BULL EL AND HIS AVATARS : THE IRON AGE LEGACY OF AN UGARITIAN TROPE

DRAFT
N. WYATT (Edinburgh)

The paper resumes and develops a discussion from the Xella Festschrift1.

Cattle have played a significant part in human economies since Upper Palaeolithic times2. With
domestication and selective breeding, but continued hunting of the wild species, the original wild
form of cattle, the aurochs, which originally ranged across Eurasia from India to the Atlantic,
including the Arabian peninsula and North Africa, finally became extinct3.
A recent study by Alain Testart has taken scholars to task for failing to distinguish between
the various functions of such representations as the archaeological record has preserved, from
hunting trophies to feasting memorials, without even due account of the sex of the animals
involved4. While the interpretation of ancient art before the advent of writing must always
remain provisional, the materials considered here fall firmly within the well-documented fields
of Late Bronze and Iron Age ideology and religion, and can thus to some extent at least be
checked against the written record, however tendentious this may be from an objective
viewpoint. The degree of metaphoricity of ancient beliefs will always remain a fairly closed book
to us, but it probably had as wide a scope as modern belief-systems, ranging from the naïve to the
sophisticated. But the position I adopt in analysing the material below is to see a blend of these
two extremes at work, where the subtlety is often subliminal and subconscious, and we have to
accept the “surface naïvety” at face-value, so that when an Iron-Age people spoke of a bull-god,
they meant just that, and not simply a lively figure, a “mere metaphor”, to convey the sense of

1
Wyatt—Wyatt 2013.
2
Wyatt—Wyatt 2013: 431-33. See also Rice 1998. Important recent discussions not included in previous
bibliography are Watanabe 2006: 57-75 and Testart 2010: 43-113. Some may see in this paper a desperate
attempt to disprove “Tristram’s Law”, which states that “An ounce of fact is worth a ton of theory” (H. B.
Tristram, The Fauna and Flora of Palestine [The Survey of Western Palestine. 1885] 155). Such harsh critics are
referred to S. Arbesman, The Half-Life of Facts. Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date (New York:
Penguin, 2012). It was on the strength of the Tristram quotation that I offered an early version of this paper to
the Oriental Institute in Oxford under the title “A Ton of Angry Pot-Roast” (also a homage to Professor Thomas
Lehrer).
3
Vuure 2005: 53–54 concluded that the “aurochs may be considered to have disappeared from the individual
countries of the Middle East and North Africa roughly in the course of the first millennium BC”. The last known
female was killed in Poland ca 1620: van Vuure 2005: 83, 98; Wyatt—Wyatt 2013: 418 n. 4.
4
Testart 2010. I think he was too scathing of Hodder, and had too narrow a definition of religion. For a recent
account of religion, giving a balanced account of the significance of aurochs trophies, see now Hodder 2016: 93-
104. And when Testart further asserted (2010: 72) that “dans aucune religion connue, il n’existe pas de dieu-
taureau. Il n’en existe pas plus dans les religions du Proche-Orient ancien…”, in the light of the materials
discussed previously and in this paper, he was simply wrong. He seems to have contradicted himself in writing
of the horned caps (“tiares”) of winged bull statues that “celles-ci ne sont que les attributs des dieux”, as though
the very fact disqualifies them from divine status (!), while his view of the golden calf as a caricature (both
observations, 2010: 73) by writers not understanding (or not caring to understand) the religious views of their
opponents is belied by the evidence for the biblical cu!t. The writers were only too well informed, but were
writing from a changing, iconoclastic, perspective. Testart’s comparison of the Çatal Höyük bucrania with
Assamese and Indonesian trophy displays is fine as far as it goes, but distinguishes too sharply and indeed
artificially (à l’européenne!) between religion and general culture. A seamless web is a better figure.

1
power manifested by the god5. In other words, there is no justification for modern scholars to
insist on the purely figurative and demythologised nature of the language.
UGARIT
(1) Ugaritic vocabulary
The written evidence of most direct significance in our present discussion, before turning to
biblical material, is provided by the Ugaritic texts. The following discussion concentrates on
vocabulary used, and theological and iconographic aspects as they emerge. They should meet
Testart’s category of the “religious”. Corresponding to the Akkadian term rīmu, rēmu
(representing Sumerian gud.am = “wild bull”), the Ugaritic term for the aurochs is written rum
(diptotic: nominative and accusative) and rumm (plural). It occurs a number of times6. The
singular form appears in KTU 1.10 iii 20-21, 35-36. The passages read:
7
ibr tld [l b c l] A mighty bull she bore [to Baal],
8
wrum lr [kb crpt] and an aurochs to the Cha[rioteer of the Clouds].
k.ỉbr. lbcl[.] yld For a mighty bull is born to Baal,
w rum. l rkb[.] crpt and an aurochs to the Charioteer of the Clouds!

This example is useful for fixing the poetic equivalents in use. In the word-pair ibr || rum, the first
term should be understood to refer to the aurochs identified in the second, the generic term
(“bovid”) preceding the specific (“Bos primigenius”). This will have a bearing on the significance
of Hebrew ’ābîr, ’abbîr and other usage below. In addition, the parallelism ṯr || ibr also occurs in
the plural in KTU 1.12 i 30-32, of El’s offspring, where no doubt they are to be understood as
aurochs. This provides the threefold poetic equivalence ibr = ṯr = rum.
As we shall see in discussing Hebrew usage below, the more general Hebrew term šôr, Ugaritic
ṯr, can, in addition to its primary sense of “bull”, explicitly denote the aurochs, as here, and as it
undoubtedly does in the divine title šōr ’ēl, where this has been recognised. This provides further
circumstantial support for the same understanding in Ugaritic, as in the instances considered
here. We should therefore recognise in the epithet ṯr il occurring in the poetic texts a reference
to El as the “aurochs god”9. We should also see in the name of the rāpi’u Tharu (ṯr: “Bull”) in KTU
1.161.7, 23 a similar reference, the name to be construed as hypocoristic, to be expected in view of
the royal usage in Mesopotamia (royal names such as Ditanu, Rim-Sin, and Amar-Sin), and

5
It goes without saying that I believe that the religious mentality exhibited in the evidence below, both
Ugaritian, Israelite and Judahite, was thoroughly mythological, not in the “primitive mentality” paradigm of
Lévy-Bruhl, but in a dual-function way, in which thoroughly rational and practical thought coexisted with
supernatural beliefs. I see no justification for claims that the latter religious manifestations “demythologised”
their traditions, which strikes me as an apologetic rather than a strictly academic argument.
6
See further Wyatt—Wyatt 2013: 431-33.
7
Wyatt—Wyatt 2013: 431 n. 81.
8
Wyatt 2002: 159. The passage is obscure: either Anat gives birth, or a cow acting as a substitute for the goddess
does so.
9
The expression may be interpreted in either of two ways: firstly, the option followed here, as the divine name
El preceded by the title “Bull”, thus “Bull El”, or secondly as “the Divine Bull”, the element il being taken as
epithetal, as is perhaps the case in the expression cgl il in KTU 1.3 iii 44 (“the Divine Calf ”; cf. Pardee CS i 252,
“Ilu’s calf ”; Wyatt 2002: 80: “El’s calf ”). Numbers 23:22, 24:8, discussed below, and identifying El as an aurochs,
presupposes the prehistory of the cult evidenced in Ugarit.

