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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/6/2020, SPi

OXFORD STUDIES IN THE ABRAHAMIC

RELIGIONS

Editors

ADAM J. SILVERSTEIN
GUY G. STROUMSA
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/6/2020, SPi

OXFORD STUDIES IN THE ABRAHAMIC

RELIGIONS

This series consists of scholarly monographs and other volumes at the cutting
edge of the study of Abrahamic religions. The increase in intellectual interest in
the comparative approach to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam reflects the striking
surge in the importance of religious traditions and patterns of thought and
behaviour in the twenty-first century, at the global level. While this importance
is easy to detect, it remains to be identified clearly and analysed, from a compara-
tive perspective. Our existing scholarly apparatus is not always adequate in
attempting to understand precisely the nature of similarities and differences
between the monotheistic religions, and the transformations of their “family
resemblances” in different cultural and historical contexts.
The works in the series are devoted to the study of how “Abrahamic” traditions
mix, blend, disintegrate, rebuild, clash, and impact upon one another, usually in
polemical contexts, but also, often, in odd, yet persistent ways of interaction,
reflecting the symbiosis between them.

Titles in the series include:

The Making of the Abrahamic Religions in Late Antiquity
Guy G. Stroumsa
Judaism, Sufism, and the Pietists of Medieval Egypt
A Study of Abraham Maimonides and His Times
Elisha Russ-Fishbane
Purity, Community, and Ritual in Early Christian Literature
Moshe Blidstein
Islam and its Past
Jāhiliyya, Late Antiquity, and the Qur’an
Edited by Carol Bakhos and Michael Cook
Goy
Israel’s Multiple Others and the Birth of the Gentile
Adi Ophir and Ishay Rosen-Zvi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/6/2020, SPi

The Golden Calf

between Bible and Qur’an
Scripture, Polemic, and Exegesis
from Late Antiquity to Islam

MICHAEL E. PREGILL

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/6/2020, SPi

3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
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© Michael E. Pregill 2020
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2020
Impression: 1
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/6/2020, SPi

In loving memory of

Mary Jardin Molina (1919–2011)

Anthony Molina (1916–2006)
Jeanne Ursula Pregill (1919–2014)
Edwin Pregill (1924–2007)
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/6/2020, SPi

Acknowledgments

In his acclaimed comparative study of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim

constructions of the “other” through discourses pertaining to dietary restric-
tions and commensality, David Freidenreich explains that his choice of subject
matter stems from his love of eating and sharing meals with friends.¹ By the
same logic, given my choice to spend years studying polemic, one might
suppose that I love to argue. However, if anything, this book stands as a
testament not to dispute and contention, but rather amity and collegiality.
Having worked on this project in one form or another for more than twenty-
five years, I have incurred a massive debt to countless mentors, friends, and
colleagues, and these short notes of acknowledgment will inevitably fall short
of adequately expressing the depths of my gratitude to so many people.
Over the long years of my academic training, I was fortunate to encounter a
series of mentors and advisors whose support made my academic career
possible and shaped the scholar I am today. Pre-eminent among them are
Peter J. Awn and Jon D. Levenson, to both of whom I owe a very great deal
indeed. I deeply regret that the untimely death of Professor Awn in February
2019 prevented him from seeing this project reach fruition when he contrib-
uted so much to it, in so many ways. At various stages of my research, the
kind advice and insightful criticisms of Richard Bulliet, Joseph Dan, Jonathan
Klawans, Marion Katz, Maren Niehoff, the late Alan Segal, and Neguin Yavari
were absolutely invaluable to me.
Academics routinely underestimate the contributions librarians make to
their scholarship. My work would simply not have been possible without the
assistance of librarians at Harvard Divinity School, Columbia University,
Union Theological Seminary, Elon University, and several other institutions.
In this connection, I owe particular debts of gratitude to Consuelo Dutschke,
Karen Green, Adam Carter Bremer-McCollum, and especially Lynn Melchor
of Elon University’s Belk Library, whose patience I surely tested (but thank-
fully never exhausted) through many years of esoteric interlibrary loan
requests during my time at Elon.

¹ Freidenreich, Foreigners and Their Food, xi.

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viii 

Over the years I have been fortunate to have benefited from the friendship
of numerous other scholars whose work and ideas have made deep impres-
sions on this project, and whose support and encouragement I am perennially
thankful for. Only a few of them can be named here, and I apologize for the
inevitable omissions. I surely must thank Phil Ackerman-Lieberman, Carol
Bakhos, Adam Becker, Ra’anan Boustan, David Freidenreich, Mimi Hanaoka,
Elliot Ratzman, Annette Yoshiko Reed, and John Reeves in particular. Kecia
Ali deserves special recognition and gratitude for her unwavering insistence
that I find the time and energy to see this project through. As I have repeatedly
wandered well outside my areas of genuine competence, gracious advice and
assistance on specific textual and philological points came at critical junctures
from Thomas Burman, Kristian Heal, Jonathan Klawans, Ophir Münz-Manor,
Tzvi Novick, Jeff Rubenstein, Luk Van Rompay, and Hamza Zafer.
Assistance in the form of considerable financial support for this project
came from sustaining fellowships at Harvard University and Columbia
University while I was a graduate student, and that support provided the
core of the research showcased here. Later, over the six years I taught at
Elon University as Distinguished Emerging Scholar in the Department of
Religious Studies, I received significant support in the form of both time off
from teaching and research funds, and this made the writing of much of this
book possible, as did the warm support and advice of my colleagues in
Religious Studies and other programs at Elon.
The scholarly terrain surrounding the study of the Qur’an has shifted
enormously in the last ten years. The founding and flourishing of the
International Qur’anic Studies Association, an initiative with which I have
been involved for some time, is both the result of this process and continues
to guide it in felicitous ways. Over the last few years as I have prepared
this manuscript for publication, the counsel and encouragement of various
colleagues in IQSA has been invaluable to me. I must thank Reuven Firestone,
Vanessa De Gifis, Marianna Klar, Shari Lowin, Gabriel Reynolds, Stephen
Shoemaker, Nicolai Sinai, and Holger Zellentin in particular for their support
and advice regarding this project.
The greatest thanks must go to my family: to my wife Lily, who has
supported and encouraged me every step of the way, and my parents Carol
and Jerry, whose hard work and sacrifices allowed me to become the person
I am today and to choose my own path in life. This book is dedicated to my
grandparents, Mary and Anthony Molina of Kaimuki, Hawai’i and Jeanne and
Edwin Pregill of Aiea, Hawai’i, who made everything possible for us.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 26/6/2020, SPi

