Lassoing the Golden Calf - Torah portion Ki Tisa
Bronze bull, Samaria, c. 1200 BCE When I go through the Golden Calf narrative through the end of Exodus 34, I tend to find myself fairly disoriented. It's a seeming jumble of retribution, beseechment and forgiveness which I have a very hard time getting straight in my head. So for my own purposes (and I hope it will help you as well), I'm going to outline the events in order, just to give a bird's eye view. Then I'll identify the narrative oddities I find so confusing, followed by a few thoughts on that. After that, I'll mention the source-critical approach and how that (at least for me) doesn't address the narrative confusion. And I'll wrap up by bringing up some more thematic questions about the Golden Calf itself. No "sermons" in this piece, no tidy answers. Mostly a lot of questions. But sometimes it helps just to organize what you don't know, "lasso the calf" as it were. SEQUENCE OF EVENTS The following covers the Golden...