2
bearing in mind Tharu’s membership of the “assembly of Didanu”, since the latter name also
means “aurochs”10.
The derivative feminine form, rimt, denotes a stringed musical instrument, indicated by the
parallelism in KTU 1.101.17 to be a knr, “lyre”. This term may be confidently restored at KTU 1.3 iii
3-4 and 1.7.21. I have proposed11 that this term relates to either the skull of the aurochs being used
as the soundbox, or to its horns as the framework holding the strings in position. The ceremonial
lyres recovered from Mesopotamian sites, and illustrated on the “standard of Ur” display an
aurochs’ head as a decoration on the end of the soundbox. This invites an interpretation along
the lines noted previously12, of expressing kinship through use of parts of the animal and access
to their characteristics. So an “aurochs-shaped instrument” was not simply shaped according to
a fashionable decorative cliché, but was believed to access a spiritual realm (of transcendence, of
ancestral powers, and so forth) represented, even reified, in the iconographic form of the aurochs.
(2) El the Bull God
An important idiom describing the Ugaritian pantheon, although occurring only once in
surviving material, is šbcm bnm aṯrt, “the seventy sons (or children) of Athirat” (KTU 1.4 vi 46). It
is complementary to another formula, identifying her as qnyt ilm, “the mother of the gods” (KTU
1.4 iii 30, 35, iv 32). It is generally agreed that Athirat was the consort of El, so that the gods may
also have been considered to be *šbcm bnm il, “the seventy sons (or children) of El”, or more
probably *šbcm bnm ṯr il, “the seventy sons (or children) of Bull El”, on the basis of the usage about
to be discussed, although this particular idiom has not been found so far in Ugarit. Yet it does
have a biblical echo, to be considered in our further discussion below.
The only deity who is consistently called bn il(m mt), “the son of El”, is Mot (sixteen or
seventeen times: KTU 1.4 vii 45, viii 30, 1.5 i 7, 12-13, [34], ii 8, 11, 13-14, 19, 20, 1.6 ii 25, 31, v 9, vi 7, 9,
24, 30). So insistent is the usage in this particular case that it is perhaps to be construed as a
theological strategy designed to subordinate that most intractable of realities, Death, to divine
authority. The same relationship is also in one instance asserted of the other cosmic
troublemaker, Yam (KTU 1.1 iv 14: šm bny yw il[m], “the name of my son (Yam) is ‘Lord of the
go[ds]’”).
Another expression used with regard to several other deities in the Baal Cycle, is ṯr il aby/h/k
(“Bull El my/your/his/her father”). The following examples occur, with regard to Anat (KTU 1.1 ii
[18, || ḥtk lṭpn], 1.3 iv 54, v 10); Athtar (KTU 1.2 iii 17, 19); Baal (KTU 1.3 v 35, 1.4 i [5], iv 47, 1.17 i 23—
in the Baal Cycle in contrast or conflict with the formula bn dgn, “son of Dagan” also used of him);
Kothar (in three restored passages: KTU 1.1 ii [–x], iii [5], 26, 1.2 iii [6]); Mot (KTU 1.6 vi 26-27);
Shapsh (KTU 1.6 iv 10); Yam (KTU 1.2 iii 22); perhaps an unidentified deity (KTU 1.1 v 22-23?) and
possibly even Athirat at KTU 1.4 ii 10, where there is a textual problem13. To be fathered by Bull
El is a mark of divinity, a point not to be forgotten in our further discussion.

10
Wyatt 2010, 53. Ditanu/Didanu of the Ugaritic texts appears to be the Didanu of the Assyrian king-list (ANET
564, CS i 463-64) and the Hammurabi dynasty (Finkelstein 1966, Lambert 1968, Spronk 1999, Wyatt 2012: 262-
63 etc.).
11
Wyatt 2002: 76 n. 36. Cf. Wyatt—Wyatt 2013: 433 n. 91.
12
Wyatt—Wyatt 2013: 433.
13
See Wyatt 2002, 94 n. 103, where in lieu of the seemingly damaged text, a partial conflation of two titles, I
proposed a restoration as follows:
tcpp tr il <abh She implored Bull El <her father,
tšal lṭpn il> dpid she begged the Wise One> the perceptive <god>,
tǵẓy bny bnwt she entreated the Creator of Creatures.

3
(3) El Father of the King
The expression ṯr il abh/k is also used of King Kirta a number of times (KTU 1.14 i 41, ii 6, 24, iv 6,
v [44]). Two other formulae are also used of Kirta, emphasising the fact that as a monarch he is
somehow to be seen as divine. Thus the expression ab adm, “the Father of Man”, a title of El, is
best construed as referring to his paternity of the king, who ideologically is “Primal Man”: KTU
1.14 iii 32, 47, vi 13, 32, and possibly to be restored elsewhere. The third idiom used of the king
occurs in three passages, KTU 1.16 i 9-13, 20-23, ii 48-49. The first and third of these have textual
problems, and I cite the second instance here14. It reads thus:
20 ikm.yrgm.bn il 21 krt. How can it be said that Kirta is the son of El,
špḥ.lṭpn 22 wqdš. the offspring of the Wise and Holy One?
uilm.tmtn Or do the gods die,
23 špḥ.lṭpn.lyḥ the offspring of the Wise One not live?

The king’s divinity in Ugarit is evident from these three usages, it may also be inferred from
various ritual contexts15, and for purposes of the present discussion, his post-mortem divinity is
also to be presupposed when he joins the rpum, the Rapiuma (= the Rephaim of the Hebrew
tradition), known collectively as the qbṣ ddn, “the Assembly of Didanu”, where the name links the
Ugaritian dynasty with the early Assyrian monarchy, and tellingly cites a personal name,
Didanu/Ditanu, which means “aurochs”. This honour appears to be promised to Kirta (while
alive?): KTU 1.15 iii 1-4, 13-1516.
The aurochs is thus closely associated with both gods and men (specifically, kings) in
Ugaritian religion and ideology, through the primary agency of El the Bull god, where his title
“Bull”, tr, is to be interpreted as referring to the aurochs.
My overall argument depends on a further step in this analysis; that is, while recognising that
profound changes occur in the latter over the centuries, I see a substantial continuity between
the thought-processes and practical outcomes in religious tropes of Ugarit and those of Israel and
Judah to the south. If we had more adequate remains of Phoenician culture, of which we have
only infrequent fragmentary glimpses, it would be arguable that the continuity also includes
those intervening territories and intervening time.

ISRAEL AND JUDAH

(4) Hebrew Vocabulary
The Hebrew term for the aurochs (rĕ’ēm, variant rēm) corresponds to Akkadian rīmu, rēmu, and
Ugaritic rum. It is used in a number of passages. In the previous joint discussion, the following
passages were treated: Psalm 22:21-22 (EVV 20-21); Psalm 29:6; Psalm 92:11 (EVV 10: a royal psalm?);
Job 39:9-10, etc. That discussion will not be repeated here. Numbers 23:22 and 24:8 will however
be examined.
The animal is a metaphor for strength, and being wild and untamed, also for autonomy and
freedom of action. There need not be any specific ideological or religious content in all instances,
though in view of the more focussed instances to be dealt with below, we may doubt that it is an

There is no reason for surprise at El’s wife being called his daughter: the mythological complex finding expression in
KTU 1.23 and a number of biblical passages such as the episode of Lot and his daughters (Genesis 19:30-38): see
Wyatt 1994b.
14
For discussion of the problems involved see Wyatt 2007a: 757-59.
15
On the divinisation of the king in the cult, see Wyatt 1999.
16
In KTU 1.161 the form is ddn; in 1.15 it is dtn.

4
entirely neutral usage. It is used on account of its further resonances. This is all the more
compelling because the literary sources themselves are explicitly religious, and may therefore be
expected to use religious tropes.
Perhaps a useful place to begin our further enquiries is with the ancient kerygma preserved in
Numbers.
Numbers 23:22 (cf. 24:8) reads:
17
’ēl môṣî’ām mimmiṣrā’îm El, bringing them out of Egypt
kĕtôcăpōt rĕ’ēm lô is to them as* the horns of an aurochs. (or: *“indeed”: kaph veritatis)

Two things are striking about this couplet: firstly the god of the exodus is not Yahweh, as other
parts of the tradition assume, but El. This alterity cannot simply be dismissed as merely a poetic
variant, particularly in view of the direction in which our further enquiry will lead us. Even more
surprisingly, El’s tauriform identity, the aurochs, is seemingly credited with the deed, the first of
many passages which bely the opposition usually understood to obtain between the aniconic
Yahweh and his Canaanite, theriomorphic rivals, El and particularly Baal18. El is here identified
as an aurochs (emphatically, if the kaph of kĕtôcăpōt rĕ’ēm is read as kaph veritatis19). The
implications are interesting for the deity’s iconography. It means that when he is identified as
šôr ’ēl (the common enough Ugaritic epitheton, as ṯr il), the generic term šôr refers specifically to
the aurochs (rĕ’ēm), as proposed above for the Ugaritic title, and not to any domesticated species.
Numbers 23:22 reflects an ancient kerygma that El was the god of the exodus tradition, before its
appropriation by Yahweh, or perhaps rather (to nuance it slightly) before the cult title Yahweh
prevailed in the expression of the kerygma. Psalm 106:19-22, for instance, alluding to the golden
calf, states that the Israelites forgot El who had saved them from Egypt:
yacăsû-cēgel bĕḥōrēb They made a calf in the desert/at Horeb.
wayyištaḥăwû lĕmassēkāh and prostrated themselves before a cast image…
šākĕḥû ’ēl môṣî’ām They forgot El who had delivered them…