Lists of Figures and Tables

Figures

1. Bull statuette. Samaria region, Iron Age I, c.12th c. . The Israel
Museum, Jerusalem. © Z. Radovan/BibleLandPictures 86
2. Stele with the storm god Adad. Neo-Assyrian, reign of Tiglath-Pileser III
(744–727 ), Arslan Tash (Hadatu). Department of Near Eastern
Antiquities, The Louvre, Paris. © Z. Radovan/BibleLandPictures 87
3. Cult stand from Taʿanach. Canaanite, Iron Age I, c.10th c. .
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. © Z. Radovan/BibleLandPictures 88

Tables

1. The Golden Calf narrative of Sūrah 20 according to its traditional

interpretation 274
2. The Golden Calf narrative of Sūrah 20 as a revision of Exodus 32 392
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Note on Style

This book makes use of texts drawn from a variety of literatures, in a variety of
languages, each comprising the main corpus of sources utilized by a particular
scholarly discipline. A serious attempt has been made to render Hebrew,
Greek, Syriac, Arabic, and other languages in more or less technical fashion
as reflects the standard practices in use in Biblical Studies, Jewish Studies,
Syriac Studies, Qur’anic and Islamic Studies, and so forth. The main priority
has been to represent texts from non-Latin scripts consistently and in a form
that will allow readers familiar with these languages to easily recognize and
reconstruct the original form with some precision.
For the most part the standards established in the second edition of the SBL
Handbook of Style (2014) have been followed here, albeit with occasional
minor adaptations. The most distinctive stylistic rules from SBLH2 that
I have utilized here pertain to the distinction between biblical and later
forms of Hebrew. Quotations from the fully vocalized Masoretic text have
been rendered according to the SBL “Academic Style” (indicating vowel
length, defective vs. plene spelling, vocal shewa represented by ә, and so
forth), whereas texts from all other Hebrew sources, from the rabbinic corpus
to medieval and modern sources, have been rendered according to the
less technical “General-Purpose Style”—characteristically phonetic and not
“scientific” due to the absence of standard vocalization for such sources.
Syriac, Ge’ez, and Arabic follow the basic guidelines given in the SBL
Handbook as well, again with minor modifications; e.g. for Syriac I have
indicated long vowels and matres lectionis, marked vocal shewa with ĕ, and
distinguished ṣādê from semkat by giving the former as ṣ and the latter as
s. Spellings follow the West Syrian forms.
Citations of primary sources follow the rules of abbreviation provided in the
SBL Handbook when possible. Citations of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew
Bible refer to BHS, as is standard. For the rabbinic corpus, modern scholarly
editions have been utilized and cited when available, though for many sources
(Mishnah, talmuds, Midrash Rabbah, etc.) I have relied on the ubiquitous
common printed editions, and citation information has not been provided for
these in the bibliography. The same applies for citations of the Qur’an and
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xiv   

ḥ adīth, where the texts are readily accessible. Generally, sources are cited
according to section and paragraph or unit number, where applicable, with
specific editions cited by volume and page number.
Throughout the book, technical terms and lexica of significance have been
italicized, while names are not. These are generally given in full transliteration
except when they are toponyms, especially familiar ones (e.g. “Mecca” and
“Medina,” not “Makkah” and “Madīnah”), or terms that have become stand-
ard in English (“Qur’an”), or the titles of works in some fields. Admittedly this
has occasionally produced minor infelicities (e.g. “midrash” versus “tafsīr”),
but as with the transliteration of various languages, such inconsistency is
tolerable for the sake of maintaining the “industry standard” particular to
various fields and literatures (thus Te’ezaza Sanbat and Pirqei de-Rabbi
Eliezer, but Tafsīr al-Jalālayn and so forth).
Dates for events, sources, and authors from Islamic history have been
given according to both the Hijri calendar and the Western calendar
(“Common Era”). Otherwise, dates obviously derive from the Western
Gregorian calendar, and  or  will be indicated when necessary for clarity.
“God” has been utilized as the universal referent for the Deity, regardless of
the particular term in use in the sources (El or Elohim, Allah, etc.). The
convention of capitalizing pronouns referring to the Deity has been main-
tained here, mainly to help distinguish the various dramatis personae in
otherwise ambiguous passages in the sources.
Throughout this book, all translations from primary (and when necessary,
secondary) sources are mine unless otherwise noted. Direct quotations from
canonical scripture are typically given in italics; this is intended to make it easy
for the reader to clearly distinguish a commentator’s citations of scripture
from interpolated glosses, comments, expansions, and paraphrases.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/6/2020, SPi

