Golden Calf Traditions in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam Themes in Biblical Narrative Jewish and Christian Traditions
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Golden Calf Traditions in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam Themes in Biblical Narrative Jewish and Christian Traditions Editorial Board Jacques T.A.G.M. van Ruiten Robert A. Kugler Loren T. Stuckenbruck Advisory Board Reinhard Feldmeier George H. van Kooten Judith Lieu Hindy Najman Martti Nissinen J. Ross Wagner Robyn Whitaker volume 23 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/tbn Golden Calf Traditions in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam Edited by Eric F. Mason Edmondo F. Lupieri LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: The Golden Calf, capital in the nave, Abbey Church of Mary Magdalene, Vézelay, France, 12th century. Credit: Vassil, public domain. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Mason, Eric Farrel, editor. Title: Golden calf traditions in early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam / edited by Eric F. Mason, Edmondo F. Lupieri. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2018. | Series: Themes in biblical narrative: Jewish and Christian traditions, ISSN 1388-3909 ; volume 23 Identifiers: LCCN 2018039955 (print) | LCCN 2018044461 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004386860 (E-book) | ISBN 9789004386754 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Golden calf (Bible) | Bible. Old Testament—Criticism, interpretation, etc. | Judaism—Doctrines. | Theology, Doctrinal. | Islam—Doctrines. Classification: LCC BS1199.I34 (ebook) | LCC BS1199.I34 G65 2018 (print) | DDC 221.6/4—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018039955 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1388-3909 ISBN 978-90-04-38675-4 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-38686-0 (e-book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Contents Preface and Acknowledgments vii Abbreviations xi Notes on Contributors xx 1 The Calf Episodes in Exodus and Deuteronomy: A Study in Inner-Biblical Interpretation 1 Robert A. Di Vito 2 The “Sin” of Jeroboam 26 Ralph W. Klein 3 Do the Books of Hosea and Jeremiah Know of a Sinai/Horeb Golden Calf Story? 36 Pauline A. Viviano 4 The Golden Calf in the Historical Recitals of Nehemiah 9 and Psalm 106 49 Richard J. Bautch 5 Did the Sheep Worship the Golden Calf? The Animal Apocalypse’s Reading of Exodus 32 59 Daniel Assefa and Kelley Coblentz Bautch 6 Philo of Alexandria’s Interpretations of the Episode of the Golden Calf 73 Thomas H. Tobin, S.J. 7 When Silence Is Golden: The Omission of the Golden Calf Story in Josephus 87 Gregory E. Sterling 8 Leaders without Blemish: Pseudo-Philo’s Retelling of the Biblical Golden Calf Story 97 John C. Endres, S.J. with the assistance of Peter Claver Ajer vi Contents 9 Paul and the Calf: Texts, Tendencies, and Traditions 110 Alec J. Lucas 10 “They Made a Calf”: Idolatry and Temple in Acts 7 132 Joel B. Green 11 Traces of the Golden Calf in the Epistle to the Hebrews 142 Eric F. Mason 12 A Beast and a Woman in the Desert, or the Sin of Israel: A Typological Reflection 157 Edmondo Lupieri 13 “A Good Argument to Penitents”: Sin and Forgiveness in Midrashic Interpretations of the Golden Calf 176 Devorah Schoenfeld 14 Anti-Judaism and Pedagogy: Greek and Latin Patristic Interpretations of the Calf Incident 194 Wesley Dingman 15 Justin Martyr and the Golden Calf: Ethnic Argumentation in the New Israel 227 Andrew Radde-Gallwitz 16 The Incident of the Golden Calf in Pre-Islamic Syriac Authors 238 Andrew J. Hayes 17 “A Calf, a Body that Lows”: The Golden Calf from Late Antiquity to Classical Islam 264 Michael E. Pregill Index of Ancient Sources 297 Index of Modern Authors 322 Index of Places 327 Preface and Acknowledgments On November 14–16, 2012, we (with Alec J. Lucas) convened an international conference at Loyola University Chicago titled “The Reception of Golden Calf Traditions in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” Fourteen papers were pre- sented on that occasion, covering centuries of reflection on the controversial “sin of the golden calf” as interpreted in various ways in the Scriptures and other important texts of the three Abrahamic religions. Those papers consti- tuted the first drafts of most of the chapters in the present book.1 After the conference we invited three additional scholars to contribute to the volume in order to offer a more complete overview of the religious and cultural impact the golden calf narrative had in the three religious traditions, from their origins through the end of Late