17
Numbers 24:8 differs from 23:22 only in the use of the singular suffix here. Note the paranomasia
mimmiṣrā’îm... rĕ’ēm, inviting just a suggestion that of course Egypt would be the place of the aurochs-god’s
epiphany. Its very name invites the divine action.
18
Herbert Niehr (Niehr 1995: 30-31) saw Yahweh as primarily a storm-god, citing many appropriate textual
illustrations, seeing his tauriform statues as related to those of Baal. However, the tradition of El as the exodus
god, and the image of šôr ’ēl as that of Jeroboam’s rejectionist cult shows the situation to be more nuanced. As
for divine mountain-dwellings, and his argument that Yahweh dwells on Mount Zion as Baal dwells on Mount
Saphon (the two mountains identified in Psalm 48:3: see Wyatt 1996: 31), it seems that El too dwelt on Mount
Saphon, since his throne is on “Mount Throne” (ǵr ks, a toponym cited at KTU 1.1 i [x], ii [24], [x], iii 12, [16] (the
instance in iii 12 allowing the tentative restoration of the others in extended formulae). The Greek name of the
mountain, Kasion, derives from Ugaritic ks—being a straight transcription and hellenising of the form—rather
than deriving from ḫazzi as usually cited. “Mount Throne” was probably Anti-Kasion. See discussion in Wyatt
1995a. Niehr’s position as outlined above took up Rendtorff’s (1966) critique of seeing Ugaritian evidence as
the “unobjectionable starting point” for assessing the rise of the early cult of Yahweh, arguing that first
millennium evidence should be paramount (Niehr 1995: 46). But the Ugaritian (and specifically Ugaritic
[language]) evidence cannot be ignored, and the first-millennium evidence is extremely scanty, and of itself
sheds scarcely any direct light on the problem. It is fair to say that the last fifty years has seen a considerable
rehabilitation of Ugarit as an important starting point, since Rendtorff wrote. The correct perspective is to see
Ugaritic not as the direct source of Israelite and Judahite theological ideas, but as an important Bronze Age
witness to the general cultural context.
19
The kaph veritatis, if this is the construction rather than the sense usually recognised here (“as”, “like”), would
indicate not comparison but identity. See Waltke—O’Connor 1990, 203.

5
The epithet šōr ’ēl has also been discerned at Hosea 8:6:
kî mî šōr ’ēl For who is Bull El?

The MT phrase kî miyyiśrā’ēl (“for from Israel”) makes no sense in the immediate context of Hosea
7:16-8:6, an attack on the bull-cult. H. Tur-Sinai’s proposal to regroup the consonants ky myśr’l as
ky my šr ’l: kî mî šôr ’ēl (the sin [ś] being read as šin [š]) immediately makes good sense20.
The same epithet has also been read in Deuteronomy 32:8 by Jan Joosten21. He proposed a
similar consonantal regrouping in the expression bny yśr’l (bĕnê yiśrā’ēl) to read bny šr ’l (bĕnê šōr
’ēl). Since LXX already read a divine reference here (ἀγγέλων Θεοῦ), rather than the “Israel” of
MT, this proposal is compelling, especially in view of Tur-Sinai’s previous discussion. We thus
have the reconstructed text:
yaṣṣēb gĕbulōt cammîm he set up the boundaries of the nations
lĕmispar bĕnê šōr ’ēl in accordance with the number of the sons of Bull El.

This passage, while at odds with the strict monotheism (or better, monolatry) enjoined by the
MT text of Deuteronomy, chimes with the polytheistic implications of both the LXX and the
4QDeutq versions of 32:43 in the same poetic composition22. The Qumran version inserts a colon
to the verse, not found in MT, reading:
whstḥww lw kl ’lhym let all the gods prostrate themselves before him!

20
Tur-Sinai 1950/1964, i cols 31–33, followed by NEB (REB lost its nerve!); Miller 1967: 422 n. 46; Motzki 1975, 471;
Schökel—Diaz 1980: 898; Korpel 1990: 537; de Moor 1997: 274 n. 11; N. Wyatt 2005a: 85; and Chalmers 2008: 130.
Note also the theophoric names cglyw, “Yahweh is a calf”, and ’bryhw, “Yahweh is a bull”: Korpel 1990: 541.
21
Joosten 2007.

22
Skehan 1954. See also Heiser 2001. The whole of verse 43 in Hebrew and Greek versions, reads as follows:
V ENGLISH MT CONSONANTAL 4QDEUT Q LXX

a Nations/Heavens, hrnynw gwym cmw hrnynw šmym cmw εὐφράνθητε οὐρανοί ἅµα αὐτῷ
rejoice with him,
b let all the gods/sons of ——————— whšthww lw kl ’lhym καὶ προσκυνησάτωσαν αὐτῷ πάντες
God pay him υἱοὶ θεοῦ
homage!
c Nations, rejoice with ——————— ——————— εὐφράνθητε ἔθνη µετὰ τοῦ λαοῦ αὐτοῦ
his people,
d Let God’s angels tell of ——————— ——————— καὶ ἐνισχυσάτωσαν αὐτῷ πάντες
his power! ἄγγελοι θεοῦ
e He will surely avenge ky dm cbdyw yqwm ky dm bnyw yqwm ὅτι τὸ αἷµα τῶν υἱῶν αὐτοῦ ἐκδικᾶται
the blood of his
servants/sons,
f he will have wnqm yšyb lṣryw wnqm yšyb lṣryw καὶ ἐκδικήσει καὶ ἀνταποδώσει δίκην
vengeance on τοῖς ἐχθροῖς
his foes,
g he will repay those ——————— wlmśn’yw yšlm καὶ τοῖς µισοῦσιν ἀνταποδώσει
who hate him
h and purify his people’s wkpr ’dmtw cmw wykpr ’dmt cmw καὶ ἐκκαθαριεῖ κύριος τὴν γῆν τοῦ λαοῦ
country. αὐτοῦ

6
corresponding however to the LXX reading of the same passage, where there appears to be a
modified repetition (43b, d respectively):
καὶ προσκυνησάτωσαν αὐτῷ and let them prostrate themselves before him,
πάντες υἱοὶ θεοῦ all the sons of God…
καὶ ἐνισχυσάτωσαν αὐτῷ and strengthen themselves before him,
πάντες ἄγγελοι θεοῦ all the angels of God…

While these lines may be read as complementary (“sons of God… and angels of God”), it is
possible that the second bicolon, which echoes the first, nevertheless reduces the gods (“sons of
God” are gods) to angels (who are less than God), thus showing it to be the later of two versions
preserved in the text, illustrating a redactional process under way, of systematically reducing the
pantheon from divine to supernatural, but sub-divine, figures. If this is the correct reading of the
situation, the text preserves a moment in the process which we would expected to be edited out
before publication, but which has apparently slipped past the censor’s red pen!23 Alternatively,
retaining the full text, we may see a cumulative listing of all the divine and sub-divine powers of
the heavenly court.
In the previous study, we observed that the insight offered by the Tur-Sinai and Joosten
analysis “raises the intriguing possibility that the formula generally used in the wilderness period
narratives for the Israelites as bĕnê yiśrā’ēl, ‘sons of Israel’, may owe something to an older
theological view of the people, as descendants of the deity (‘sons of Bull El’)”24. It is this question
which is addressed in the rest of this paper.
Several biblical passages employ the term ’abbîr—sometimes in the form ’ābîr, but the two
are consonantally identical—pairing it with yiśrā’ēl or yacăqôb, “the Mighty Bull of Israel or
Jacob”: Genesis 49:24cd (’ăbîr yacăqôb || rōceh ’eben yiśrā’ēl), an interesting passage of which we
shall have more to say below; Psalm 132:5 ( yhwh || ’abbîr yacăqôb), Isaiah 1:24 (hā’ādôn yhwh
ṣĕbā’ôt || ’ăbîr yiśrā’ēl), 10:13 (... ka’bbîr), 49:26 and 60:16 ( yhwh || ’ăbîr yacăqôb). This evidence
shows the usage continuing into the exilic period, and its assumption of the identity of El with
Yahweh, typical of Judah, but not of Israel.
The species of the golden calf of (northern) Israelite tradition, a literary construction, an exilic
midrash based on the putative historical tradition of Jeroboam’s reform (1 Kings 12) is not
specified, being merely designated cēgel, “calf”, perhaps as a parody to belittle the cult25. But in
view of Hosea’s tirade on bull-worship (Hosea 7:16-8:6) and the traditions also cited above, in
Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Psalm 106, we should probably understand it to be an aurochs,
representing El, in line with Tur-Sinai’s and Joosten’s observations, and my 1992 discussion of the
significance of Jeroboam’s reform as a rejection of the cult of Yahweh in favour of a return to that
of El26.

