The crucial materials here comes from
the so-called Bull Site, which was discovered somewhat accidentally by a young
Israeli solider and then, systematically excavated by Amihai Mazar between 1978
and 1981. This site, which dates from the twelfth century BCE, lies on the
summit of a high ridge in the northern reaches of the tribal territory of
Manasseh, about 9 kilometers east of biblical Dothan and near the road that
connected Dothan to the site of biblical Tirzah (see Fig. 1.1). The site’s
layout suggests it was meant to be used for communal gatherings by a reasonably
sized, although not an overwhelmingly large group of people: it consists of an
open-air, circular space, a little more than 21 meters in diameter, surrounded by
a low-lying enclosure wall at least 1 meter and possibly as much as 2 meters
long, 0.97 meters high, and 0.55 meter think. This sort of stone is often found
in religious settings in the Syro-Palestinian world, and its presence at the
Bull site thus suggests that the communal gatherings that apparently took place
within the site’s enclosed precinct were religious in character. The standing
stone was fronted by a paved area that arguably functioned religiously as well,
as a place where offerings were left and perhaps also where animal sacrifices
were enacted.
The Bull Site takes its name, however,
from an even more significant artifact (Fig. 3.2): a bronze bull about 17.5
centimeters long with a maximum height of 12.4 centimeters. Yet despite this
object’s obvious significance . . . scholars are unsure how, exactly, to
interpret it. Both of the principal gods of the Canaanite pantheon, the divine
patriarch and head of the pantheon El and the storm/warrior god Baal, can be
associated with bulls. For example, in fourteenth-/thirteenth-century BCE mythological
texts from the northern Levantine city-state of Ugarit (See Fig. I.2), El is
repeatedly referred to under the epithet tr, “Bull,” and
archaeologists have discovered bull images from the ancient Canaanite world
that were arguably a part of the cult of Baal. However, the biblical record
makes clear that the Israelite god Yahweh can also be referred to as “Bull”:
see the epithets “Bull of Jacob” and “Bull of Israel” used of Yahweh in Gen
49:24; Isa 1;24; 49:26; 60:16; and Ps 132:2. Other biblical texts—preeminently 1
Kgs 12:28-29—report that two bull-calf images represented Yahweh in the
Northern Kingdom’s state sanctuaries in Dan and Bethel. Moreover, a cult stand from
the tenth-century BCE Taanach, which lies near Megiddo in the southern reaches
of the Jezreel Valley (see Fig. I.1), has been interpreted as using a bull
image to depict Yahweh. In conjunction with other evidence—for example, a
constellation of arguably Israelite villages proximate to the Bull Site (five
within a 1-kilometer radius)—thus has suggested to most that the Bull Site is
indeed Israelite and that the bull found there is a Yahwistic icon. (Susan
Ackerman, Women and the Religion of Ancient Israel [The Anchor Yale
Bible Reference Library; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022], 89-91)
After establishing his temples at Dan
and Bethel, Jeroboam is said to host a feast (1 Kgs 12:32), as had David upon
bringing the ark into Jerusalem and as had Solomon at the occasion of the
Jerusalem temple’s dedication (2 Sam 6:19; 1 Kgs 8:62-66). Jeroboam’s sim, as
was David’s and Solomon’s was to assert his royal authority by demonstrating
this intimacy with his patron god and also his ability, concomitant with the
god’s ability to see to his people’s well-being. Jeroboam is said as well to
have designated a priesthood to serve, at least, the Bethel shrine (1 Kgs
12:32), as is said of David regarding the ark (2 Sam 8:17; 20:25) and of
Solomon even before his building of the Jerusalem temple (1 Kgs 2:26-27, 35). In
asserting his right to appoint this sanctuary’s priestly personnel, moreover,
and also his right to determine, as did David, his sanctuaries’ appropriate
furnishings (by stationing in Dan and Bethel two bull-calf images that were
somehow meant to represent Yahweh [1 Kgs 12:28-29]), Jeroboam effectively
claimed for himself the same position of titular head of the shrines he had
founded as had David and Solomon. (Ibid., 132-33)
Here are the relevant images referenced above (click to enlarge):
