Introduction
The Prince of Egypt cuts to the end credits as Moses triumphantly descends Mount Sinai with the tablets of God’s law. If the film had continued, the very next scene would have been Moses discovering Israel worshiping a golden idol of a young bull, created by Moses’ own brother Aaron. Moses cracks the stone tablets on the ground in anger, having just defended Israel to God. He seizes the idol, grinds it into a fine powder, and forces the idolators to drink the powder mixed in water. Moses then instructs the Levite tribe to kill anyone who failed to repudiate the idol.
Psalm 106.19–20
They made a calf at Horeb and worshiped a cast image. They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass.
The story is infamous, and has become ubiquitous in pop culture for perceived idolatry. Lesser known, however, is a different account of Israel worshiping golden idols of bulls.
The first several chapters of the Book of Kings deal with the transition of royal power from David to his son Solomon, followed by Solomon building a temple for Yhwh in Jerusalem, along with a palace for the king. When we arrive at 1 Kings 12, Solomon’s son Rehoboam has become king, but he faces a revolt. The northern tribes secede and a man named Jeroboam son of Nebat, is chosen to rule the new northern kingdom of Israel, with the south becoming the kingdom of Judah.
To ensure the security of his throne, Jeroboam builds two altars, one each in the towns Bethel and Dan. Placing the golden idol of a young bull in each sanctuary, Jeroboam’s intention is to prevent the northern tribes from continuing to think of Jerusalem’s temple as their religious capital, keeping their allegiance to the northern kingdom.
It is here that a literary puzzle emerges.
Exodus 32.4
1 Kings 12.28
He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said,
So the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold. He said to the people, ‘You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough.
‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’
Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.’
Except for the introductory ‘these are’ (ʾêlleh) and ‘here are’ (hinnêh), Jeroboam’s declaration is identical to what Aaron said to Israel. It is extremely doubtful he would purposely quote the antagonist of an event in Israel’s past, yet even the context is the same: both men say this in reference to golden idols of bulls they have just made for Israel to direct their worship to. There are three possible explanations here: the verbal connection is purely coincidental; when the Jeroboam story was written, the author purposely borrowed from the Exodus story; or, the Exodus story purposely borrowed from Jeroboam’s story.
Aaron and Jeroboam
Once we notice the verbal echo, a number of other similarities between Aaron and Jeroboam start showing up. ‘Almost no one denies’
- Both act on counsel to make the golden calves as idols for Israel.
- ‘[These/here] are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.’
- Both build altars and ordain feasts.
- Both perform sacrifices in a priestly role.
- Levites oppose Aaron; Jeroboam appoints a non-Levite priesthood.
- Both occasions of idolatry are described as a supreme sin.
- Both men are threatened with death, but live longer anyway.
- An intercession is made for the idolators.
- Aaron’s calf and Jeroboam’s altars are burnt and ground into dust.
- Aaron’s sons are named Abihu and Nadab; Jeroboam’s sons are named Abijah and Nadab.
This degree of similarity between the two men goes beyond sheer coincidence, ruling out the first potential explanation. This leaves us with direct literary dependence. The question is, which text was dependent on the other? Looking into some of the items from our list above, along with a few other points, will shed light on this.
Bull Idols
The broader story claimed by the Hebrew Bible’s narrative books—that Israel was vaguely monotheistic and iconoclastic before the exodus, and became firmly so afterward, such that polytheism and idolatry were deviations from the norm—finds dissent within both the Hebrew Bible itself and the archaeological record. Ugaritic texts refer to the Canaanite gods El and Baʿal as a ‘bull’,
The Book of Kings was written in the mid to late sixth century BCE, by scribes descended from Judah. Two centuries before the Book of Kings was being written, we find the prophet Hosea condemning bull idols. This indicates the practice was falling out of favor in certain circles, but Hosea was two centuries after Jeroboam, hinting that the Israelite king was not doing anything out of the ordinary. Some scholars suggest Jeroboam’s golden calves would not have been understood by his contemporaries as depictions of Yhwh. Rather, they were more of a symbolic representation of his throne (similar to the function of cherubim in other parts of the Bible), or perhaps the bulls represented a pedestal Yhwh stood upon, as was the case for Baʿal.