23
Intriguingly, another Qumran fragment, 4QDeutj, does not read as 32:8, bny yśr’l, representing on Joosten’s
argument an older bny šr ’l, but simply, as Skehan and Joosten noted, bny ’lhm. Joosten argued that this version
chose to omit the problematic šr from the text (rather than reread it as part of yśr’l). If he was right, we see part
of a reforming policy, censoring offensive elements, in both places (but missing in the instance just cited). Such
an ongoing strategy is to be posited behind many of the scribal variants to be noted.
24
Wyatt—Wyatt 2013: 436 n. 103.
25
See Wyatt—Wyatt 2013: 437-38 n. 108. Contrary to the view expressed there, the personal name “Calf of
Yô/Yahweh” is perhaps sustainable in view of the occurrence of “Calf of Sin” (Amar dSin) as a Mesopotamian
royal name in the third dynasty of Ur. Amar-Sin was son of Shulgi.
26
Wyatt 1992 = 2005a, 72–91.

7
(5) Suggestions for some Further Incidences of šōr ’ēl
Let us return to the suggestion that at times the word Israel (yiśrā’ēl) is perhaps preferably to be
construed as šôr ’ēl, as proposed for Hosea 8:6 and Deuteronomy 32:8. It seems to me that the
insight has interesting implications beyond these isolated instances. If it may be regarded as
probable that these two occurrences are genuine, and not mere academic speculation, then we
should expect to find other instances, especially in view of the considerable number of references
to taurine imagery for both El and Yahweh already isolated. After all, if this is the correct original
reading in these two cases, then it is implausible that it should be construed as anything other
than an important ancient witness to the early perception of the national deity.
The task is made easier by increasing recognition that we should not look to one single Ur-
text for the books of the Hebrew Bible. At all stages of its transmission it is evident that the
tradition remained fluid on key points, and no one manuscript tradition enjoyed a monopoly.
The survival of so many “awkward” texts, departing from what some might hope to be a canonical
norm, shows a remarkable vitality in the tradition, and a concern, even if unconscious, to retain
ancient insights. The symbolic power attached to the aurochs has evidently not disappeared, and
it must be one of the oldest natural symbols in human cultural experience. And as we have
argued, the iconography belongs in the Levantine context fairly consistently to El27, the chief deity
of the Ugaritic pantheon (as Ilu), as of the premonotheistic Israelite and Judahite pantheons, in
the latter tending to coalesce with Yahweh. It is with this appreciation in mind that we shall take
further steps in our enquiry. Firstly, let us see whether any further passages will bear the Tur-
Sinai—Joosten treatment. Among possible candidates for such an analysis are the following.
1) Genesis 33:20. Returning home on his way to Bethel (ch. 35), and following his nocturnal
confrontation with an unknown assailant (32:23-33), receipt of the new name Israel, and naming
the place Peniel (32:31)—thus implicitly identifying his anonymous assailant as El28—Jacob (sic!)
erects an altar at Shechem, MT reading:
wayyaṣṣeb-šām mizbēaḥ wayyiqrā’-lô ’ēl ’ĕlōhê yiśrā’ēl
And there he set up an altar and invoked (it as?) “El the god of Israel”.

The text is problematic. Perhaps the lô, “to or on him” should be read as the particle lĕ: *lĕ’ēl. Is
it an altar that Jacob establishes (“sets up”), or is he perhaps naming a stela (maṣṣēbāh a preferable
reading: and note *wayyaṣṣeb 29)? The text in any event looks slightly overloaded. This invites us
to consider other options. For the conclusion of the verse LXX reads
και ἐπικαλέσατο τὸν θεὸν Iσραηλ and he invoked the god (of ) Israel

The phrase τὸν θεὸν Iσραηλ is naturally enough read as genitival, if we bear the MT in mind, “the
god of Israel”, but this is not a required reading. If we are to discern the implicit use of the gentilic
here (“the god of Israel” as the national rather than a personal god, the common usage) it is

27
Not exclusively, of course. Baal too is taurine, and the animal appears widely in the Mesopotamian, Hittite and
Egyptian iconographic repertoire, as discussed in Wyatt—Wyatt 2013. The Israelite bull, as appearing in the
Exodus 32 and 1 Kings 12 tradition, is however emphatically linked to El, not Baal, as indicated by all the
evidence discussed here. None of this evidence justifies any link with Baal (sc. the storm god), pace Niehr (n.
18), which is not to deny in principle possible storm-god elements in the general theological development of
Yahweh.
28
The toponym pĕnî’ēl (consonantal pny’l: v. 32 has pĕnû’ēl—pnw’l) is explained on the basis of pĕnî ’ĕlōhîm (kî-
rā’îtî ’ĕlōhîm pānîm ’el-pānîm), which as a folk etymology avoids the real name.
29
So BHS apparatus, with appropriate alteration of lô to lāh.

8
anachronistic within the narrative. It is also possible to construe it as “the god Israel”, but the
final word now requires further explication. This suggests that we may reconstruct a slightly
shorter Hebrew text, which, taking the anachronism into account, is to be read as one of the
following:
wayyiqrā’-lô *’ĕlōhîm yiśrā’ēl and he invoked the god {of } Israel
or: wayyiqrā’ * lē’lōhîm šōr ’ēl and he invoked the god Bull El,
or even just: wayyiqrā’ * lĕšōr ’ēl and he invoked Bull El

Just how short the original text was is a matter for conjecture. Perhaps MT has amalgamated two
earlier recensions. My preference here is the third option. As for the choice here between
mizbēaḥ and maṣṣēbāh, does one “invoke” an altar?
2) Genesis 35:9-15—a doublet of 35:6-7, which again involves the building of an altar—
narrates the name-change again (this a doublet, after 32:29) following Jacob’s arrival in Bethel.
No explanation is forthcoming, but the deity reveals himself (v. 11) as El Shaddai, and Jacob, now
Israel, raises a stela (maṣṣēbāh)30, and names the place Bethel. This reads like a temple
foundation-legend. The toponym certainly denotes a temple: “the House of El”. We have the
echo in this narrative of the setting of Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28, where he earlier names Bethel
(28:19)31. For present purposes, we have the clear evidence of 1 Kings 12 (Jeroboam’s reform, on
which the Golden Calf episode of Exodus 32 is a midrash) and the conjectural evidence of Hosea
8:6, which relates directly to the northern cult, to demonstrate that Bull El was the deity
worshipped at Bethel. The narrative links with Jacob (now Israel) appear to be references to the
cult-legend of the shrine’s origins through the agency of the national eponym. We may
reasonably suspect that the name El Shaddai used in this passage is a later replacement in the
redaction of the Pentateuch (P, on the basis of the revelation at Exodus 6:3) for a more
appropriate manifestation, of Bull El (’ēl šadday for šōr ’ēl: is there perhaps an epigraphic link
here—daleth and resh being regularly confused?). There is, however, nothing in the text to tempt
us to a specific emendation.
3) Genesis 42:5 is the first mention of the gentilic use that becomes the standard referential
term for the Israelites in the Pentateuch from this point on: the “sons of Israel” (bĕnê yiśrā’ēl). Our
argument above for preferring a putative earlier form, bĕnê šōr ’ēl, would if consistently applied
suggest this emendation here. It would identify the entire people as sons of the bull god, an
extension of the relationship already implicit in royal ideology, where the king is “son of God”
(Psalm 2:7 etc.). We shall see further evidence which supports such a hypothesis.
4) Genesis 46:15 is interesting because it lists the sons of the patriarch (Jacob! sic, not here
called Israel) by Leah, whose name (lē’āh) means “cow”32. In anticipation of our further discussion
of Jacob below, the Leah tribes (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, and by surrogate
Zilpah: Gad, Asher, and the sub-tribe Dinah) would thus see themselves, at least metaphorically,
as the offspring of male and female aurochs parents, independently of the implications of §3.

30
Or perhaps a second stela. And see 35:7 (an altar)!
31
For an analysis of the story see Wyatt 1990.
32
Her sister’s name, Rachel (rāḥēl) means “ewe”. HALOT: 513, discussing lē’āh, notes that Arabic la’ātu specifically
means “wild cow”. Akkadian littu A, “cow” (domestic or wild status not noted) (CAD L, 217); also lītu, which
CAD L, 221 defines as “victory… triumph, power, rule”, which CDA 183, as form II, also understands as “cow”.
The Ö here is undoubtedly l’h (Ugaritic l’y) “to be strong”. Note also Arabic la’ātu = “wild cow”: sc. female
aurochs.