Introduction

This book is a study of the famous—or infamous—narrative of the Israelites’

worship of the Golden Calf, explored through historical and literary analysis of
the various interpretations and expansions of the episode across more than a
thousand years. The story of the Calf is familiar even to laypeople with very
little scriptural literacy; many people know it from the version recounted in
the Hebrew Bible (sometimes still termed the “Old Testament”), and perhaps
from later Jewish and Christian versions as well. However, while those ver-
sions will be discussed at length here, this book focuses in particular on the
version found in the Qur’an—which, I will argue, represents an integral part of
the biblical tradition, broadly conceived. I will trace the development of
understandings of the episode from ancient Israel through the consolidation
of classical Judaism and Christianity up to the emergence of Islam, using it as a
case study through which to re-evaluate the relationship between Bible and
Qur’an. Interrogating both historical and contemporary scholarship on the
Qur’an and its connections to the Bible and ancient Jewish and Christian
traditions of interpretation provides us with a framework in which to inves-
tigate the relationships between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, particularly
during the long transitional period now commonly termed Late Antiquity.
Here and in Chapter 1, I set out the methodological and historiographic
presuppositions that inform this work, as Qur’anic Studies remains conspicu-
ously undertheorized as a discipline despite its impressive expansion over the
last decade; monographs on the Qur’an all too often fail to make their
conceptual and theoretical assumptions explicit from the outset. Although
there has been much energetic growth in the field recently, with institutions,
conferences, and publications dedicated to the study of the Qur’an rapidly
proliferating, Qur’anic Studies is still characterized by a certain lack of coher-
ence and cumulative development, in part because of a failure on the part of
many scholars to articulate robust theoretical frameworks for their research or
adequately locate it in a particular trajectory of historical scholarship.
A recent survey of the modern field of Qur’anic Studies suggests that the
main issue that divides contemporary scholars in this area is whether or not

The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur’an: Scripture, Polemic, and Exegesis from Late Antiquity to Islam.
Michael E. Pregill, Oxford University Press (2020). © Michael E. Pregill.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852421.001.0001
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/6/2020, SPi

2       ’

they understand the Qur’an to be part of the biblical tradition.¹ This book
proceeds from the assumption that this characterization is both accurate and
useful, and aims to present a careful, nuanced argument in support of it. In so
doing, I hope to contribute to the current scholarly effort to advance our
understanding of the complex relationship between Bible and Qur’an, and to
demonstrate why such a perspective on the Qur’an still matters. As is well
known, approaching the Qur’an as part of—or at least deeply rooted in—the
biblical tradition is a well-established methodology in Western scholarship.
The “biblicist” approach was foundational in the emergence of modern
European studies of the Qur’an and Islam in the early nineteenth century,
and although it was largely abandoned for a number of decades, it has recently
enjoyed a significant revival.
Despite its distinguished pedigree, however, much work remains to be done
in this area of research, both in terms of systematic exploration of the biblical
subtexts and contexts of the qur’anic corpus and sophisticated articulation of
the rationale behind such a project.² It should go without saying that this is not
the only valid method of approaching the Qur’an, but unfortunately advocates
of a “biblicist” approach have often denigrated and dismissed other method-
ologies, claiming not only that their perspective is superior because it seeks
to recover the original meaning of the Qur’an in its historical context, but
that all other approaches are secondary, irrelevant, or theologically driven.
Sometimes, scholars engaged in historical-critical research have even implied
(or asserted outright) that Muslims are mistaken in interpreting the Qur’an
the way they have and do, expressing reductive and derogatory attitudes
towards Islam on account of their supposed recovery of what the Qur’an
“really means” through reconstruction of the historical context.
This is a problematic and troubling legacy of the historical study of the
Qur’an in the Western academy that must be honestly and openly acknow-
ledged. Here, I model one type of historical-critical approach to the Qur’an, but
by no means intend to imply that other approaches are illegitimate or lack
probative value, or that investigating the Qur’an’s meaning in its original context
is supposed to be some kind of corrective to traditional and contemporary

¹ Stewart, “Reflections on the State of the Art in Western Qurʾanic Studies,” 4. For other important
historical surveys of the field, see Neuwirth, “ ‘Neither of the East nor of the West’ ” and Reynolds,
“Introduction: The Golden Age of Qurʾānic Studies?”
² Fortunately, future scholarship may now benefit from the massive work of Reynolds, The Qurʾan
and the Bible, which serves as an indispensable guide to the current state of the field. Arranged as a
commentary on the Qur’an translation of Quli Qarai, Reynolds presents a concise but comprehensive
guide to the most commonly recognized biblical subtexts and intertexts for the entire Qur’an, as well as
to major scholarly insights and debates.
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 3

