The Problem

Scholars have long noted some unexpected language in the Golden Calf episode in Exodus,¹ in particular in the description of the destruction of the calf by Moses:

And he took the calf the people had made and
burned it in the fire;
then he ground it to powder,
scattered it on the water and
made the Israelites drink it.²

The alternative account in Deuteronomy has Moses scatter the ashes into a running stream, with no mention of their consumption.³

The steps Moses takes to destroy the calf seem inapplicable—or at least extremely odd—for an object cast from gold, especially “burning” (וַיִּשְׂרֹ֣ף) (instead of “melting”), and “grinding” (וַיִּטְחַ֖ן) it into dust. Instead they seem more appropriate to organic material.

In addition the entire story of the establishment of bovine statues made of gold and set up for worship as the god of the Israelites owes much to the episode of the golden calves Jeroboam set up in Dan and Bethel.⁴

Mot

In the middle of the 20^th century, the similarities between the destruction of the calf and the destruction of Mot in the newly discovered Ugaritic texts of Ras Shamra were noted.⁵ Here is the description of Mot’s destruction by Anat:

She seizes Divine Mot,
With a sword she splits him,
With a sieve she winnows him.
With a fire she burns him,
With millstones she grinds him,
In a field she sows him.
Birds eat his flesh,
Fowl devour his parts
Flesh to flesh cries out.⁶

Elsewhere in the text, during his own description of the event, Mot says that his ashes were scattered on the ocean, recalling the alternate ending of the calf’s destruction in Deuteronomy.⁷

Begg and others note⁸ how these methods (winnowing, fire, water, grinding, scattering) might simply be enumerations of various alternative ways of destroying a foe, not meant to be taken literally, thus offering one explanation for why they were applied to a golden object such as the calf. However Frankel⁹ cautions that no other description of destruction uses all of the terms, arguing against a simple transferal of destruction language from another story,¹⁰ and suggesting that the combination of several methods in the Golden Calf story is deliberate and not meant metaphorically. Let us note too that no matter how we should understand Mot’s precise role in Ugartic mythology, he is treated here in a manner that clearly identifies him with grain: cut, winnowed, the chaff burned or the grain roasted, and some grain ground (into flour) and some sown in the field where it is consumed by birds.¹¹

The Corn Calf

The recognition that the destruction suffered by the calf in Exodus is consistent with it being made of some organic material, along with its similarities to Mot’s destruction strongly suggest a connection with grain, and indeed Moses’ actions as described in Exodus are consistent with an object made of wheat (as is its golden color). But if we wish to find the origins of story in a “corn calf,” in what context would the Israelites be making and then burning such a thing?

In his classic work of comparative mythology, Frazer cites numerous examples of human and animal figures—including calves and cows and bulls—being fashioned out of grain at the end of the harvest and used in various kinds of celebrations.¹² In fact Perdue suggested the context of the harvest for the story of Mot some decades ago:

the pericope of Anat’s destruction of Mot is a mythical depiction of the destruction of the god of grain/death during the harvest festival¹³

It is therefore highly significant that the broader episode of the giving of the Torah, of which the Golden Calf forms an essential part, was early on associated with the holiday of Shavuot, which itself celebrates the end of the harvest. Importantly this connection exists despite the absence in the text of any direct connection of the episode with the harvest.

Worden¹⁴ similarly connects the destruction of Mot with the description of a rite at another harvest, that of the first sheaf of barley (itself connected with another event in the Exodus narrative, Passover) as described in detail by Josephus.¹⁵

Conclusion

This evidence then suggests that we might attribute the oddities of the destruction of the Golden Calf to an original description of a harvest festival in which an animal is created out of wheat and subsequently destroyed during a raucous celebration, its ashes being either consumed by participants or scattered over water.¹⁶ The last phase is of course paralleled by the purificatory use of the ashes of the Red Heifer,¹⁷ itself connected in later thought with the Golden Calf. A harvest ritual with such a corn calf would then have been combined with the elements of the story of Jeroboam to create the episode preserved in Exodus. Though speculative, such an origin would not only explain the way in which the calf is destroyed, but also be consonant with the traditional connection of this event with the actual harvest festival of Shavuot.

The origins of this corn calf remain obscure. As noted above, Frazer offers numerous examples of corn animals from central and eastern Europe, which suggests that this particular example should be seen in a much broader folkloristic context. Many have connected the bovine nature of the Exodus idol with the Egyptians, and we might note the connection Diodorus makes between their harvest and the worship of Isis, who is herself connected to the cow.¹⁸ In his description of the carrying of first-fruits in a harvest celebration, Diodorus also cites the role of Isis as law-giver which provides an interesting, if tenuous, analogy to the giving of the Torah.¹⁹ Wherever it came from, once the core of this ritual was combined with the idolatry of Jeroboam and the calf transformed into gold, additional elements and references could be added to it, obscuring its origin.

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