MOSCHOLATRY, or CALF–WORSHIP. Prominent among the characteristic sins of the Jewish people stands moscholatry ;' in spite of the divine prohibition in the moral law, a sensuous representation of deity was constantly resorted to from the very beginning of the nation to the time of the captivity. Various forms of this idolatrous tendency appear in the sacred history. In the ephod of Gideon (Judg. viii. 27), and in the images and teraphim of the Ephraimite Micah (Judg. xvii. 5), we have what may be called the domestic in stances ; while in the golden calf of Aaron and the calves of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, occur the public and state form of the image-worship. In this article we have only to do with the latter instances. In the moscholatry both of Aaron and of Jeroboam, a connecting link with Egypt is afforded us in the sacred narrative ; in the case of Aaron we have not only the general fact of Egypt having been the birthplace of the sinning people, but the clear comment of Ezekiel, in xx. 6-to, on their conduct ; while in the case of Jeroboam we have the fact that it was after a long residence in Egypt, in the court of Shishak, that he devised the worship we have here to consider (1 Kings xi. 40; xii. 2). In the Egyptian worship of APIS, there fore, most writers, with a remarkable unanimity, have found the original hint which suggested the Jewish calf-worship ; the same unanimity, how ever, has not attended their speculations on the purport and extent of this tu/tus. Before we notice these speculations, it will be convenient to adduce a few ancient statements relative to the Egyptian calf-deity.' Herodotus (iii. 2S) says, Apis or Epaphus is the calf of a cow which is never afterwards able to bear young. The Egypt ians say that fire comes down from heaven upon the cow, which thereupon conceives Apis.' Ac cording to Plutarch (de Is. xx. 29), this calf Apis was supposed to be the shrine of the soul of the greatest of the Egyptian deities, Osiris, and the symbol of that god (Warburton, iv. 4; Rawlin son's Herod , vol. ii. p. 423) ; and with this well agrees the language of Herodotus in ii. 65, who says, The inhabitants of the various cities, when they have made a vow to any god, pay it to his animals,' etc., eaXALCEPOL Ty OECP TOO av rP 977plov. Two views of opposite character are advanced as to the origin of this cuthts ; according to one, the worship of Apis was at first nothing but the simple worship of the calf; mere fetichism (Smith's Diet. of Mythology, art. Avis); but Hero dotus (ii. 4) expressly states that the Egyptians (from whom the Greeks adopted the names of the twelve great gods) first erected altars, images, and temples to the gods, and also first engraved upon stone the figures of animals ;' we gather from this, that not the adoration of the living animal, but of its picture or image, was the form of the primitive brute-worship of Egypt. This symbolical charac ter seems to explain the language of the second commandment, Thou shalt not make unto thee . . . any likeness of anything in heaven above, etc., nor bow down to it, nor serve it.' And this brings us in contact with Aaron's golden calf at once. The fickle and impatient Israelites re quested, in the protracted absence of their law giver, that his brother would make them gods to go before them' (Exod. xxxii. 1), probably back again to Egypt' (Acts vii. 39, 4o). Aaron gratified their impious desire by an expedient suggested by the superstition of Egypt, which was capable of, and no doubt actually received, a twofold interpre tation. In his elaborate treatise (Aaron purgatus, sive de Vitulo aureo), Moncus labours to show that Aaron intended his calf to be a cherubic represen tation of Jehovah, and not an Egyptian deity. This writer seems to us to have succeeded very well in establishing the probability that such was Aaron's intention ; after the fabrication of the image he proclaimed a dedication festival for the next day in the remarkable words, To-morrow is a feast to the LORD' (Exod. xxxii. 5) ; but even on this milder view the sin was in direct violation of the moral law, and excited God's anger (Dent. ix. 20). But whatever be the extenuation which this theory may gain for Aaron, it does not reach (as it appears to us) to the people. The fatal com pliance of their leader only encouraged them in the indulgence of their tendency to the grossest ido latry ; the dedication festival itself was turned by them into a heathen revel—' The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play,' giving them selves fully up to the most indecent ritual of pagan worship (comp. Exod. xxxii., ver. 6 with ver. 25). In the later allusions to this sad event the sacred writers treat the calf as nothing but an idol—' They made a calf in Horeb, and worshipped the molten image ; thus they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass' (Ps. cvi. 19, 20). So the prophet Amos (v. 25, 26) reproves not only this transaction, but the entire conduct of the Israelites during their abode in the wilderness, as an unmitigated apostasy from Jehovah to hea thenism—' Did ye offer unto me sacrifices and offerings for forty years, 0 house of Israel? Ye bare about the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chinn your images, the star of your god which ye made to yourselves ;' as if the primeval sin which they had copied from Egypt only led, when time and contact with other nations enabled them, to their similar adoption of the Moabite and Syrian gods also. The Jewish writers exhibit much anxiety to exculpate the brother of Moses ; some (as the Jerusalem Targumist) pretend that Aaron yielded through fear to the frenzied crowd who had slain his colleague Hur for resisting their insane request. But Aben Ezra rejects with disdain a theory which, while rescuing Aaron from one im putation, overwhelms him with a worse. He takes somewhat the view which we have advanced, that the golden calf was not at the first designed to be an idol, but a symbol of Jehovah ; that afterwards it was the people who abused it as an object of idolatrous adoration. Aben Ezra (see Cohen,