Muslim understandings. Those understandings proceed from rather different

assumptions and pursue goals categorically different from those of this book.
Neither methodology should invalidate the other. Both should be valued as
aspects of the academic study of the Qur’an, and ideally, in a scholarly discourse
in which diversity of all sorts is valued, the study of these separate enterprises
should be mutually enriching and complementary.
Here, the primary method of historical-critical analysis of the Qur’an
I employ is that of history of interpretation in the longue durée—embedding
a particular narrative shared between Bible and Qur’an in the literary, reli-
gious, and political-ideological contexts of its reinterpretation and recontex-
tualization over a millennium, across the boundaries separating the Jewish,
Christian, and Muslim communities of the Mediterranean and Near East.
I take for granted that to fully understand how the Qur’an recasts and deploys
stories shared with the Bibles of Jews and Christians in its late antique milieu,
we should not focus exclusively on the transference of isolated motifs, lexica,
and other raw scriptural data from one corpus to another.³ Rather, we should
strive to comprehend the wider context in which Jews and Christians—and
eventually Muslims—transmitted and interpreted biblical narratives. That is,
we must pay close attention to the function stories from and about ancient
Israel played in various genres and discourses among later communities, and
how apologetic and polemic inflected and affected how interpreters made use
of them. In the end, it is continuities in discourse rather than communication
of specific influences that tell us the most about the form a story takes in the
Qur’an and why it appears there—how specific claims informed particular
narrative choices. Those continuities can only be appreciated by taking the
long view in the narrative history of scriptural stories shared between Bible
and Qur’an, and thus between Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
In pursuing this method, this book operates at the intersection of a number
of areas of study, including Hebrew Bible, Second Temple and rabbinic
Judaism, Late Antiquity, Eastern Christianity, Qur’anic Studies, and tafsīr or
traditional Islamic commentary. Again, although this book is about biblical
tradition and shared narratives, it is the Qur’an’s perspective on the Calf
episode rather than that of the Hebrew Bible that is central to our concerns
here. Therefore, I pay substantial attention to Islam and Islamic (or
“Islamicate”) material, while aiming to reorient the relationship between
Biblical Studies as it is currently conceived—encompassing not only the

³ For a trenchant critique of this tendency as it applies to lexica treated as loanwords, see Saleh, “The
Etymological Fallacy and Qurʾanic Studies” and “A Piecemeal Qurʾān.”
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4       ’

Hebrew Bible and New Testament but also the literatures of early and late
antique Judaism and Christianity—and Qur’anic and Islamic Studies. I have
adopted this approach because I am by training primarily an Islamicist, but
also have significant interest and background in the study of the Bible, classical
Judaism, and Late Antiquity. In engaging in such an interdisciplinary project,
I have benefited in many ways from the work, ideas, and generosity of people
who primarily locate themselves in these latter fields, and from whom I have
learned just as much as I have from fellow students and scholars of Islam.
The narrative of the Israelites’ worship of the Golden Calf at Mount Sinai
during their exodus from Egypt is one of the most important stories in both
the history of scriptural interpretation and the history of intercommunal
relations in Western religious history. It is one of a number of narratives
that Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike embraced as establishing their own
community as the main protagonists of salvation history and recipients of the
covenant with the God of Israel. In a very real sense, Jews, Christians, and
Muslims all identify with the righteous followers of Moses, in distinction to the
idolaters who transgressed and worshipped the Calf at Sinai. For members of
all three communities, the story is interpreted as being about us—Moses is
seen as our prophet, and we identify with his loyal supporters who rejected the
worship of the Calf and remained believers like us. Yet the literal meaning of
the story, as describing a specific moment in the history of Israel in which
that community went astray, has also had particular relevance for Christians
and Muslims as the main basis for asserting the disinheritance and delegitim-
ation of the Jews as the descendants of the erring, idolatrous Israelites.
Thus, for Christians and Muslims, this story is also commonly interpreted
as being about them—describing their sin, signaling the rejection of those
people, the Jews.
The Golden Calf story thus provides us with a unique basis for discerning
how apologetic and polemic between communities was expressed through
recasting and reinterpreting scriptural episodes inherited from ancient Israel.
Through these discourses, scriptural interpretation became an instrument for
identity formation and boundary maintenance, as exegetes and storytellers
projected views of themselves and their interlocutors—their real or imagined
“others”—onto the behavior of various characters in the episode. Again, these
processes can best be understood by embracing the long view and adopting
a perspective sensitive to both continuity and change in portrayals of
the episode. In tracing the history of interpretation of the Calf narrative, we
discern a variety of approaches to and perceptions of the story, but at the same
time, we can observe how particular interpretive moments resonate with
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 5

others across a period of more than a thousand years, from ancient Israel and
the Second Temple period to the emergence of the Qur’an and the advent and
maturation of classical Islam.
Scholarly attempts to investigate shared scriptural narratives have seldom
managed to examine both the broad contours of their development over
centuries (or millennia) and the subtler ways in which social, political, and
religious contexts, especially intercommunal relations, shape interpretation.
Further, despite its importance as the single most representative portrayal of
idolatry in both the Bible and the Qur’an, it is a strange fact that the Golden
Calf story has never been the subject of a comprehensive comparative
treatment that incorporates Jewish, Christian, and Islamic material.⁴ This is
especially surprising given that the episode demonstrates with virtually unpar-
alleled clarity how fundamental concepts that Jews, Christians, and Muslims
share in common such as chosenness, covenant, transgression, and authority
can be articulated through narrative and exegesis, as well as the way in which
the competing claims of rival communities converge in the interpretation of
shared stories.
Bori’s classic study The Golden Calf and the Origins of the Anti-Jewish
Controversy provides a critical starting point for understanding the nexus of
theology, exegesis, and polemic that coalesces in the early Christian interpret-
ation of the Calf narrative. However, Bori’s work fails to adequately capture
the contours and trajectory of historical development of the narrative in Late
Antiquity, given his relatively limited textual sample (mainly classical patristic
literature and a small corpus of comparanda from rabbinic tradition), as well
as his emphasis on thematic parallels rather than historical progression.⁵
Lindqvist’s more recent study Sin at Sinai focuses upon early Jewish material
on the Calf, from the Second Temple period to the early rabbis; along with the
material found in the canonical Hebrew Bible, these texts have received the
greatest amount of scholarly attention in the past. Lindqvist’s work is a
deliberate response to the widely held assumption that Jewish exegetes were
predominantly concerned with fending off polemical attacks against Jewish

