clear water; the hymn likens him in this act as a rampant bull and the Tigris and Euphrates as wild cows eager to be impregnated by him. Other gods are Utu the sun god arising from the mountain of the east with his sword-saw (perhaps the Zagros range), and the goddess Inanna greets him. The two faced god is Isimud, Enki's vizier. The god with bow and arrow might be Ninurta. Note the bull beneath Enki's raised foot. (for the below photo cf. p. 122. "The Cylinder of Adda." Samuel Noah Kramer & John Maier. Myths of Enki,The Crafty God. New York. Oxford University Press. 1989. ISBN 0-19-505502-0) The peoples of the Ancient Near East (Mesopotamia, Syria, Phoenicia, Canaan, Egypt) greatly admired the strength and power of mighty bulls and thus in metaphorical language likened their gods and goddesses to these animals. They also likened their kings, queens, princes and princesses to these animals as well. Hence the reason all the gods in the above seal are shown with crowns or helmets consisting of multiple layers of bulls' horns. The goddess Inanna, whose name means "Queen of Heaven" was likened to a "wild cow," (she was associated with the Venus star and called the "fiery torch" of heaven) the sun, called Utu or Shamash, was at times likened to a bull-calf, so too, the moon, called Nanna or Sin. JCanon
-
Leolaia
Whose post did the stuff at the bottom come from? DeusMauzzim or JCanon? If it could be moved up to the originating post, it would be a bit less confusing.
Still there is the connection Asherah / Atirat (the consort of El in Ugarit). Seems like YHWH, as a son of El, was the first Oedipus, and Adam imitated him :)
LOL, well there is actually a partial precedent for Oedipus in the Phoenician mythology found in Philo of Byblos, who posts the parents of El as Ouranos and Ge ("heaven and earth", cf. Arts-w-Shmm at Ugarit and the covenantal invocation of "heaven and earth" in the OT), who were among the "old gods" that correspond to the pre-Olympian deities of Hesoid (cf. Ouranos, Gaia, Erebus, Nyx, Pontos, Ourea, Oceanos, etc., cf. also Ugaritic Grm-w-'mqt "Mountains and Valleys," Ym "Sea," etc.). Ouranos (= Shmm in Phoenician and Ugaritic, and possibly An in Sumerian/Akkadian mythology) replaced his father Elioun (= Elyon) as supreme god after Elioun died in an encounter with a monster, and Ouranos begat "Elus (= El) who is also Kronos", Baetylus (= Bethel), and Dagan "who is also Sidon". So El and Dagan (the father of Baal-Hadad in Ugaritic mythology) were brothers. Then El fought a war against Shmm and drove him from his kingship, a war which resembles Zeus' war against the Titans in Hesoid -- except in the Phoenican version, the war occurs a generation earlier (as Zeus corresponds to Baal-Hadad). During the war, El took the pregnant concubine of Shmm and gave her to Dagan to become his wife. Then she gave birth to Demaros (= dmm, an epithet of Baal at Ugarit?), who was raised by Dagan as his own son though he was begotten by Shmm. This is reminiscent of how Baal was called the "son of Dagan" at Ugarit but who was recognized by El as his own son. The gods who threw their support behind El were called the Eloim (i.e. 'lhym "gods"), but the imprisoned Shmm tried to avenge his son El by sending his daughters Astarte and Asherah (= Rhea and Dione) to secretly assassinate El. But El captured them and married both Astarte and Asherah, though they were his sisters. After Dagan discovers corn and agriculture, Demaros and Pontos fight against each other, and this is analogous to Baal's battle against Yamm in the Baal Epic at Ugarit, except in this first battle, Demaros is put into flight. Then El finally captures his father Shmm and puts him to death, here is the Oedipal theme of patricide, whereby Shmm's blood flows into all the fountains and rivers. At last, Astarte and "Zeus Demaros also called Adodos (= Hadad) ... reigned over the country with the consent of Kronos (= El),' which is just the situation we find in Ugaritic myth. Except, we know that at least at Ugarit, Baal-Hadad obtained Athtart (= Astarte) as his consort through his humilation of Athtar. I find the Phoenician theogony fascinating, as it may throw some light on the backstory of the Ugaritic myth (keeping in mind tho that Philo of Byblos may have been influenced by Hesiod in some areas).
Anyway, in the journey from polytheism to monotheism, we find all sorts of conflations and shifts, such as Elyon and El originally being separate deities, Athtart being first Athtar's consort and then Baal's, etc. Asherah would become Yahweh's consort through the conflation of Yahweh and El, and subsequently Asherah then merged with Yahweh, becoming the feminine hypostasis of God (e.g. the Shekinah, feminine Wisdom, the "face" of God, which still later contributed to christology and the characterization of the Holy Spirit).
As for Eve as a depotentiated deity, most striking is Aruru in Akkadian texts, who together with Marduk, create mankind, and she is described as forming Enkidu from clay of the earth in the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the way Eve's begetting of Cain is described in Genesis 4:1 ("I have created a man with the help of Yahweh") is also quite curious, especially when compared with Aruru's creative agency in Akkadian texts ("Aruru, with the help of Marduk, created the seed of mankind").
But based upon some aspects of Akenaten's sun worship and the association with a bull, I'm wondering if there was some contextual belief that the bull was associated with what they understood to be the comming messiah.
The post-exilic concept of messianism is entirely foreign to the thought of the Egyptian New Kingdom.
Was Baal ever considered to be a calf? In Egypt Horus is associated with he calf and the sun, the son of Isis/Hathor
Both Baal and El were depicted in bovine terms. I especially love the episode of Baal getting it on with a heifer (Athtart, I think, right?).
As for the identification of Yahweh with Horus, notice the post-exilic Egyptian text I mentioned above, which uses bovine language to describe Yaho-Horus. Bear in mind that this represents post-exilic syncretism of Jews in Egypt and it is unclear what kind of syncretism existed before the exile (other than the case of Anat = Hathor, which is pretty clear, as well as the cult of Resheph). I know that there was a cult of Baal-Sapan in Egypt as well in the New Kingdom among the Asiastics, but I forgot which Egyptian god Baal-Sapan (= Yahweh at least in part) was identified with.
-
Narkissos
Let's see if another post on this thread clears the formatting up or makes it worse...
One possibility is that the "ark" and the "calf" (or, rather, young bull) were at one point seen as alternative (and concurrential) representations of Yhwh's "seat" or "pedestal". From this angle both could theoretically suit the standards of post-Josianic and post-exilic aniconism (even though this implies a reinterpretation of the bull as originally representing Yhwh himself). In that case we could find some material for ideological analysis.
On Biblical "aniconism" more generally, here's an interesting article from a Jewish perspective: http://www.umass.edu/judaic/anniversaryvolume/articles/18-D1-CEhrlich.pdf
