Does this sound sane or likely?

Question

When Moses went up onto Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments (Exodus 19:20), he left the Israelites for forty days and forty nights (Exodus 24:18). The Israelites feared that he would not return, and asked Aaron to make gods for them (Exodus 32:1). He constructed the golden calf and built an altar, and the next day, the Israelites made offerings and celebrated.

The Lord told Moses that his people had corrupted themselves, and that he planned to eliminate them, but Moses argued and pleaded that they should be spared (Exodus 32:11); the Lord relented. Moses went down from the mountain, but upon seeing the calf, he too became angry. He threw down the tablets upon which God's law had been written, and broke them.

Moses then burnt the golden calf in the fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on water, and forced the Israelites to drink it. Moses gathered the sons of Levi and set them to slaying a large number of adult males (3000). A plague then struck the Israelites.

Since Moses had broken the tablets, the Lord instructed him to return to Mount Sinai yet again (Exodus 34:2) to receive a replacement.

Answer 1

are you trying to put logic into religion? How many times do I have to tell you, LOGIC and RELIGION don't MIX! IT makes your brain go KABLAM! The answer is no. Why? Because burning a golden calf in the fire and grinding it to powder? IF it's GOLDEN it would MELT. AND if it MELTED it would be liquid and kinda hard to grind! If it hardened before it was ground, then you'd have a huge chunk of malleable metal. Good luck with that!

Answer 2

Okay, if we're going by what the Bible says, then the only thing silly about the story is when Moses destroys the original tablets that were written on by God himself. Those would 'have more weight' than the second tablets Moses transcribed. So that part doesn't make sense.

However, the Israelites DID have enough gold to make a calf (they had just come from Egypt, bringing their religious artifacts with them), and gold CAN be made into powder.
Gold-leaf and gold powder/dust exists today. At the store.

Answer 3

It sounds like bullshit to me.

So these starving, newly-freed desert people just happened to find enough gold to build a statue of a cow? No nearby mines? And they drink it all so there's nothing left? How convenient. If they have gold, why not trade it in a neighboring community for something useful? It beats wandering in the desert for 40 years, don't you think?

How nice of Moses. The misogynist goes on another tantrum-laced murder spree when his groupies fail to show the right gusto.

Sounds like that Israelite plague is all about stupidity. Specifically that of religious fundamentalism.

Answer 4

Since Moses wasn't there to tell God stories they wanted Aaron to make some up.

Sounds reasonable.

Answer 5

I want a golden calf!!! I don't think I'll worship it but I would like to melt it down and make golden shoes out of it! then I would talk people into worshipping my feet!

Answer 6

that just means that they never really believed in god and had lost faith in just 40 days. why wasnt god warned about this... why 40 days, he could have made it in a blink of an eye since he's so "powerful"

too many questions, all of which are against the story...

unless you consider it as just another story in the bible, in which case, is still against the bible.

Answer 7

A shimmering parade of nonsense.

Answer 8

i don't remember all that.
but i never understood why, after all they had seen, they changed so quickly. i mean forty days, come on, that's nothing.
just another little thing that doesn't make sense to me.

Answer 9

I think it makes good fantasy literature, and if the writer had lived today, he or she could make a living from writing such a stuff.

Answer 10

golden calf powder? isnt that a herbal remedy for piles?