CALF, THE GOLDEN, an object of worship which appears in two (apparently) different connections in the Old Testament : (a) the molten image whose making by Aaron in the absence of Moses is described in Ex. xxxii.; (b) an idol set up by Jero boam I. at Bethel and at Dan, on the secession of the northern tribes from the kingdom of the house of David.
The calf- (or rather, bull-) cult of northern Israel is condemned by Hosea, and was regarded as an act of apostasy by the com pilers of the Books of Kings, probably under the influence of Deuteronomy. At the same time no objection seems to have been raised till the latter half of the 8th century.
Bull worship was common both in Egypt and Palestine, and it has been conjectured that the narrative in Ex. xxxii. records an attempt to revive an older cult which the Israelites had known in Egypt. More probably, however, the narrative is a modified form of an ancient story told at Bethel, and possibly, also at Dan, to explain the cult—in other words the hagios logos of the shrine. If this be so, then the original probably made Moses himself, not Aaron, the originator of the cult, and explained that this was the divinely communicated form under which Yahweh wished to be worshipped. A later generation, convinced of the iniquity of any material representation of Yahweh, turned this into an act of apostasy and fathered it on Aaron, who elsewhere has hardly an independent character (see AARON). We may conjecture that the bull-cult itself was a native Canaanite form of Baal-religion, adopted by Israel with the change of the name of the deity revered.
See HEBREW RELIGION ; W. R. Smith, Prophets of Israel, pp. 175 seq.; Hastings' Dict. Bib. i. 342 ; and T. H. Robinson on The Golden Calf, Expositor, 8th series, vol. xxiv. pp. 121 seq. (T. H. R.)