9
5) The previous paper drew attention to Blockman and Guillaume’s interesting translation
of Genesis 49:22, in the blessing of Joseph. Following the consonantal text, and taking the second
bn prt as dittographic, they read it as:
bn prt ywsp {bn prt} Joseph is a cow’s son.
c
ly-cyn bnwt ṣcdh On me the source of daughters advanced,
c
ly-šwr on me a bull.

They observed rather nicely that “it takes a lot of ingenuity to avoid the bovine metaphor of a
mounting bull”33. In view of the evident parallelism we have noted between šôr and rĕ’ēm, we
may identify this bull as an aurochs, if we follow this line of interpretation. It is interesting that
Rachel (rāḥēl: “ewe”) is here called a cow: we should expect Leah to fit this description. The MT
is clearly having problems, and translations look to versions for alternative approaches34. The
main problem is identifying the speaker. Is Jacob really saying that a bull in a state of evident
arousal is approaching him? Or are we to take it that these are Rachel’s words? At least Leah
would make more sense! (See §4 immediately above.)
6) A further possible example is Genesis 49:24cd-25ab, noted briefly above, in the blessing
of Joseph by Jacob, where all the elements are present for a fuller theological understanding of
the trope. The passage reads, following MT:
mîdê ’ăbîr yacăqôb by the hands of the Mighty Bull of Jacob,
35 c
miššām rō eh ’eben yiśrā’ēl ××× the shepherd of the Stone of Israel;
mē’ēl ’ābîkā wĕyaczĕrekā by El your father and he will assist you,
wĕ’ ēt šadday wîbārĕkekā and Shadday and he will bless you.

The “Mighty Bull” epithet (’ăbîr) in the first colon is the equivalent of the aurochs, as we have
seen. The second colon is problematic. For the present I am ignoring the first, obscure word. But
it seems to me that there is a case to answer for taking the taurine reference in the first colon,
’ăbîr yacăqôb, as a pointer to the sense of the yiśrā’ēl of the second, thus construing it as *šōr ’ēl,
“Bull El”. Now if we pursue this option for the sake of argument, it has implications for the rest of
the text. I propose reading what now forms MT as a modification of an earlier form of the present
consonantal text (mšm rch ’bn yśr’l) as *mšm rch bny šr ’l. The only loss (or rather addition to an
older consonantal text in MT) is the aleph of ’eben. This invites the reading of the first obscure
word left untranslated above as miššēm rather than MT miššām (particle and noun, as with mîdê
in the previous colon). The terms yād and šēm have a natural association, given the use of the
expression yād for Absalom’s memorial stela in 2 Samuel 18:18, designed expressly to preserve his

33
Blockman—Guillaume 2005: 5.
34
JB reads as: “Joseph is a fruitful creeper near the spring | whose tendrils climb over the wall” (n. p: conjectural
translation). RSV, NRSV similar. JPS reads as: “Joseph is a wild ass | a wild ass by a spring | wild colts on the
hillside”. Other versions all follow one or other tendency. LXX: Υἱὸς ηὐξηµένος Ιωσηφ | υἱὸς ηὐξηµένος ζηλωτός |
υἱός µου νεώτατος | πρός µε ἀνάστρεψον = “A prolific son is Joseph, | a prolific son, worthy of emulation, | my
youngest son, | to me you have returned”.
MT: bn prt ywsp bn prt cly cyn bnwt ṣcdh c
ly šwr.
Sam. c c
bn prt ywsp bn prt ly yn bny c
ṣ yry c
ly šwr.
It has to be said that none of these variants produces a more convincing sense than Blockman and Guillaume
achieved. See discussion in commentaries and at:
http://nazarenespace.com/profiles/blogs/textual-criticism-gen-49-22-vs-1.
35
MT read miššām (“from there”), which appears meaningless in the context. BHS suggests miššēm cōzēr (“by the
name of the helper…” [divine name]) or miššōmer ’eben (“by the protector of the stone…”, which might refer to
a stela).

10
šēm. The compound formula yād wāšēm occurs in Isaiah 56:5, with the sense of “monument and
memorial”. The plural use mîdê in the first colon constitutes a slight embarrassment. Has an
inadvertent yod been inserted, consonantal myd becoming mydy? In the third colon, notice that
in mē’ēl ’ābîkā MT, instead of reading the expected ’ĕlōhê ’ābîkā, preserves the expression ’ēl
’ābîkā which I have postulated lies behind it, used of the paternal god36. As for the final colon,
the pointing of wĕ’ēt šadday (note the surprising ṣērê of wĕ’ēt) suggests that the reader should
expect *wĕ’ēl šadday. It is arguable that the whole passage perhaps originally read:
mîdê/*miyad ’ăbîr yacăqôb by the hand(s) of the Mighty Bull of Jacob,
37
miššēm rōceh bĕnê šōr ’ēl by the name of the Herdsman of the Sons of Bull El;
mē’ēl ’ābîkā wĕyaczĕrekā by El your father, and he will assist you,
*wĕ’ēl šadday wîbārĕkekā and El Shadday, and he will bless you.

This gives a reference for the herdsman metaphor, so that the people are taken as a herd of cattle
(originally wild cattle, now presumably domesticated) rather than a flock of sheep, which has
later become the assumed sense of the image. The mixed metaphor is now straightened out.
Finally, two further divine titles are brought in to provide an imposing set of four (unless ’ēl
šadday be seen as a modified šōr ’ēl). While the passage concerns the blessing of Joseph, it treats
the restraint imposed by the deity on Joseph’s enemies, the eponyms of the older tribes,
specifically the sons of Leah.
7) Exodus 24:138, 9-11 is an ancient tradition now embedded in the Sinai narrative (and
paralleling the events described independently in 19:1-25), recounting a face-to-face encounter
between tribal representatives and the deity. The climax of the narrative reads thus:
9 wayyacal mōšeh wĕ’aḥărōn nādāb wa’ăbîhû’ wĕšibcîm mizziqnê yiśrā’ēl. 10 wayyir’û ’et ’ĕlōhê yiśrā’ēl
wĕtaḥat raglāyw kĕmacăśēh libnat hassappîr ûkĕceṣem haššāmayim lāṭōhar. 11 wĕ’el ’ăṣîlê bĕnê yiśrā’ēl
lō’ šālaḥ yādô wayyeḥĕzû ’et-hā’ĕlōhîm wayyō’kĕlû wayyišĕtû.
9 Then Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu and seventy elders of Israel went up, 10 and they saw the god of
Israel, and beneath his feet was a sapphire pavement, like the essence of the heavens in purity. 11 And
he (God) did not stretch out his hand against the nobles of the Israelites: they looked upon God, and
they ate and drank.

This is a remarkable text within the anti-iconic tradition of the Bible (see Exodus 3:6 and 20:4-6!).
The elders here look upon a visible god. The phrase ’ĕlōhê yiśrā’ēl in v. 10 suggests part of a gloss,
reading perhaps originally yhwh ’ĕlōhê yiśrā’ēl, to harmonise with vv. 3-8, a later insertion, but
with the tetragrammaton being lost. Without that, ’ĕlōhê yiśrā’ēl reads strangely—almost as
though wishing to avoid using a specific divine name—and indeed looks as though it could be a
glossed version of šōr ’ēl. So the beginning of the verse perhaps read at an earlier stage *wayyir’û
’et šōr ’ēl: “and they saw Bull El”. It is as though the nobles contemplate an image of God. Taking
into account all our discussion so far, it is a reasonable inference that what they saw was Bull El,
or perhaps more precisely his cult image, the whole scene being inspired by the language of
temple ritual practice. What they did was participate in a feast in the presence of the divine

36
Wyatt 1978 = 2005a: 1-5.
37
Hardly “shepherd” if the livestock are cattle rather than sheep. The Akkadian verb re’û(m) has the generic sense
of tending livestock of various species (CAD vol. R, 300: “tend cattle, sheep, or other animals”; CDA 303, “pasture,
tend”). The substantive rē’û(m) means “herdsman, shepherd” (CAD vol. R, 303; similarly CDA 303). In that the
herdsman is the deity himself, “leader (of the herd)” might be a more nuanced translation.
38
Verse 2 cannot be part of this story, since it allows only Moses to go up the mountain. It is rather a redactional
link between 1, 9-11 and 3-8, trying rather ineptly to harmonise the two.

