The widespread presence of bull images in ANE worship has been
thoroughly confirmed by Eissfeldt (ZAW
58 [1940–41] 199–215; cf. also Wainwright, JEA
19 [1933] 42–52), and attempts have been made to connect the golden calf with
the lunar cult of the god Sîn, brought by the patriarchal fathers from Haran
and possibly even reflected in the name “Sinai” (Bailey, HUCA 42 [1971] 103–15; cf. also J. Lewy, HUCA 19 [1945–46] 405–89, and Key, JBL 84 [1965] 20–26), and also with the Egyptian representation of
Amon-Re as a bull, “the ‘Bull, chief of all the gods’ ” (Ostwalt, EvQ 45 [1973] 17–19). One scholar
(Sasson, VT 18 [1968] 383–87) has
even made an imaginative though implausible suggestion that the golden calf is
to be understood as a symbol of the “continued, reassuring presence” of the
absent Moses (cf. also the proposal of Brichto, HUCA 54 [1983] 41–44). These theories go beyond what the text will
allow, not least because the entire composite of Exod 32–34 turns on the fact
that the making and worship of the golden calf are an unacceptable idolatry
that threatens the destruction of the relationship between Yahweh and Israel.
The probability that the calf was a symbol of divinity widely used among
Israel’s neighbors of course makes Israel’s idolatry even worse.
The apparent acceptance of the golden calf by Israel as their gods
“who brought them up from the land of Egypt,” is taken by Faur (JQR 69 [1978] 11–12) as a part of a
ritual of consecration by which the people hoped to have God “identify with”
the calf and “make his glory dwell among them.” The evidence for such a ritual
in the OT is very skimpy (Faur builds his case, for the most part, on Egyptian
and Babylonian texts—9–10, nn. 51–54). (John I. Durham, Exodus [Word
Biblical Commentary; Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1987], 420-21)
