Tag Archives: idol

Golden Calf

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Medieval manuscript depiction of Moses seeing the Hebrews worshipping the golden calf.



Aaron made a golden calf for the Hebrews to worship when Moses disappeared for six weeks high atop Mt. Sinai. What was he thinking?!

Aaron probably did not think of the golden calf as an “idol,” per se. Often, the image of a calf or bull was thought to be the throne of a god; the god was seated in the empty space between the horns of the animal. When God gave directions for making the ark of the covenant, he promised that his glory would dwell atop the ark, between the two cherubim at each end of the ark’s lid; this was a very similar idea to what Aaron probably thought he was doing. He was making a throne for God, whom his brother Moses had gone up the mountain to meet.

Why a calf rather than a bull? A calf—a young cow—might have reminded Aaron of Hathor, the goddess of Egypt who was a maternal figure, nurturing and sustaining the people. She fed the people, much as God fed the Hebrews with quail and manna. She helped people cross from life to death, not so unlike the Lord delivering the Hebrews through the Red Sea. (Hathor was the great Mother before Isis was.) She was also associated with the land of Canaan—exactly the place the Hebrews hoped to journey to through the wilderness. Maybe Aaron thought that Hathor’s cow horns would be an appropriate throne for the God of Israel.

This might explain what Aaron did but does it excuse what he did? Although he made the calf, he was not subjected to the consequences and punishment for worshiping the calf—he was not forced to drink the gold dust water and he was not killed by the Levites when Moses came back to the Hebrew camp. So Moses might have understood Aaron’s motivation although disagreeing with his brother’s behavior.

How do we make a golden calf for ourselves? How do our motives seem reasonable though our actions are not? How do we accidentally make idols for ourselves or others? Anytime we let something—even a good thing, such as providing for our families—become the most important thing in our lives, we have constructed an idol. We make a throne for God in our hearts but then the throne itself is mistaken for the One who is enthroned.

Read more about the golden calf here and here.

Commandments #1-3

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A contemporary icon showing the prophet and God-seer Moses at the Burning Bush and receiving the Ten Commandments, both of which happened at Mt. Sinai.


Moses goes up into the smoke and fire and receives the Ten Commandments from God on Mt. Sinai. He has set a human barricade around the base of the mountain to insure that no “tourists” or sightseeing thrill seekers climb up the rocky heights behind him, hoping to see and hear what is intended only for Moses to see and hear. Even his brother Aaron, who goes partway up the mountain with his brother Moses, turns around and goes back to the bottom before Moses reaches his destination.

The first three or four commandments are commonly considered to describe our duty towards God; the following commandments are commonly thought to reveal our duty to our neighbors. It is these Ten altogether that the Early Church thought were eternal; the other commandments of the Old Testament—according to the Apostolic Constitutions, a 4th century Syrian handbook for how to run a parish church—says that the other Old Testament commandments were all given after the idolatry of the Golden Calf and all have to do with regulating the worship of Israel (how to worship, who can worship, what is worshipped, behavior that can get a person banned from participating in worship).

The most famous and controversial of these first three commandments is the commandment condemning idolatry. Most people think idolatry means worshipping statues but idolatry is really about letting anything be more important than God. Family, ideas, food, sex, drugs (alcohol included) can become idols if any of them are more important to us than God.

People often also think idolatry means worshipping devils and demons. St. Paul doesn’t think idolatry is about worshipping demons; he thinks idolatry is a waste of time because the “god” the statue represents doesn’t exist. According to St. Paul in First Corinthians, idolatry is the worship of a thing that isn’t real whereas worship of the true God is worshipping what really exists. That’s why he thinks it’s safe for a Christian to eat meat that was sacrificed to an idol; the meat wasn’t sacrificed to a devil but it was offered to something that doesn’t exist so it wasn’t really offered to anyone or anything.

That doesn’t mean that devils and demons don’t exist. The NYTimes had a fascinating article this weekend about the differences in religious power wielded by a Christianity that takes demonic power seriously vs. a Christianity that does not take demonic power seriously.

Food Offered to Idols

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What is most frequently offered in religious rituals? Food! Religious food practices shape communities–what people do or do not offer to the gods and do or do not eat together identifies who we are as societies. What the Hebrews and the Egyptians ate before the Exodus helped distinguish the two communities. Read about food in ancient Egypt here.


So, concerning food that is offered to idols. We know that in the world an idol is nothing and there is no God but one…. But food will not put us in the presence of God. We are not inferior if we do not eat nor are we superior if we do eat. (1 Cor. 8:4, 8)

The parish in Corinth was torn apart by several disputes, one of which involved what was or was not legitimate to eat. It was meat that had been sacrificed to idols was the problem. The obvious question is, “Then why not just go buy meat from the kosher butcher?” No problem with idols then. Problem solved.

There was a large Jewish community in Corinth with plenty of kosher butchers. I could spend 20 minutes–or several hundred words–talking or writing about how the animosity between the Jewish and the Christian communities was ready to boil over at the least provocation. Christian patronage of kosher butchers was simply not possible. Tensions between the two communities were just too high.

The Christian neighbors that needed to experience God’s peace and harmony in Corinth were more than just two theological factions or two groups that wouldn’t eat together or speak to each other at coffee hour. The labels of “weak” and “strong” throughout the epistles are code words for ethnic identity and social status. The weak were the Jewish believers, the socially disadvantaged, those on the periphery of the culture, the people who could be expelled from town because the powers-that-be don’t want to be bothered with them—just as the Jews had been expelled from Rome several times already. (Many of the Jews in Corinth being, in fact, refugees who had settled there after the most recent expulsion from the great capital, only a few years before St. Paul came preaching there.)

The strong were the Gentile believers, the socially powerful and important, the people who would probably think that it might actually be a good idea to expel the “weak” from town if they got too troublesome or demanding.

St. Paul declared that he would give up meat forever—that he would fast as the Prophet Daniel had fasted in Babylon because there was no kosher meat available—to maintain the harmony of the Christian community. St. Paul said that anyone who joined him in that fast, joined him in maintaining that harmony would also be maintaining the harmony not only of the community but the harmony of their personal relationship with God. The fast established and maintained the love and reconciliation between members of the congregation. The fast—like the holy kiss—was an expression of love for both God and neighbor.