11
image, and such a feast would take place in the context of a sacrifice. The naturalistic language
(the sapphire pointing to the sky) would actually inform the decoration of a temple cella39.
Lest this seem a gratuitously generous interpretation of the passage, let us consider a remarkable
parallel to this scene, at once sacred mountain and temple sanctuary, from Ugaritic tradition,
which supports the cultic interpretation given here. In the inaugural rites following the
completion of Baal’s temple on Mount Saphon—the prototype of the acropolitan temple of Baal
in Ugarit—the climax of the Baal cycle, we read (KTU 1.4 vi 38-59) that:
38
c
dbt.bht[h.b]cl 39 ycdb. The offerings for [his] house [Ba]al presented;
hd.cdb [.cd]bt 40 hlkh. Hadd presented the [off ]erings for his palace.
ṭbḫ.alpm [.ap] 41 ṣin. He slaughtered oxen [and] sheep:
40
šql. ṯrm [.w]m 42 ria.il. he felled bulls [and] the f attest of fatlings,
c
glm.d[t] 43 šnt. year-old calves,
imr.qmṣ.l[l]im skipping lambs, kids.
44 ṣḥ.aḫh.bbhth. He invited his brothers into his house,
aryh 45 bqrb.hklh. his kinsfolk into the midst of his palace;
ṣḥ. 46 šbcm.bn.aṯrt he invited the seventy sons of Athirat.

y 47 špq [.] ilm.krm. He supplied the gods with rams41;

[y] 48 špq.ilht. ḫprt.
[y] 49 špq.ilm.alpm.
y 50 špq.ilht.arḫt
[y] 51 špq.ilm.kḥṯm.
y 52 špq.ilht.ksat.
y 53 špq.ilm.rḥbt[.]
y 54 špq.ilht.dkr<t >
55
c
d.lḥm. šty.ilm
56 wpq.mǵrṯm. ṯd
57 bḥrb.mlḥt.qṣ [.m]r 58 i
he supplied the goddesses with ewes.
He supplied the gods with oxen;
he supplied the goddesses with cows.
He supplied the gods with sieges;
he supplied the goddesses with thrones.
He supplied the gods with amphoras (of wine);
he supplied the goddesses with jars.
While they ate the gods drank.
Then they were served suckling animals,
with a jaw-shaped knife fillets of [fat]ling.

39
One early exodus and conquest narrative may have known of no mountain theophany, as suggested by the
credal formula of Deuteronomy 26:5-9, which takes the people directly from Egypt to “this land…”. This was a
northern tradition. Cf. the Massah-Meribah events taking place in Exodus 17:1-7, and recapitulated in Numbers
20:1-11, where originally the text perhaps ran straight on with no mountain element (though the location is
given respectively as the Wilderness of Sin (midbar-sîn) and that of Zin (midbar-ṣin). The original Sinai
narrative (see various passages below: Deuteronomy 33, Judges 5, Psalm 68 Etc.) knew of no exodus event. This
was a southern tradition. Gradually the two narratives merged. Exodus 24, an anonymous mountain (“the
mountain of God”), a more primitive tradition than Exodus 19, would first enter the amalgamation, being the
sequel foretold in Exodus 3:20. The Sinai tradition, which may have some ancient elements, as in these ancient
poetic passages, and according to the evidence of Khirbet el Qom and Kuntillet Ajrud, but essentially dates to
the time of Nabonidus and the composition of the Abraham cycle (involving Ur, Harran and Tema), was then
also incorporated.
40
Reading il as superlative.
41
Following the suggestion of Smith—Pitard 2009, 594, but modifying their view. But at the end of the line where
they tentatively read y[nqm?], the n is not visible on the tablet, as they supposed. So this reconstruction is
unwarranted: there are no suckling rams, but just rams. The whole sequence can now be read more
satisfactorily: the pattern of the apparent špq beginning the sequence of eight lines is misleading. It led KTU 1-
3
to suppose that the word yn is missing from the end of each line (whence my translation in 2002). But the
surviving y at the end of some of the lines is best interpreted, I think, as the prefix to the verbal form yšpq in
each colon following. Smith—Pitard’s alternation of the špq/yšpq forms with masculine and feminine deities
was a good attempt at a solution, but the forms actually occurring do not match the genders. In my translation,
“he”, Baal, is the attentive host in each colon. More prosaically, since each verb is causative, “he caused the
gods/goddesses to be supplied with xxx”. But this is poetry!

12
 tšty.kr[pn.y]n They drank gob[lets of wi]ne,
c
59 [b]ks. ḫrṣ.d[m. ṣm] [from cu]ps of gold the jui[ce of grapes42]. 43

It is certainly striking that the number of the elders of Israel in the Exodus narrative is seventy, as
are the gods enumerated in this passage44. It may of course be simply an ideal representative
number. Indeed it corresponds to one computation of the number of Jacob’s extended family.
But the ideal number of gods reflected in the Ugaritic passage entitles us to ask if it is the same
seventy. If the bĕnê yiśrā’ēl are indeed to be construed as the bĕnê šōr ’ēl, then bearing in mind
the common usage in both Ugaritic and Hebrew, where a bn il, ben ’ēl or ben ’ĕlōhîm is a god, then
these elders correspond precisely to the gods of the Ugaritic passage45. Is it going too far to say
that the family of “Israel” was actually modelled on the pantheon, or that the pantheon was the
apotheosis of the nation (it being a two-way process)? This sounds rather like Durkheim’s
observation that in worshipping the gods a people worship themselves46!
In a recent discussion (based on a much older one)47 I noted that the core material in Exodus 3
(1, 4b, 6, 9, 10-12a, 12b, 20), before it reached its present form as the revelation of the name Yahweh
to Moses, should be read in this order, with appropriate adjustment of the divine name to reflect
the underlying ancient kerygma. In view of the discussion here, I have revised it a little more:
1 wĕmōšeh hāyāh rōceh ’et-ṣō’n yitrô ḥōtĕnô kōhēn midyān wayyinhag ’et-haṣṣō’n ’aḥar hammidbār
wayyābō’ ’el-har *’ēl … 4b wayyiqrā’ ’ēlāyw *’ēl mittôk hāhār 6 wayyōmer ’ānōkî *’ēl ’ābîkā… wayyastēr
mōšeh pānāyw kî yārē’ mēhabbîṭ ’el *’ēl 9 wĕcattāh hinnēh ṣacăqat *bĕnê šōr ’ēl 48 bā’āh ’ēlāy wĕgam-rā’îtî
’et-hallaḥaṣ ’ăšer miṣrayim lōḥĕṣîm’ōtām 10 wĕcattāh lĕkāh wĕ’ešlāḥăkā ’el-parcōh wĕhôṣē’ ’et-cammî
*bĕnê šōr ’ēl mimmiṣrāyim 11 wayyōmer mōšeh ’el *’ēl mî ’ānōkî kî ’ēlēk ’el-parcōh wĕkî ’ôṣî’ ’et-*bĕnê šōr
’ēl mimmiṣrāyim 12a wayyōmer kî-’ehyeh cimmāk wĕzeh-lĕkā hā’ôt kî ’ānōkî šĕlaḥtîkā 20 wĕšālaḥtîkā ’et-
yādî wĕhikkētî ’et-miṣrayim bĕkōl niplĕ’ōtay ’ăšer ’ecĕśeh bĕqirbô wĕ’aḥărê-kēn yĕšallēḥ ’etkem 12b
bĕhôṣî’ăkā ’et-hācām mimiṣrayim tacabdûn ’et-*’ēl cal hāhār hazzeh
Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, priest of Midian. He led his flock to the far
side of the wilderness and came to… the mountain of El. 4b And El called to him from the midst of the
mountain. 6 ‘I am El your father,’ he said… At this Moses hid his face, afraid to look at El… [El said,]
9 ‘So now the cry of the Sons of Bull El has come to me, and I have also seen the way in which the

Egyptians oppress them. 10 So come, I send you to Pharaoh to bring the Sons of Bull El … out of Egypt.’
11 Moses said to El, ‘Who am I, to go to Pharaoh and bring the Sons of Bull El out of Egypt?’ 12a Then he

said ‘I shall be with you, and this is the sign by which you shall know that it is I who have sent you: 20 I
shall stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders I am going to perform there. After
this he will let you go. 12b After you have led the people out of Egypt you are to offer worship to El on

42
Literally “the blood of trees”.
43
Translation following Wyatt 2002, 106-8, but modified with reference to Smith—Pitard 2009, 594-95.
44
There is a complication in the numbering here: see Wyatt forthcoming.
45
This in turn has a bearing on the ambiguities of Deuteronomy 32:8-9, taking us a little further on from my
analysis in Wyatt forthcoming.
46
Durkheim 1912: 327, 322, 395 respectively:
“La force religieuse n’est que le sentiment que la collectivité inspire à ses membres, mais projetée
hors des sciences qui l’éprouvent (…). Pour s’objectiver, il se fixe sur un objet qui devient ainsi sacré;
mais tout objet peut jouer ce role.” (327)
“Nous pouvons dire, en effet, que le fidèle ne s’abuse pas quand il croit à l’existence d’une puissance morale
dont il dépend et dont il tient le meilleur de lui-même: cette puissance existe, c’est la société.” (322)
“Cette réalité, que les mythologues se sont représentée sous tant de formes différentes, mais qui est la cause
objective, universelle et éternelle de ces sensations sui generis dont est faite l’expérience religieuse, c’est la
société.” (597) (my emphases).
47
Wyatt forthcoming; Wyatt 1979.
48
Reading bĕnê *šōr ’ēl rather than bĕnê yiśrā’ēl .

