gold cows

[menageriekeeper]

Seems like there was more than one 'golden calf' set up as idols in OT Isreal.

Aaron set one up while Moses was on Mount Sinai and then Jeroboam set 2 up in Isreal (I Kings 12: 28) and those continued for some years it appears because they are spoken of again in II Kings 10:29.

What was the significance of cows to the Isrealites that this would be something they would think to worship?

 

[webdog]

One symbolism I can guess at is the fact the Israelites were promised the land flowing with "milk and honey". Cows are the source of milk, and honey is gold.

I have no idea if this was the intention or not, however :laugh:

 

[mcdirector]

I also wondered about the source of the Hindu cow worship when I read this - does it have a basis in Hebrew scripture? I'd never wondered about it before.

 

[tinytim]

Seems like there was more than one 'golden calf' set up as idols in OT Isreal.

Aaron set one up while Moses was on Mount Sinai and then Jeroboam set 2 up in Isreal (I Kings 12: 28) and those continued for some years it appears because they are spoken of again in II Kings 10:29.

What was the significance of cows to the Isrealites that this would be something they would think to worship?

I believe I remember that the golden cow was a deity in Egypt...
They wanted to go back to Egypt, remember...

Then of course, this tradition would have been perpetuated through the generations...

If i have time, I will find this infomation... unless someone else can.

 

[tinytim]

Here is one reference after doing a yahoo search...
Early BeliefsProbably the oldest form of religious worship in Egypt was animal worship. Early predynastic tribes venerated their own particular gods, who were usually embodied in a particular animal. Sometimes a whole species of animal was sacred, as cats at Bubastis; at other times only individual animals of certain types were worshiped, as the Apis bull at Memphis. As Egyptian civilization advanced, deities were gradually humanized. Many were represented with human bodies (although they retained animal heads) and other human characteristics and attributes. The wolf Ophois became a god of war, and the ibis Thoth became a patron of learning and the arts.
http://www.bartleby.com/65/eg/Egyptn-rel.html

If I remember right, the cow was considered a fertility Goddess, and that was part of the fertility rituals that Moses observed as he came off the mountain that made him angry...

But it has been yrs since I studied this...

 

[Magnetic Poles]

 

[tinytim]

This is from the commentary of Jameson, Faucett, Brown....
Exo 32:4 - fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf--The words are transposed, and the rendering should be, "he framed with a graving tool the image to be made, and having poured the liquid gold into the mould, he made it a molten calf." It is not said whether it was of life size, whether it was of solid gold or merely a wooden frame covered with plates of gold. This idol seems to have been the god Apis, the chief deity of the Egyptians, worshipped at Memphis under the form of a live ox, three years old. It was distinguished by a triangular white spot on its forehead and other peculiar marks. Images of it in the form of a whole ox, or of a calf's head on the end of a pole, were very common; and it makes a great figure on the monuments where it is represented in the van of all processions, as borne aloft on men's shoulders.

 

[tinytim]

And of course Wiki's take on Apis....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apis_(Egyptian_mythology)
According to Manetho, his worship is said to have been instituted by Kaiechos of the Second Dynasty. Hape (Apis) is named on very early monuments, but little is known of the divine animal before the New Kingdom. He was entitled "the renewal of the life" of the Memphite god Ptah: but after death he became Osorapis, i.e. the Osiris Apis, just as dead men were assimilated to Osiris, the king of the underworld. This Osorapis was identified with Serapis, and may well be really identical with him: and Greek writers make the Apis an incarnation of Osiris, ignoring the connection with Ptah.
Apis was the most important of all the sacred animals in Egypt, and, like the others, its importance increased as time went on.

 

[Alex Quackenbush]

Seems like there was more than one 'golden calf' set up as idols in OT Isreal.

A church I attended for a brief period had a gold cow. No one liked sitting behind her because her hair was so big...:laugh: :laugh:

 

[tinytim]

A church I attended for a brief period had a gold cow. No one liked sitting behind her because her hair was so big...:laugh: :laugh:

Her name wasn't Elsie was it?

Or was it Bitsy?

 

[Magnetic Poles]

Her name wasn't Elsie was it?

Or was it Bitsy?

Uh oh! I'm just gonna stand WAAAAY back over here. raying:

 

[tinytim]

 

[mcdirector]

Ignoring the men . . .

 

[menageriekeeper]

Thanks Tiny Tim.

That suggests to me how heavily influenced the Isrealite had to have been by Egypt that they had all these miracles going on around them and yet centuries (?) after they left Egypt they still reverted back to worshipping gold calves. Sad really.