⁴ The recent edited volume on the Calf episode in Brill’s Themes in Biblical Narrative series, Mason
and Lupieri (eds.), Golden Calf Traditions in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (to which
I contributed the article on the Qur’an and Islam), is to some degree representative of the diversity
of historical treatments of the narrative, although, as is characteristic of this series as a whole, greatest
emphasis is placed on biblical and early Jewish representations of the episode. See my comments on this
tendency as reflected in this series in Chapter 1.
⁵ Bori mentions the qur’anic tradition on the Calf in a brief aside early in the book and subsequently
devotes a mere two pages to it in an appendix; for him, the qur’anic story functions as corroboration of
a supposed rabbinic impulse to blame the episode on diabolical interference (Golden Calf, 23, 98–100).
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6       ’

communities based on the biblical portrayal of the Calf episode. Though we

can readily appreciate the desire to restore agency and autonomy to exegetes of
the Second Temple and early rabbinic periods that lies behind Lindqvist’s
emphasis on internal communal considerations as driving shifts in interpret-
ation, his depreciation of the role of external interlocutors in motivating such
shifts creates the unfortunate impression that Jewish communities were largely
insulated from larger cultural patterns, perceptions, and concerns. Further, the
historical moment that Bori and Lindqvist focus upon really represents only
the earliest phase of a much longer diachronic coevolution of traditions.⁶ Until
now, most of the textual evidence pertaining to understandings of the Calf
narrative from Late Antiquity to the Qur’an and early Islam has either been
completely ignored or else been the subject only of brief inquiries, viewed in
isolation from larger frameworks of meaning.
Besides rectifying the historical neglect of a massive amount of important
literary material, another major goal of this book is addressing the chronic
misrepresentation of the Qur’an—and sometimes all of Islamic tradition—as
the product of a passive reception of influences channeled from other, more
literate communities. Historically, scholarship investigating the Qur’an’s lit-
erary precursors and parallels has portrayed the Prophet and early Muslims as
“borrowing” ideas from their more scripturally learned betters, especially the
Jewish groups in their immediate environment. Discomfort with the reduc-
tionist implications—if not overtly political agenda—of such an approach is
one of the main reasons that academic investigation of the Qur’an’s Jewish and
Christian background fell out of fashion for decades. The most potent antidote
to the once-ubiquitous emphasis on themes of dependency and derivation is to
demonstrate how the Qur’an and early Muslims were not passive recipients of
“influences,” but rather well-informed, active participants in complex pro-
cesses of identity formation through narrative reshaping that were character-
istic of their time. Their reinterpretations of biblical narratives are part of,
embedded in, the continued unfolding of biblical tradition in the later first and
second millennium .
Thankfully, much contemporary scholarship on the Qur’an now avoids
this reductionist and even polemical approach of the past. Continuing this

⁶ The attention paid to this era is unsurprising given the way in which Second Temple, early
rabbinic, and early Christian material—especially from the Greco-Roman cultural ambit—has histor-
ically monopolized the attention of scholars in Biblical Studies and its cognate fields. Only relatively
recently have scholars shifted from an historical emphasis on the Mediterranean and “Romanocentric”
material to exploring relevant textual corpora from other areas and periods, for example Eastern
Christian material from Late Antiquity.
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vein of inquiry, this book is intended to model an approach to the shared

biblical-qur’anic legacy that turns not on a concept of passively absorbed
influences—what one scholar has called the “debtor-creditor” approach—
but rather on that of long-term trajectories of development that unite the
perennially fruitful (and perpetually fractious) Jewish, Christian, and Muslim
reimaginings of the legacy of Israel.⁷ My hope is not only to contribute to this
ongoing project—one that has proven so productive for the field of Qur’anic
Studies in recent years—but also to demonstrate why the study of the Qur’an
and Islamic tradition matters for scholars in other fields such as Biblical
Studies, late antique Judaism and Christianity, and the newly flourishing,
increasingly ecumenical study of the intertwined religious traditions of the
First Millennium.

Overview of chapters

Chapter 1 establishes the historical and methodological framework for this

book. Subsequently, the book is arranged into three discrete but interdependent
parts. The first part, “Foundations,” deals with the most ancient traditions on
the Calf episode, beginning with the Israelite narratives that eventually became
the basis of the account in the book of Exodus in the canonical Hebrew Bible/
Old Testament, and proceeding to the oldest extant traditions of Jewish inter-
pretation of the story. The second part, “Jews, Christians, and the Contested
Legacy of Israel,” charts the significant ongoing dialogue between these com-
munities on the status of the Israelite covenant and the identity of the true
chosen people as it was refracted through the prism of the Golden Calf story.
Understanding the broad contours of exegetical approaches to the narrative in
the Near East in Late Antiquity is crucial as background for the third part, “The
Qur’anic Calf Episode.” Here we will examine trends in exegesis and narrative
reimagining in two very different contexts, the late antique setting in which the
Qur’an was revealed and the medieval and modern settings in which Western
reception of and scholarship on the Qur’an was shaped.
Part I: Foundations. Chapter 2 examines the main narrative of the Golden
Calf found in Exodus 32, as well as other allusions to this episode from Israel’s
history that are preserved in what became the canonical Hebrew Bible. Here,
we introduce major themes that will resonate throughout the rest of the book,
especially insofar as the account of the Calf in Exodus appears to have been

⁷ See the provocative introduction to Wasserstrom, Between Muslim and Jew.

