Chris Weimer

Also, Friedman lists Exodus 32-33 wholly E. I don't know what that means, particularly, or why E was in constant use of YHWH, but that is what he says...

Loomis

Yawn

Loomis

Hey Dharma,

It looks to me like the author of Exodus 27 – 29 is sacrificing the bull in order to put an end to El worship. After all, what better way to kill off El (and the old religion) than to kill a bull?

I doubt if you would ever find an El-worshipper slaughtering a bull. Bulls were sacred. It would be humiliating.

Are you familiar with the pottery shard of Kuntillet`Ajrud?

http://www.bibleorigins.net/Kuntille...ehAsherah.html

It’s an old piece of pottery with some interesting things painted on it. It portrays Yahweh as a bull!

But wait! That’s nothing! There’s more! It says Yahweh had a girlfriend (a cow) named Asherah.

This bull shit and Asherah shit is borrowed from El-worship.

El was a bull. El had a girlfriend named Asherah.

Some Yahwists took El stories and recast the lead character as Yahweh. Other Yahwists objected.

I think the author of Exodus 32 is dissing the artist who painted the pot. He objected because the artist was combining Yahweh and El, and this pissed him off.

Am I making any sense?

Anat

The claim was that in Exodus 3 God revealed his identity as 'I am that I am' to Moses, and from there on E also uses the name YHWH.

John Kesler

The similarity in language of Exodus 32:8 and 1 Kings 12:28 leads to the conclusion that the two "golden calf" episodes are related.

The question is why the Exodus account uses the plural "gods" even though only one "calf" is created. I think the paraphrase of the Exodus 32 account, found in Nehemiah 9:18, may provide the answer.

Notice that the speaker, presumably Ezra, claims that the people used the singular, "God," rather than the plural "gods." In my opinion what has happened here is that the Exodus account probably originally employed the singular, "God," which would be consistent with the fact that only one "calf" was produced, and the paraphrase in Nehemiah retains the original meaning. A later author (perhaps the author of 1 Kings), in a polemic against the "calves" that Jeroboam set up at Dan and Bethel, and taking advantage of the fact that "elohim" can take plural or singular verbs, changed the Exodus 32 account so that it, too, speaks of "gods." In other words, Exodus 32 was written, or at least revised, through the lens of 1 Kings 12.

Loomis

That makes sense. But why are you pointing the finger at someone like, “the author of 1 Kings,� and not simply to the guy who did the translation from Hebrew to English?

What specific Hebrew words in Exodus 32 required a change?

I’m no expert in Hebrew, but it looks ambiguous to me. What part of the current Hebrew text prevents us from making English translations like this:

or …
Do you understand my question?

John Kesler

I said perhaps the author of 1 Kings. It may have been "the guy who did the translation from Hebrew to English," a "redactor" of Exodus, etc. For what it's worth, Richard Elliott Friedman considers "E" the author of all of Exodus 32.

The New Jerome Bible Commentary, page 59, commenting on Exodus 32 says this:
I think I did; tell me if I didn't.

Loomis

Thanks John.

You are describing a three-step process.

1) A verse in Exodus 32 gets written in Hebrew.

2) Someone comes along and tweaks it in Hebrew.

2) Someone translates the Hebrew into English.

I don’t know much about Hebrew. Why is step #2 necessary? Maybe the confusion surrounding god vs. gods was introduced by the guy who did the translation.

Case in point: Look at the comments over at NET Bible®

Check out footnote 14 regarding elohim at Exodus 32:4:

The commentator makes it clear that the decision to use these are your gods over this is your god is a decision based on superstition, and not on anything substantive that we know about the Hebrew language.

I think you made a good point about Nehemiah 9:18 being singular. The commentator at NET Bible® is lacking important information.

This should come as no surprise.

John Kesler

Step #2 (I assume that you mean the first step#2 ) may not be necessary, but I would assume that scholars like Richard J. Clifford (who wrote the Exodus commentary for TNJBC), Richard Elliott Friedman, etc. would consult the Hebrew rather than relying on someone else's English translation.

Wallener

That is the translation in JPS, Buber and Fox. My current favored theory is that the young bull is the Canaanite fertility god and the incident is a casting-backward of the Jeroboam-Solomonic splitting of the kingdom.