Antiquity. This book is the final result of that common endeavor. The idea for the conference and subsequent volume emerged from con- versations at Loyola University Chicago in the Spring 2010 semester. Eric F. Mason was a visiting scholar on sabbatical leave from his institution and was familiar with the dissertation work of Lucas, then a Ph.D. candidate in Loyola’s Department of Theology.2 Golden calf traditions in several texts were central to Lucas’s research. He and Mason began to consider the possibilities for a con- ference exploring the ancient reception of the calf traditions more broadly; they sketched out initial plans for the texts to be examined and the speakers to invite, with the goal of publication in the Themes in Biblical Narrative se- ries from the outset. At this point they engaged Edmondo F. Lupieri, the John Cardinal Cody Endowed Chair in Theology at Loyola; together they brought further clarification to the plans for the conference, and Lupieri administered the financial arrangements that made the conference possible. The event was scheduled over two years in advance so it could coincide with the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Chicago and to accommodate Lucas’s time away in Heidelberg on a Fulbright fellowship. Though Lucas was unable to continue as an editor for this volume due to his subsequent employ- ment outside the academic field, his vital and prolific contributions to the project have been very much appreciated by his colleagues. 1 Clare K. Rothschild’s presentation has been published elsewhere and is not included here. See “Golden Calf Incident in 1 Clement” in her collection titled New Essays on the Apostolic Fathers (WUNT 375; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 81–96. 2 The dissertation was later published as Alec J. Lucas, Evocations of the Calf? Romans 1:18–2:11 and the Substructure of Psalm 106(105) (BZNW 201; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015). viii Preface and acknowledgments The organizers sought from the beginning to include contributing scholars both from the region and beyond. Naturally Loyola was very well represented, but scholars from several other Chicago-area institutions also participated, both as speakers and dialogue partners. In particular, members of the Chicago Society of Biblical Research were actively engaged in all aspects of the meet- ing. Other program participants were from various regions in the United States, and one came from Ethiopia. Several Italian scholars attended; unfortunately, a scheduled speaker from Europe had to withdraw from the conference shortly before it opened. In addition, the conference was planned alongside the seventh annual John Cardinal Cody Lecture, offered by John J. Collins of Yale Divinity School on the topic “What Have We Learned from the Dead Sea Scrolls?”3 The present volume comprises seventeen contributions, which we have ar- ranged following a roughly chronological order according to their contents. The golden calf narrative depicts Israel’s idolatry during the exodus saga and was considered by some ancient writers to be the worst of their sins in the his- tory of their relationship with God. Their own uses of the tradition are diversi- fied and sometimes controversial. Accordingly, the seventeen contributions in this volume reflect that diversity, both in terms of methodology and content. The first chapters discuss the earliest biblical attestations of the legend and their intra-biblical connections. Then we follow subsequent paths of analysis in Jewish, Christian, and qur’anic and Islamic texts and traditions. The ancient interpreters sometimes handle the calf narrative explicitly, sometimes use it implicitly as a conceptual and literary model for a new and different narra- tive, or sometimes avoid it in contexts where it would have been logical and expected to be utilized. In this way we have not only analyzed the calf tradi- tion’s explicit Fortleben, but also its allusions and echoes, and even the silence of some apologetic texts. The five opening chapters deal with explicit or potential golden calf im- agery in Jewish canonical and extracanonical texts. In the first chapter, Robert A. Di Vito argues that Exod 32 and Deut 9:7–10:11 are intertexts, products of inner-biblical interpretation. The second contribution, by Ralph W. Klein, analyzes the so-called “sin” of Jeroboam and concludes that his calves may very well represent an earlier tradition that linked Aaron in a positive way to the golden calf incident. Pauline A. Viviano concludes that the books of Hosea and Jeremiah show no awareness of the Sinai/Horeb calf story, but the golden calves of Jeroboam are alluded to in Hosea.