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profoundly shaped by polemical imperatives in the earliest stages of its

development. Rather than presenting a unified picture of the Calf affair, the
versions of the episode preserved in different parts of the Pentateuch reflect
profoundly different perspectives on the matter. While the Exodus narrative
ultimately hearkens back to a time in Israel’s history in which the making of
the Calf was perceived primarily as a lamentable cultic infraction, the refram-
ing of the narrative in Deuteronomy embeds it in a larger discourse in which
the making of the Calf appears as the pre-eminent example of idolatry, a
distinctive ideological construction of the exilic and post-exilic period.
Just as narratives on the Calf in the canonical biblical accounts are already
deeply colored by polemical concerns, the earliest “post-biblical” traditions on
the narrative (found in texts outside of and responding to those canonized in
the Pentateuch and other parts of what eventually became “our” Bible) are
already deeply colored by apologetic concerns. Chapter 3 traces the develop-
ment of early Jewish interpretation of the Calf episode from authors of the late
Second Temple period to the emergence of distinctive midrashic readings of
the narrative collected in classic works of rabbinic literature from Late
Antiquity. Major shifts in interpretation can be charted over the course of a
few short centuries here due to rapid changes in the cultural and religious
landscape. The earliest Jewish interpretations of the Calf episode, dating to the
late Second Temple era, are primarily concerned to minimize the impact of
attacks on the Jewish community and its traditions from gentile outsiders.
Early rabbinic exegetes, in contrast, are relatively candid about Israel’s sin with
the Calf. However, the promotion of stridently anti-Jewish readings of the
narrative by the early Christian movement, especially after Christianity’s
establishment as an imperial religion, would compel Jewish exegetes to
adopt new apologetic interpretations that were more imaginative, as well as
more evasive, concerning the issue of the culpability of both Aaron and the
Israelite community for their deed at Sinai.
Part II: Jews, Christians, and the Contested Legacy of Israel. In Chapter 4, we
turn to the emergence of specific anti-Jewish readings of the Calf episode in
patristic literature. Virtually from the outset, the early Christian movement
made use of the Calf narrative as proof of the disconfirmation of the formerly
chosen Israel—the remnants of whom they saw manifest in the Jewish com-
munity of their day—in favor of the Christian Church, positioned as the True
Israel and new chosen people. Early Christian exegetes strove to emphasize the
illegitimacy of the Jews’ continuing claim to covenantal priority, but this effort
was tempered by the necessity of validating Israel’s historical relationship with
the Deity and the authenticity of the Bible (which included post-Sinaitic
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 9

prophecy) as true revelation. Notably, these exegetes’ understanding of the

significance of Israel’s idolatry with the Calf often appears to reflect an
awareness of older Jewish approaches to the story. In turn, the major revisions
of the episode seen in later rabbinic tradition can be read as direct responses to
the promotion of specific anti-Jewish themes in patristic literature; the diverse
claims about the Calf episode preserved in rabbinic collections reflect a host of
approaches to the problem of the apparent schism between Israel and God
caused by the worship of the Calf. Despite the mutual opposition and hostility
expressed by spokesmen of both communities, a basic symmetry, even sym-
biosis, between Jewish and Christian traditions is characteristic of this phase of
development of accounts of Israel’s making of the Calf.
Chapter 5 examines a unique corpus of material in Syriac that reflects a
synthesis of older patristic views of the Calf episode with specific themes that
seem to have circulated widely in the Eastern Christian milieu, shared in
common between communities of Jewish and Christian exegetes in this
period. While continuing the tradition of anti-Jewish arguments predicated
on the abiding impact of Israel’s sin with the Calf, authors such as Ephrem,
Aphrahat, and Jacob of Serugh also developed a unique view of Aaron that
dictated a more apologetic position regarding his particular culpability; this
precisely paralleled the development of similar views of Aaron in Jewish
tradition. Given these Syriac Christian authors’ social proximity to Jews and
the much-discussed cultural affinity of their distinctive brand of Christianity
with contemporary strands of Judaism, this material provides us with a
particularly compelling case through which to examine the phenomenon of
exegetical approaches that are held in common by different communities, yet
deployed for opposite purposes. Beyond the general theological, social, and
ideological imperatives operative in these Syriac Christian authors’ works, it is
also possible that there was a specific historical context to the polemic they
advanced based on the Calf narrative, given recent research pointing to a
contemporary revival of priestly leadership—symbolic or actual—in late
antique Palestine.
Part III: The Qur’anic Calf Episode. Chapter 6 introduces the qur’anic
Golden Calf episode as it is traditionally interpreted in both Muslim exegesis
and in Western scholarship. Jewish and Christian debates over the meaning of
the Calf story provide the essential background for understanding the Qur’an’s
unique approach to the Calf episode; however, this background has never been
fully appreciated or explored in historical scholarship on the narrative. We will
show that Western scholars have almost always relied upon the explanation of
the episode in Muslim exegesis, the tafsīr tradition, misunderstanding the role
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that early Muslim commentators played in introducing a radical revision of