The charge of Jeroboam’s apostasy serves Judean polemical interests. His use of the golden calves did not depict YHWH or any other god per se, but the mount on which YHWH rides.12
One peculiar detail of the golden calves stands out when comparing Exo 32 with 1 Kings 12.
Jeroboam makes two calves because he makes two altars, one each for two different villages, Dan and Bethel.
This is not the case in Exo 32. The Hebrew Bible regularly uses the plural noun ʾĕlōhîm in reference to the singular ‘God’ (perhaps as an intensive plural). We know this is the correct translation because the accompanying verb will be in singular form. If the verb is also in the plural, it means ʾĕlōhîm should be translated as ‘gods’. This is what we find in verses 4 and 8 of Exo 32, which means Aaron is bizarrely referring to a single bull idol as multiple ‘gods’. This is a strong hint at the direction of literary dependence: the chronologically earlier story in Exodus 32 is based on the later story in 1 Kings 12.
Literary Dependence
The information surrounding either Aaron’s or Jeroboam’s two sons helps make sense of Exodus’ dependence on 1 Kings. Briefly mentioned above, the two men’s sons share similar names. Aaron’s son Abihu (אביהוא) is just two consonants more than Jereboam’s son Abijah (אביה). Aaron’s son Nadab is spelled identically to Jeroboam’s son Nadab (נדב).
While Aaron’s son are mentioned a handful of times in the Torah, their only actual narrative role is to die in an unusual way.
Leviticus 10.1–2
Now Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, each took his censer, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered strange fire before Yhwh, such as he had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of Yhwh and consumed them, and they died before Yhwh.
Jeroboam’s sons also die prematurely, though the circumstances are different. Abijah falls ill, and passes away when his mother sets out to consult a prophet (1 Kings 14.1–18). Nadab succeeded Jeroboam as king (14.20), but was assassinated just two years later (15.25–28), bringing an abrupt end to Jeroboam’s short-lived dynasty.
The reasoning around Aaron’s sons’ deaths are a bit opaque. Their sin is evidently because they used ‘strange’ or ‘different’ fire in their incense offering. The additional phrase ‘such as he had not commanded them’ may provide additional clarity. The phrasing is awkward in English; it doesn’t refer to a law which doesn’t exist (i.e. ‘God never said anything about this’), but to a law of prohibition (‘God said don’t do this’). The phrase is generally used in the Hebrew Bible in relation to idolatry or other unacceptable practices of worship. The deaths of Abihu and Nadab for burning incense on a ‘strange fire’ (the author here may have in mind Exo 30.9, though it doesn’t prohibit strange fire specifically) is generally seen as an allusion to Jeroboam offering incense to the bull idol at Bethel (1 Kings 12.33), an act for which Jeroboam is immediately condemned (13.1–2), leading to his family’s fate of being ‘cut off and destroyed from the face of the earth’ (13.33–34).
the figure of Aaron as he appears in the golden calf story is, to all intents and purposes, identical with Jeroboam19
Exo 32 is an invented story, created by remixing parts of Jeroboam’s story in 1 Kings 12–15 in a way that fits the context of the exodus narrative, while still condemning Jeroboam.
The biblical figure Zadok, the first high priest to serve in Jerusalem’s temple for Yhwh, was a close ally of David and Solomon. Many scholars think the Zadokite priests were not members of the Aaronide priesthood, but were instead a rival lineage. Where 1 Kings 12 comes from Judean scribes vilifying Israel altogether, Exo 32 reflects a Zadokite portrait of the Aaronide priesthood.
First Kings 12–15 is a revisionist history, describing tenth century events in Israel according to sixth century scribes from Judah. They meant to depict Jeroboam as far more immoral than he probably was. In a similar way, the golden calf story in Exo 32 may also have been written for polemical reasons. This time, instead of members of one nation condemning their northern neighbor, it was one clan of priests smearing another.