13
 this mountain.’

According to this reading, the narrative originally credited the exodus event to El, who now
appears as the neutral ’ĕlōhîm of MT. El was the god of the exodus, according to an important
witness strand, as we have seen above from Exodus 15:2cd, Numbers 23:22, 24:8 and Psalm 106:21.
The present narrative in Exodus 24:1, 9-11 appears to be a suitable fulfilment of the concluding
instruction at Exodus 3:12b. We should perhaps see an original strand of tradition reading this
material from Exodus 3, then 19:1-2, or perhaps only 1a, 2b, if the Sinai reference is already
secondary (but that is a further complication), followed immediately by 24:1, 9-1149. Exodus 15
may be regarded as an appropriate poetic accompaniment to this narrative—though
undoubtedly an independent composition—in view of verses 13 and 17, which meld very
satisfactorily with the narrative we have isolated:
13 nāhîtā bĕḥasdĕkā cam-zû gā’āltā You led in your fidelity this people whom you had redeemed;
c
nēhaltā bĕ ozzĕkā ’el-nĕwê qodšekā you guided (them) by your strength to your holy dwelling.
17 tĕbi’ēmô wĕtiṭiācēmô bĕhar naḥălātĕkā You brought them and planted them on the mountain
of your inheritance,
mākôn lĕšibtĕkā pā altā
c 50
the foundation (which) you made for your dwelling…51

The language here, which belongs in the same milieu as the Exodus 24 scene, is also closely
related to the same conceptual form as an Ugaritic formula (KTU 1.3 iii 28-31 = 1.3 iv 19-20
[truncated]):
atm.wank ibǵyh.btk.ǵry.il.ṣpn Come, and I shall reveal it in the midst of my divine
mountain, Saphon,
bqdš.bǵr.nḥlty in the sanctuary, on the mountain of my inheritance,
bncm.bgbc.tliyt in Paradise, on the hill of victory…

This passage anticipates the victory feast and temple consecration of KTU 1.4 vi, cited above.
Exodus 15 anticipates the victory feast of Exodus 24. (Note that I have omitted most of Exodus 19
from this list of cultic passages.) The latter additions implicitly transform the feast into a
covenant ratification.
Baal’s temple is on the summit of mount Saphon (no doubt the mythic analogue of the
acropolitan Baal temple at Ugarit52). This is where the gods eat and drink with Baal. The deity in
Exodus 24 is on the summit of the mountain. This is where the elders of Israel (sons of Bull El:
gods!) eat and drink with Yahweh-Bull El. K. L. Roberts has drawn attention to another mountain-
top feast, in 1 Kings 18:41, when Elijah tells King Ahab to “go up, eat and drink, because I can hear
the rain”. She remarked:

49
For reasons for regarding this rather than Exodus 19 as the sequence of the original narrative, see n. 39 above.
In Exodus 19 Sinai has become the locus of events. But the Sinai tradition was originally independent of the
exodus tradition.
50
The name Yahweh is a later addition to the verse.
51
The shrine reference here must surely have originally been one in Palestine, and an obvious candidate would
be Shechem, featuring the covenant ceremony narrative in Joshua 24. But perhaps Jerusalem is actually
reflected. The wilderness mountain of the narrative would thus be a reification of the mythic form implied by
the parallel with Ugaritic usage. The inheritance motif preserved in both Ugaritic and biblical tradition
represents the notion of divine ownership of the sacred mountain, the epitome of the national territory.
52
We should not use the Baal connection here as evidence against my emphasis on El. The pantheon-list KTU
1.47.1 explicitly heads the list “the gods of Saphon” (il ṣpn), which must include El (l. 3). All the gods dwell there.

14
 Immediately the prophet Elijah sends the king back up the mountain to eat and to drink... The action
in v. 41 is particularly striking. Ahab, king of Israel, eats and drinks on the mountain where Yahweh’s
presence and power have most immediately been manifested.”53

She went on to describe the narrative as a covenant ritual, corresponding to that in Exodus 24—
though no such rite is described in that passage, and it gains this status only with the later
incorporation of the larger Sinai tradition—and the independent covenant motif, with the altar
with twelve stelae set up by Elijah (1 Kings 18:30-32a) corresponding to the construction of an
altar with twelve stelae by Moses in Exodus 24:454. She also drew attention to the parallel between
those two scenes and the feasts of the Baal cycle (KTU 1.1 i 1-20, 1.2 i 1-38, 1.2 iii 4-5, 1.2 iv 25-40) as
well as the passage discussed here. If her analysis is correct (though I think her wrong on the
matter of covenant, and the identity of the deity is different: we are dealing with stereotypical
cultic tropes), we then have three witnesses to a ritual set piece. Surprisingly for a parade
example of “a true prophet”, Elijah is nowhere credited with an iconoclastic programme. It is not
unfair to say that he probably had no thoughts on the subject. So it is entirely possible that the
sacrificial feast on Mount Carmel was also to be held in the presence of the image of Bull El. This
was, after all, the national cult of the northern kingdom, which worshipped the bull deity55.
Reverting to the mountain-top scene in which Moses participates, we later have his
transfiguration described in Exodus 34:29-30, 35. In vv. 29, 30 we read (lō’ yādac kî) qāran côr
pānāw, and in v. 30 qāran côr pĕnê mōšeh . This, I have argued previously, involved the provision
of horns on his face, indicating his transformation into a god56. This makes particularly good
sense when read in the context both of the initial feast (Exodus 24) and of the intervening (false)
worship of the golden calf (Exodus 32). The true deity is reflected in the appearance of his
transfigured representative. While the deity is visible to Moses and the people’s representatives,
explicitly in Exodus 24 (24:9) and implicitly in 19 (19:11), in 33-34 (33:18-23) even Moses may not
see him face to face (pānîm ’el-pānîm: e.g. Genesis 32:31, the old expression for eye-contact
between divine image and worshipper), but only obliquely. This third account of the mountain
encounter is to be read in the context of a wider Pentateuchal pattern of a divine action, a human
reaction and a new divine action, which seems to me to be parabolic of the exilic experience and
the organisation of the post-exilic community, which no longer sees God face-to-face, and indeed
latterly has no divine image for guidance57.
8) A group of verses from the Song of Moses, Deuteronomy 32:6b, 18, 19, and his blessing of
the tribes, 33:17, are also of interest to our discussion. The first of these, 32:6b58, is part of the lead-
in to 32:8, discussed above:
hălô’-hû’ ’ ābîkā *qonekā Is he not your father, your progenitor?
hû’ cāśĕkā wayĕkōnĕnekā He made you and begot you…

53
Roberts 2000: 633. She also cited Enuma Elish 6.70, 73.
54
Anati found twelve massebot at his Mount Sinai (Har Karkom in the Negev): Anati 1985: 53-54. Humphreys
found twelve at his (Hala ’l Bedr in the Hijaz): Humphreys 2003: 324-25. These locations represent rival claims
for Mount Sinai.
55
Wyatt 1992.
56
Wyatt 2005b: 209-10. On the golden calf episode, see Wyatt 1992. On the deification of the High Priest, see
Fletcher-Louis 1997. Cf. Emerton 1958; Teeple 1965.
57
On the pattern see Wyatt 2003; on the aniconic outcome, Middlemas 2014.
58
See Wyatt 2006, 2007b for discussion of the issues raised in Deuteronomy 32:6b-9.

15
This is quite explicit concerning the paternal relationship of God to his people. And there is no
justification for taking it as no more than a metaphor. The other verses in the Song, 32:18-19, are
further references to the same trope:
ṣûr yĕlādĕkā tĕšî The Rock who begot you, you have forgotten,
wattiškaḥ ’ēl mĕḥōlĕlekā and you have misremembered El who was your originator.
wayyar’ yhwh wayyin’āṣ Yahweh has seen and has spurned (them),
mikkacas bānāyw ûbĕnōtāyw out of vexation with his sons and daughters.