the story that was quite different in major details from the account found in
the Qur’an itself. This can be demonstrated by examining historical transla-
tions of the Qur’an in the West, beginning with some of the earliest transla-
tions and commentaries of the medieval and early modern periods in Europe.
In the specific case of the Calf narrative, Western scholars’ reliance on tafsīr
has typically been motivated not by a desire to validate the claims of Muslim
authorities, but rather by the assumption that Islam is at its root thoroughly
dependent upon Judaism—a presupposition informed initially by medieval
ecclesiastical polemic against Islam and subsequently by the influence para-
digm introduced by Geiger’s groundbreaking work on the Qur’an. This
assumption has colored not only the overarching approach to the qur’anic
narrative per se, but also the characterization of a number of midrashic
traditions found in the rabbinic corpus that have been cited as the sources of
that narrative.
In Chapter 7, we will re-examine major aspects of the qur’anic story,
proposing a reading of the narrative that breaks with those of both traditional
Muslim and Western scholarship and seeks to restore it to its proper historical,
religious, and literary context in Late Antiquity. The qur’anic references to the
image worshipped by the Israelites as ʿijl jasad lahu khuwārun, that is, a lowing
image of a calf (literally a calf, a body that lowed or that “possesses lowing,”
7:148/20:88) provided Muslim exegetes with a pretext for depicting the Calf as
alive or at least possessing some semblance of life. However, we will argue that
the qur’anic Calf is better understood not as a lowing image of a calf but rather
as an image of a lowing calf, a distinction of enormous significance for the
exegesis of the story. In the absence of a conception of the Golden Calf as
actually or seemingly animate, the Qur’an’s allusions to al-sāmirī’s creation of
this entity must be reinterpreted as well. We will thus propose alternative
explanations of the major elements of the traditional portrayal of the narrative,
especially the depiction of the “Samaritan” as an outside interloper who
created and animated the Calf through supernatural means, with Moses
subsequently imposing a sentence of exile on both Sāmirī and his descendants,
the Samaritan community, for all time. We will propose instead that the major
elements of the key passage in the Qur’an can be interpreted as allusions to
various biblical subtexts, and that the qur’anic story originally posited, like its
Jewish and Christian precursors, that it was Aaron who had made the Calf and
led the Israelites into sin—the Qur’an’s unique contribution to the development
of biblical tradition here being Aaron’s portrayal as al-sāmirī, an epithet that
identifies him as the inventor of the calf worship of biblical Samaria.
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Overall, judging by consistent parallels in structure, imagery, and linguistic

expression, the Calf narrative of Sūrah 20 appears to reflect a profound, subtle,
and intentional engagement with the Golden Calf story as it is known to us
today from the book of Exodus, reshaped according to certain exegetical
predispositions anticipated by older late antique Jewish and Christian inter-
pretations of the story. In Chapter 8, we will discuss these findings in the
context of both the Qur’an’s relationship to its literary precursors and the Calf
narrative’s particular points of resonance with other themes and topoi in the
qur’anic corpus. Though the term is a problematic one, we will consider the
Qur’an’s novel treatment of the Calf story as an example of “rewritten Bible,” a
reshaping of an older scriptural story that is not only a reimagining but in
some ways a re-revelation of a narrative with a considerable—and consider-
ably freighted—history in previous scriptural tradition. We will also consider a
possible context for the qur’anic presentation of the Calf narrative, particularly
its subordination of Aaron as priest to Moses as prophet, in the conflict that
traditional Muslim sources describe between Muḥammad and the Jews of
Medina after the hijrah. At the same time, our interpretation must take into
account the possible significance of central themes of the story such as
transgression, repentance, and authority for the Qur’an’s original audience,
the community of Believers, at a transformative moment in their history.
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1
Method and Context in the Study
of Bible and Qur’an
The Calf Narrative as Case Study

Israel’s idolatry at Sinai

The Golden Calf episode of Exodus 32 stands as the paradigmatic example of

idolatry in the Bibles of both Jews and Christians—the Jewish Tanakh, now
commonly called the Hebrew Bible, as well as the Christian Old Testament.
In this famous portrayal of a critical moment in Israel’s history, while Moses is
away on Mount Sinai receiving the Tablets of the Testimony (typically inter-
preted by Jews as the Written Torah and by Christians as the Ten
Commandments), the people fear that their leader has abandoned them. They
approach Aaron, the brother of Moses and leader of the people in his stead,
demanding that he make them gods to go before us (v. 1). Aaron complies and
makes the people an image—a calf of gold—that they then worship.
Subsequently, Moses returns from Sinai after interceding with God on
Israel’s behalf, persuading Him not to annihilate the people for their sin, and
destroys the image. As the worshippers of the image—known to posterity as
the Golden Calf—abide in their idolatrous fervor, Moses rallies the loyal tribe
of Levi to slay thousands of the idolaters until the camp is pacified. This
shocking act is followed by a plague sent by God that smites the surviving
Israelites in retribution for the community’s transgression. The denouement of
the story, however, is the resumption of the revelation of the Torah, indicating
that the covenantal relationship between God and His chosen people has
been restored.
A similar version of this narrative appears in the Qur’an. While there are
shorter allusions to the episode found in a number of other chapters, the
lengthiest and most detailed account appears in Sūrah 20, Tā-Hā.
(It is no
coincidence that the longest portrayal of the episode is found here, since this
chapter is a kind of extended biography of Moses, and so the Calf story is only
one of many parallels to be found between Tā-Hā
and the biblical book of