Pentateuque, ii. 147, I48) sees in this view a recon ciliation of some difficulties, and justly, as it seems to us. Identical in drift and character was the moscholatry of Jeroboam the son of Nebat. The avowed purpose of his calves at Dan and Bethel was to provide his new subjects with a substitute of divine worship which should supersede their attendance at the temple-service at Jerusalem (1 Kings xii. 26-29). Moncaeus designates these images, no less than Aaron's, as cherubic symbols of Jehovah. Whatever may be thought of some of his arguments,* we have the patent fact that Holy Scripture recognizes a distinction between this image-worship of Jeroboam and the idolatry of Ahab. The Baal coitus of the latter was a rejec tion of Jehovah, whereas the ritual of Jeroboam expressly, like Aaron's, acknowledged the God which had brought Israel out of Egypt' (comp. Exod. xxxii. 4, and I Kings xii. 28, with Lev. xxii. 32, 33), and provided a feast like unto the feast t that is in Judah,' with other institutions resembling those of the temple (I Kings xii. 32, 33). By and by, when Jehu had executed the judgment of God upon the family of the apostate Ahab, the divine approbation is expressed in terms which indicate the distinction,:t which we have stated (see 2 Kings x. 28-31). In the history of Ahab himself; the sacred historian had plainly indicated the distinc tion in r Kings xvi. 31-33 ; but the most expres sive passage is 2 Kings iii. 2, 3, where, concerning Ahab's son Jehoram, it is said, that he wrought evil in the sight of the LORD, but not like his father, and like his mother, for he put away the image of Baal . . . Yet he clave unto the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which made Israel to sin.' But this theory of palliation effects but little after all. Moncmus calls his work Aaron purgatus ; and he includes the calves of Jeroboam with Aaron's under cover of his extenuation ; but would he add, jeroboam purgatus? We suppose not. It is, in fact, a dangerous exegesis which draws distinctions or degrees in a question of sin and moral guilt. It is observable how the least flagrant, no less than the most violent, of these cases of image-worship, led to idolatry and apostasy. Not only did Aaron's calf lead on to Moloch and Chiun, and Jeroboam's to Baal and Ashtaroth, but even Gideon's domes tic and apparently harmless ephod soon degener ated into the gross formulary of Baal-berith (Judg. viii. 27 comp. with 33). A great deal of discussion has been indulged in as to how Moses destroyed the golden calf ; both from the narrative in Exod. xxxii. 20, and his own statement in Dent. ix. 21, it seems that he adopted much ceremony to mark his indignation at the sin of his brother and the people. He took the calf; melted it in the fire to destroy its shape ; then ground, or beat, or filed the gold into small pieces or dust, and threw the latter into the water of the stream which flowed from Horeb. This,' says Kalisch (on Exod. xxxiv. 15, 24), is the only possible explanation which the literal sense of the text admits ; 91I:1 is not necessarily to consume by fire, but only to burn, to put into the flames . . . the words pp and pi do not compel us to suppose the pieces to have been exactly so fine as powder ; and as the act of drinking the water was a symbolical one, it would be pedantic to urge that the atoms which are thus produced are not small enough to amalga mate with the water. It is therefore neither neces sary to recur, with Rosenmiiller, to the conjecture, that the calf was by a certain chemical process, known already to the ancient Egyptians, reduced to powder, or calcined; nor to suppose here with Winer, 'the incorrect view, or at least the incorrect expressions of a writer not versed in the matter.' Moses threw the atoms into the water, as an em blem of the perfect annihilation of the calf, and he gave the Israelites that water to drink, not only to impress on them the abomination and despicable character of the image which they had made, but as a symbol of purification, to remove the object of the transgression by those very persons who had committed it (compare Num. xix.) ' Not less deci sive, though more tardy, was the fate of Jeroboam's moscholatry. However astutely designed by its founder, it carried the seeds of its own dissolution from the very first : In 2 Kings xvii. 22, 23, the fall of the kingdom is expressly attributed to the gods of Jeroboam,* and the prophet Hosea had denounced ruin on them, and captivity on the nation of their votaries : Thy calf; 0 Samaria, bath cast thee off—the calf of Samaria shall be broken in pieces—it shall be also carried into Assyria for a present to king Jareb (Yr, the strife ful or hostile king) ; Ephraim shall receive shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of his own counsel' (viii. 5, 6 ; x. 6; comp. Selden, De Diis Syris Syn tag. i. 4 • Works, by Wilkins, ii. 300).* The memory of this sin, especially of Aaron's share in its origin, is retained sadly and bitterly by thought ful Jews ; a proverb of theirs attests somewhat strangely this sentiment, novilD i+N )1)1 wpn, nz NW", i. e., No punish ment happeneth to thee, 0 Israel, wherein there is not an ounce of the sin of the calf' (Moses Gerund. cited by Munster on Exact: xxxii.) But the Mohammedans, no less than the Jews, labour hard to explain away, or at least extenuate, the odium of this idolatry. In the Koran there are many express references to Aaron's calf ; the two chief are—Sum, vii, 146-148 ; and Sura, xx. Ss-g6. See Maracci, Alcoranus, vol. ii., pp. 281, 445.
The word is the common designation of this image (Exod. xxxii.), which in the LXX. is rendered generally by /.46crxos, sometimes by ,uoa xdpcov, polbov or SciyaXtr. In Ps. ciii. 20, the word used is bos vel vitsdus. Beyer on Sel den.—P. H.