The evidence so far strongly favors the author of Exo 32 being directly dependent on 1 Kings 12–15, but this does not mean the idea Israel worshiped a golden calf during the exodus originated with this author. Many details in Exo 32 have no parallel in Jeroboam’s story in 1 Kings. The most likely other source for them is Deut 9.7–10.11.
The Deuteronomy version of Israel’s idolatry in the wilderness differs from Exo 32 in several ways. In Deuteronomy, the guilt is on all Israel; Aaron is only briefly mentioned, not credited with making the idol, but defended by Moses. In Exodus, Aaron creates the idol, but is conspicuously excused from any punishment despite Moses never interceding for him.
The Deuteronomy story is often thought to be based on Exo 32, but it could be the other way around.
There are also some inconsistencies within Exo 32 itself — such as Moses being told about the bull idol by God while still on Mount Sinai in 32.7–10, but then being surprised when he discovers the bull idol after descending the mountain in 32.15–20
Jeroboam and Jeroboam
Locating the source used by another text would normally be the end result of a study like this, but there is an additional layer of complexity: that of the actual history surrounding Jeroboam, the bull idolatry attributed to him, and the two places he establishes cult worship, Bethel and Dan.
On a strictly archaeological level, the earliest evidence for the two kingdoms is that of Omri (king of Israel roughly twenty-five years after Jeroboam), and shows the northern kingdom was not just larger, but more powerful than the south, almost the opposite situation of what the Bible depicts.
The earliest we see criticism of this kind of idolatry in biblical texts is Hosea 8.5–6 and 10.5,
Scribes attributing the works of a lesser known biblical figure to a more legendary one is not without precedent. The slaying of Goliath by the warrior Elhanan was attributed to King David. This was done to build up David’s legend, so that the Hebrews’ founding king (skipping the ‘failure’ Saul) was truly epic. If the theory is correct, it is a prime example of ‘history is written by the winners’ happening within the Bible: by taking basic civil duties carried out by Jeroboam II and rewriting them as a willful, self-serving sin committed by Jeroboam I that led to God sentencing his kingdom to destruction, the Judean scribes responsible for the Book of Kings succeed in vilifying the northern kingdom.
A major component of Hebrew Bible scholarship is the understanding that Judean religion underwent major reforms in the time of King Josiah, in the late seventh century BCE. Second Kings describes how priests under Josiah ‘discovered’ a lost scroll of the Torah in Yhwh’s temple, which was quickly followed by Josiah centralizing Judean religious expression to the Jerusalem temple establishment. This effort included destroying competing worship sites. Based on linguistic and conceptual clues, this ‘lost scroll’ was probably an early version of Deuteronomy, which contains the instruction to do exactly as Josiah did (Deut 12.1–14).
This gives us an earliest possible date for when the story of Jeroboam I was written: not just after Jeroboam II (c. 788–747 BCE), but after Josiah (640–609). Whereas the Judean scribes built the foundation myth for the southern kingdom on the valorous feats of David, they also wrote a foundation myth for their historical rivals to the north.
Scholarship has also long recognized that the Hebrew Bible mostly associates the story of Jacob and the exodus with Israel in the north, not with Judah in the south. In particular, it is believed that the story of Jacob and the story of the exodus were rival origins for Israel: some preferred the Jacob legend as their foundation myth, while others preferred the exodus story. An example of this is found in Hosea 12, which criticizes Jacob for ‘supplanting his brother’ while idealizing Moses (or rather, the ‘prophet’; exodus traditions had not yet named ‘Moses’ in the mid eighth century).
Coincidentally, Jacob is associated with Bethel, credited as the one who named the village (Gen 28.10–22). In the course of demeaning the Jacob tradition, Hosea 12.4 identifies Bethel as the place where Jacob wrestled with the god El. Why does Hosea bring the Jacob story up at all? Perhaps because Jeroboam II had been invoking the patriarch in order to validate the new shrine he had built at Bethel. Gen 28.22 proclaims that the monument stone Jacob placed at Bethel ‘shall be God’s house’. Jeroboam II was simply fulfilling what Israel’s ancestor began.