The Golden Calf between Bible and Qur’an: Scripture, Polemic, and Exegesis from Late Antiquity to Islam.
Michael E. Pregill, Oxford University Press (2020). © Michael E. Pregill.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198852421.001.0001
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         ’ 13

Exodus.) The account of the Calf found in Sūrah 20 (vv. 83–97) touches on
many of the same themes as Exodus 32, though there is no analogue here to
the Levites’ violent suppression of the idolaters, which resonates in another
qur’anic passage instead (Q 2:51–4). Overall, given its prominence in both
Bible and Qur’an, it is hardly an overstatement to say that the Golden Calf
serves as the ultimate symbol of the sin of idolatry in all three of the great
scriptural traditions of the West, readily recognizable by Muslims, Jews, and
Christians alike as a tangible sign of the Israelites’ faithlessness and betrayal
of the covenant.
When we look closer, however, we find that these communities have
historically disagreed in significant ways over the ultimate meaning of
Israel’s sin with the Calf. For Jews, the story is a symbol of Israel’s susceptibility
to temptation, only one of many occasions in the biblical narrative in which
they transgress and stray from the path of fidelity to their unique covenant
with God. The Calf thus provides the Jewish faithful with what a tradition in
the Babylonian Talmud terms a “pretext for penitence”: a reminder that no
one is perfect and that God is willing to accept sincere repentance for even the
most heinous transgressions.¹ While later Jewish readers would certainly
identify more with Moses and his faithful Levites than with the Israelites
who lapsed into idolatry, a sense of collective responsibility also pervades
Jewish understandings of the event, and so interpretation of the story is
often colored by empathy for the transgressors, reflecting a desire to under-
stand the rationale and circumstances behind their sin.
On the other hand, for many Christian exegetes, the story of the Golden
Calf signals nothing less than a complete disruption of the original covenant
with Israel, proof of the total disconfirmation of the Jews. This reading of the
narrative is strongly conditioned by the influential representation of the
episode in one passage of the New Testament in particular, Stephen’s speech
in Acts 7. This supersessionist reading clears the way for a new covenant
between God and the Church as Verus Israel: Christian exegetes position the
Church as heirs to the legacy of Moses and other patriarchs and prophets
whose teachings would be realized and fulfilled in the Church, while their
literal followers, the Israelites/Jews, proved themselves unworthy through their
idolatry. Unlike Jewish exegetes, Christian readers of the narrative have little
motivation to view it empathetically.
However, interpreting the Calf episode as a total annulment of the covenant
with Israel presented some difficulties for the Christian interpreter as well.

¹ b. AZ 4a.
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14       ’

As we shall see, representing the making of the Calf as irrevocably disrupting

the covenantal process between God and Israel is problematic, because if such
a disruption did occur with the making of the Calf, one must explain why God
continued His relationship with Israel after these events, communicating with
His people through the prophets and repeatedly calling them to repentance. If
the Calf represents the complete severing of the tie between God and Israel,
one wonders why God would even bother to complete the revelation of the
Torah to Moses, as occurs right after this idolatrous episode in the Exodus
narrative. Questions such as these seem to have nagged at Christian exegetes
and imposed certain limits on how they could construe the Calf narrative’s
significance for Israel.
For their part, on the basis of the qur’anic narrative, Muslim exegetes
promote an interpretation of the story that is rather similar to that of
Christians, namely that it demonstrates the ingratitude of Israel—and, by
extension, their descendants the Jews—for God’s beneficence and their innate
predisposition to sin and disobedience.² However, while both Christians and
Muslims see the story as emblematic of the Jews’ propensity to idolatry,
Muslim exegetes generally do not cast the sin of the Calf as the single event
that ruptured the covenantal relationship between God and Israel. Rather, in
keeping with a recurring motif in the Qur’an, Muslim commentators are
usually inclined to portray this sin as an example of the Jews’ perpetual
tendency to rebel against God and defy His prophets, manifest on a variety
of occasions and not just during their idolatry with the Calf.
Thus, while for many Christian exegetes Israel’s worship of the Calf is a
decisive moment in sacred history, for Muslim exegetes, it is a sign of a
perennially manifest inner perversity. Notably, this is quite similar to the
conception of the sin maintained in both the Bible and Jewish tradition; the
prophets of ancient Israel would likely not disagree with the Muslim assess-
ment that the episode of the Calf reflects a chronic propensity towards bad
behavior on the part of a thankless people. It is this persistent tendency
towards sin and ingratitude that paves the way for another community to
replace Israel as the chosen people—though Muslim readers naturally see the

² The qur’anic term Banū Isrāʾīl is ambiguous. It is often used in connection with the ancient history
of Israel and so might be rendered “Israelites,” in clear reference to people who lived in the past;
however, sometimes the term refers to Israel as a generic identifier for the followers of the Torah,
without a distinction being implied between past and present (e.g. 2:83), but often with a specific claim
of lineage or inheritance being overt (e.g. 40:53). I have thus generally opted to translate or allude to
qur’anic and Islamic statements about Banū Isrāʾīl with the term “Israel,” preserving the ambiguity. See
Rubin, “Children of Israel.”
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Tempest Elizabeth

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339

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Archdeacon of

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