Canaanite bull worship directly hails from Egypt/Mesopotamia. Lucifer/Baal worship stems from Osiris/Nimrod myth. During the age of Taurus, numerous civilisations began worshiping bulls.
From the Minoans to worship of Gugalanna, the heavenly bull of Sumer, bulls were held in high esteem during this time. In India, the earliest evidence of bull worship begins around this age (Pasupathi is an early depiction of the Hindu god Shiva). In Egypt, one of the major cults of this age was the worship of Apis, the heavenly bull.
The Indo-Europeans have many ancient stories related to bulls as the originator of the world and they may have worshipped bulls in their earliest stage. They began expanding around Eurasia during this time.
But bull worship is not necessarily tied to this age by mystical powers. Recall that Catalhoyuk and many other neolithic towns also demonstrated bull worship as well as depictions of bulls at the sacred site of Gobekli Tepe.
Ancients have not always had a restricted view of incarnation. A god might choose to become a tree, a rock, a lightning bolt, or even an animal. Incarnation merely means a divinity has taken physical form.
Some animals are considered holy just by their association with a god or goddess. The Egyptian pantheon did not lack for zoomorphic deities with the heads of various animals. Their god Apis, however, was wholly bull and wholly god.
The New Kingdom of Egypt conquered and ruled Canaan for centuries. During this time, the Egyptians' main god was Amun. When Amun was associated with fertility and agriculture, he was merged with Min, called Amun-Min, and used Min's bull symbolism.
This is how the Canaanites and later the Jews came to worship an agricultural bull god. All Mesopotamian and Anatolian gods with a bull association are lightning-throwing storm gods (Adad, Ishkur, Teshub, Tarhunna).
Alexander was told by an oracle in Egypt that he was the son of Amun, a horned god the Greeks syncretized as a form of Zeus. Alexander was depicted with horns on coinage and even wore horns as part of his ceremonial regalia. And of course, Alexander was deified in Ptolemaic Egypt.
Canaanite polytheism has been regarded by some as consisting of a four-tiered set of deities: the two chief gods, their seven primary attendants, the messenger gods, and the minor craft gods.
Yahweh was probably worshipped as a bull figure. This may have developed from earlier Canaanite traditions associating first El, and then Baal, with the bull.
"El" and "Ba'al" are generic proto-Canaanite names for "deity" and "divine master" respectively. It's used for divine beings that are the "kings" of other nations, but it's also used to describe the unique, uncreated source of everything that began to exist.
El was recognised as the king of heaven, the head of the assembly of the Elohim, the great divine judge, the 'Father of all the Gods' and the main deity of harvest and agriculture. Moreover, he was associated with the bull as a symbol of his male potency and known as the 'Father of Years', which means he was the god of time.
In the Levantine regions of the Iron Age, El was worshipped as the Supreme Father and the Most High by the Phoenicians, the Philistines and the Canaanites among other Semitic peoples, and his cult was characterized by sacrifice, both animal and human.
El was a warlike and bloodthirsty god who lusted after sacrificial blood. Interestingly the same pre-Israelite deity was represented by a winged solar disk with a star in its center.
The story of the golden calf is a rejection of earlier pagan elements of the faith. One or more golden calf statues might have been involved in the veneration of Yahweh in Israel, depending on what we make of the references in Hosea.
The golden calf heresy was used by the authors of Exodus as a template for a new story about Israel's apostasy in the wilderness, using 1 Kings as a literary source. Basically it was an addition added later on (by the Levites) to the Exodus narrative that was intended to smear rivals.
The various temples and cultic institutions of Israel (the Northern Kingdom) were understood, however anachronistically, as perversions of the proper Yahweh cult in Jerusalem by the Deuteronomist writers.
The Judean Deuteronomists depicted the monarchy of Israel as wicked from its inception by blaming its heterodox cultic sites, priesthood, and festivals on the legendary founder of the monarchy, Jeroboam I — who may have been an invention based on Jeroboam II.
Around the time of Jeroboam II, Israel had developed a tradition of Egyptian origins for itself and Yahweh, apparently in competition to a tradition involving Jacob as a founder figure.
At some point, worship of the golden calf and its connection with Egypt became a specific locus for this derision, though such references stand in tension with other stories in 1–2 Kings and may be later interpolations.
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