An Origin for the Exodus
The archaeological and literary evidence firmly supports that the exodus—the slavery of the Hebrews in Egypt, the devastation of the Egyptian kingdom, the Hebrews’ escape into the wilderness, and their subsequent wandering in the desert and invasion of Canaan—never happened. However, strangely, the biblical literature suggests the legend emerged in Israel to the north, rather than Judah to the south. What might explain the story originating in the kingdom more geographically removed from Egypt than the one closer? Just as many scholars noticed a series of parallels between Jeroboam and Aaron, there are some who find compelling similarities between Jeroboam’s story and the exodus as a whole.
In the exodus, Israel (the people descended from the twelve sons of Jacob) resides in a territory ruled by a foreign power: the pharaoh of Egypt. The pharaoh’s son takes the throne and enslaves Israel, forcing them to build the store-cities Pithom and Rameses. During this time, the Israelite Moses is raised in the pharaoh’s court. Moses rebels against the system of slavery, but when the pharaoh decides to kill Moses, he is forced to flee to a land outside of the pharaoh’s rule (Midian). After this pharaoh’s son takes the throne, Moses returns and speaks to the new pharaoh, bringing Israel’s elders. They request permission to travel into the wilderness for three days to worship Yhwh. The pharaoh refuses. The pharaoh’s advisors even suggest that he free the Israelites, but he still refuses. With Yhwh backing him, Moses leads the Israelites east, then around the Dead Sea, crossing the Jordan River into Canaan just north of the Dead Sea. This long route is entirely justified as avoiding the land of the Philistines along the western coast, even though the exodus takes place three centuries before the Philistines lived in the region.
Compare the outline of the exodus story with Jeroboam I’s emergence on the political scene. At the beginning of the Book of Kings, Israel (the northern tribes, as opposed to the southern tribes) reside in a territory that is, politically speaking, ruled by a foreign power: David of the tribe of Judah. David’s son Solomon takes the throne and enslaves Israel (1 Kings 4.6; 5.13–16), forcing them to build store-cities (9.19). During this time, the Israelite Jeroboam serves in Solomon’s court (11.26). Jeroboam rebels against the system of slavery (11.26–39), but when Solomon decides to kill Jeroboam, he is forced to flee to a land outside of Solomon’s rule (Egypt). After Solomon’s son Rehoboam takes the throne, Jeroboam returns and speaks to Rehoboam, bringing Israel’s elders. They request the king to end their slavery in exchange for their loyalty (12.1–4). Rehoboam waits three days, then refuses (12.5, 9–15). Rehoboam’s advisers even suggests that he free the Israelites, but he still refuses (12.6–8). With Yhwh backing him (11.29–39), Jeroboam establishes the northern kingdom, with its southern border just north of the Dead Sea (12.16–19).
In the exodus, the Israelites don’t just avoid the land of the Philistines. They also avoid the part of Canaan that would become the kingdom of Judah.
Exodus
Jeroboam
Israel lives in the pharaoh’s territory.
Israel lives in David’s territory.
The pharaoh’s son succeeds him, enslaves Israel to build the store-cities Pi-Atum and Pi-Rameses.
David’s son Solomon succeeds him, enslaves Israel to build store-cities, Yhwh’s temple, and Solomon’s palace.
Israel’s slavery compels Moses to rebel. He flees to Midian when the pharoah wants to kill him.
Israel’s slavery compels Jeroboam to rebel. He flees to Egypt when Solomon wants to kill him.
The pharaoh dies, his son takes the throne, and Moses returns with Yhwh backing him.
Solomon dies, his son Rehoboam takes the throne, and Jeroboam returns with Yhwh backing him.
The pharaoh refuses to free Israel from slavery, against the advice of his officials. Yhwh violently frees Israel, and they escape to the north.
Rehoboam refuses to free Israel from slavery, against the advice of his officials. Israel violently frees itself, and they make a new kingdom to the north.
Aside from the broad strokes of the two stories’ outlines as described above, smaller details may provide further support for this reading. Solomon actually marries a daughter of the pharaoh (1 Kings 3.1).
Conclusion
In this light, Jeroboam I building altars and sanctuaries in his new kingdom would not be an unexpected action. Rather, he would be appropriately fulfilling his civil duties by funding the construction of sites for religious expression, now that Jerusalem’s temple was no longer a viable option for his population to make pilgrimages to. The notion that his action was a grievous sin against Yhwh would not come until centuries later. But that is getting ahead of ourselves. We have many layers of information above, so let’s lay them out in an orderly fashion that helps us bring structure to some potentially contradictory theories. The following is theoretical, and somewhat reductive in its historical complexity; it should be taken as a possible reconstruction of events, not confirmed fact.
- In the early tenth century BCE, the kings of Jerusalem enslaved a large portion of the Israelite people and forced them to build public works in the capital city, including a temple for Yhwh and the royal palace. In the late tenth century BCE the slaves revolted, and carved out territory in the north to establish their own kingdom. The Israelites appointed Jeroboam son of Nebat, a leading figure in the revolt, as their king.
- Israel’s enslavement and eventual escape from Judean rule was reshaped into a historicized allegory as escape from Egyptian rule instead, situated hundreds of years earlier in the time of an anonymous pharaoh.
- In the first half of the eighth century BCE, Jeroboam son of Jehoash expanded the kingdom of Israel. This included the construction of new worship sites — most likely for Yhwh, but possibly for El or Baʿal — and may have included idols of bulls, representing the deity (particularly his strength), or his throne or mount. Locations ostensibly included Bethel and Dan, near the borders of Israelite territory.
- Two competing foundation myths for Israel, that of a patriarch named Jacob and that of an escape from slavery in Egypt, were in circulation by the time of Jeroboam II. The Jacob legend, which connected the patriarch to Bethel, was used to validate the sanctuary Jeroboam II built in that town, an effort ridiculed by the prophets Hosea and Amos. After some time, Jeroboam II’s acts were attributed to his namesake, the first king of Israel, to bolster the kingdom’s founding.
- After the kingdom of Israel was conquered by Assyria in 722 BCE, some of the population fled south into Judah, bringing their traditions with them. These traditions were not fixed, and scribes freely changed details for their own needs.
- In the late seventh century BCE, with the support of the religious elite, the Judean king Josiah introduced major religious reforms to his country.
50 The population was to worship Yhwh alone, holy festivals were restricted to his temple in Jerusalem, and he was not to be depicted by any idols or icons. Shrines, temples, and altars outside the Jerusalem establishment were to be destroyed. As scribes carried out the arduous process of sorting through Israelite and Judean folklore, writing and rewriting these traditions,51 they redacted Jeroboam I’s founding of Israel to reflect this new iconoclasm: by building shrines outside of Jerusalem, and by making golden calves, the kingdom of Israel began its existence in sin and was doomed. - The Judean revision of history was taking shape as an epic, nine-book narrative spanning from the creation of the universe up to (eventually) the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 587 BCE. The most important event in the timeline is the exodus, which occupies four of the nine books. Amid this historical revisionism were rival priesthoods, the two most influential being the Zadokite and Aaronide clans. The Zadokites, identified as controlling the Jerusalem religious establishment from the time of David onward, sought to delegitimize the Aaronide legacy by smearing their eponymous ancestor. They did this by once more rewriting the story of Jeroboam’s golden calves as an idolatrous act first carried out by Aaron himself right after Israel’s escape from Egypt, bringing Exo 32 into the exodus tradition fairly late.
52 - However, by the end of the Babylonian exile in the second half of the sixth century BCE, the shape of biblical narrative was finally settling into something familiar to us, and the boundaries between the Zadokites and Aaronides priesthoods were blurring. By the early fifth century, Judean literature was identifying Zadok as a descendant of Aaron: the Zadokites were Aaronides.
53
In short, both stories of the golden calves are anachronistic. Digging into one uncovers information about the other, which snowballs into a survey about Israel’s historical origins on a larger scale. While this reconstruction, in some places, relies on some educated guesswork, it is largely consistent with the evidence available to us.
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