Is it possible that ṣûr59 in the first colon here originally read šôr, the divine name šôr ’ēl being
divided across the constituents of the bicolon? This can be no more than conjecture, but is
consonant with the general picture we are reconstructing.
9) Deuteronomy 33:17 pursues this parent-child relationship further in the blessing
pronounced on Joseph (cf. §5 above), in which the patriarch himself is now a bull aurochs:
bĕkôr šôrô hādār lô His first-born bull is his splendour60,
wĕqarnê rĕ’ēm qarnāyw and the horns of an aurochs are his horns.
bāhem cammîm yĕnaggaḥ With them he gores peoples
yaḥdāw ’apsê-’āreṣ even to the ends of the earth.

The first of these passages clearly understands the deity to be the father of the Israelites (it
matters not what degree of metaphoricity we attribute to the figure), while Joseph in the second,
now the honorary first-born of the deity61, implicitly El, evidently shares his father’s propensity
for horns. They are in his DNA! This is preferable to seeing it as a reference to Jacob within this
blessing. To dismiss this as a mere metaphor for power after our discussion so far would be
perverse. We are in a world, in all these passages, where the people really are the sons of the
deity, and their leaders at least, Joseph (or Jacob), Moses, and no doubt others unnamed,
themselves wear the aurochs horns which are the very marks of divinity throughout the ancient
Near Eastern iconographic convention.
10-12) A family of related theophany traditions should be treated briefly here. The first of these,
Deuteronomy 33:2, is the opening figure of Moses’ blessing:
yhwh missînay bā’ Yahweh came from Sinai,
wĕzāraḥ miśśēcîr lāmô and rose up from Seir62.
hôpîac mēhar pā’rān He shone forth from Mount Paran
63
wĕ’ātāh mēribĕbôt qōdeš and came with tens of thousands of *holy ones ,

59
The presence of ṣûr in vv. 4 and 15 tells against the amendment. However, if we compare the SHIN (*) and the
TSADE (*) in Palaeo-Hebrew, the latter is a SHIN with a tail, which might very plausibly be lost in transmission,
offering circumstantial support for the suggestion.
60
JB reads “First-born of the bull”: however construed, the patriarch’s father is El himself.
61
This is a particularly interesting expression in view of Joseph being Jacob’s youngest son in Genesis 49:22 (§5
above: Benjamin apparently being left out of account). The youngest natural son becomes the first divine son.
This may be a conscious echo of the situation regarding Solomon, the youngest son of David, and yet his heir.
For discussion of the ideology see Wyatt 1985, 1987.
62
I have left the lāmô untranslated, here and three cola later. HALOT: 532: “(relative) to whom Seir belongs”, and
analogously following ’ēšdāt (*’ăšērāt) below. See Waltke-O’Connor 1990: 189, 205 (§§11.1.2d, 11.2.10a). It is
difficult to make sense of it.
63
MT mēribĕbôt qōdeš. I construe this as “ten thousand(s) of holiness”, that is, as comparable to the preferable
way to read har qodšî, “my holy mountain”, literally “mountain of my holiness”. This is unconvincing in this
form. Better, a mem is to be understood to have been lost following qōdeš from haplography (with following

16
 mîmînô ’ēšdāt lāmô with at his right hand *Asherah64.

The following two passages, clearly partial doublets, should be considered in tandem. Firstly,
Judges 5:4-5 reads as follows:
yhwh bĕṣē’tĕkā miśśēcîr Yahweh, in your setting out from Seir,
bĕṣacdĕkā miśśĕdēh ’ĕdôm in your striding forth from the steppeland of Edom,
’ereṣ rācāšāh the earth shook,
gam-šāmayim nāṭāpû even the heavens were convulsed,
gam-cābîm nāṭĕpû māyim and the clouds shed water.
hārîm nāzĕlû mippĕnê yhwh zeh sînay The mountains melted before Yahweh, the Lord of Sinai,
mippĕnê yhwh ’ĕlōhê yiśrā’ēl before Yahweh, the god of Israel.

Secondly, Psalm 68: 8-9 (EVV 7-8) reads thus:

’ĕlōhîm bĕṣē’tĕkā lipnê cammekā
bĕṣacdĕkā bîšîmôn selāh
’ereṣ rācāšāh
’ap-šāmayim nāṭāpû
mippĕnê ’ĕlōhîm zeh sînay
mippĕnê ’ĕlōhîm ’ĕlōhê yiśrā’ēl
Yahweh, in your setting out before your people,
in your striding forth across the wilderness,
the earth shook,
how much more were the heavens convulsed,
before God, the Lord of Sinai,
before God, the god of Israel.

These are clearly variants on an original core, and it is likely that the Sitz im Leben of the tradition
is the temple cult (see Psalm 68:18 [EVV 17]65), probably with the processing of images of the gods,
including that of Bull El—and according to Deuteronomy, on my reading, his consort Asherah—
accompanied by a recitation, or more probably chanting, of the legend of the cult’s origins in a
theophany-narrative. It is the final colon of the Judges 5 and Psalm 68 excerpts, ’ĕlōhê yiśrā’ēl,
which in the light of our discussion so far may arguably reflect an older (’ĕlōhê) šōr ’ēl. Even the
southern tradition (generally represented in J, P and associated material) thus has a “Bull El”
tradition at its core. We have to ask why southern traditions use the terminology of the northern
kingdom (Israel), unless the present forms of the text post-date the destruction of Samaria in 721,
after which the term Israel increasingly came to cover Judah. The evidence from Kuntillet-Ajrud
provides an answer to this, invoking both Yahweh of Shomron (Samaria) and Yahweh from

mîmînô: or it should be transferred from the second to the first word: *qĕdōšîm yĕmînô): the qĕdōšîm are the
gods of the pantheon. The AV had it almost right (“ten thousands of saints”)! Note LXX’s σὺν µυριάσιν Καδης.
To ribĕbôt cf. Ugaritic rbt, rbbt, “myriad”: DUL3: 719. Cf. Deuteronomy 33:17. Note that LXX and MT both
interpret qōdeš as a toponym (Kadesh). Habakkuk 3:3 is a related text.
64
MT ’ēšdāt, HALOT: 93 construes as “‘fire a law for them’?”, evidently at a loss! LXX: ἐκ δεξιῶν αὐτοῦ ἄγγελοι µετ᾽
αὐτοῦ. I take the Hebrew to be a (deliberate?) corruption of ’ăšērāh or an older form ’ăšērāt, following Ugaritic
aṯrt. Once the preceding colon is seen as referring to a heavenly host, such a solution here seems inescapable.
As for Asherah’s position on the right, the place of honour, note that in 1 Kings 2:19, Bathsheba, the Gebirah (=
Ugaritic rbt, Athirat’s title), sits at the right hand of the king. As Ahlström observed (1963, 73), the Gebirah is
“the earthly replica of Asherah”.
65
Perhaps Psalm 68:18 (EVV 17) should also be mentioned here:
rekeb ’ĕlōhîm ribbōtayim ’alpē šin’ān The chariots of God are twice ten thousand,
’alpē šin’ān with thousands of (his) archers,
’ădōnāy bām sînay (read *bā’ missînay) baqqōdeš as the Lord comes from Sinai to (his) sanctuary.
The first colon contains two hapax forms: ribbōtayim and šin’ān. They may be best explained on the basis of
Ugaritic: the former appears in KTU 1.4 i 30 (rbtm) and the second in accounts of Kirta’s army, in KTU 1.14 ii 38
and parallels (ṯnn dbl.hg: “archers beyond reckoning”). See Dahood 1973: 142-43; Wyatt 2002: 91, 190. The latter
has support from LXX and Vulgate readings, and especially the Peshitta, with b’alpē dĕḥaylā, “with thousands
of troops”, endorsing this approach (cf. HALOT: 1596). See also n. 62 above.

17
Teman in its inscriptions. Evidently northern and southern manifestations of Yahweh were
readily juxtaposed in the religious mind of a southern shrine at least as early as the eighth century.
And if Teman is to be identified as the oasis of Tema, as I think likely, these two remote places
are more or less equidistant from Kuntillet-Ajrud, reducing any unlikelihood that the latter site
is meant here.
The varying locations identified as the starting point of the divine journey in these passages
may be mythic realities, but are possibly geographical ones. And nothing in the allusions requires
that Teman be identified with Edom, as is commonly done, rather than being the more remote
site of Tema. These texts deal with a theophany tradition connected with Sinai, unlike Exodus
24 above, which is germane to our discussion, and merits further discussion in view of Tema’s
link with the cult of Sin and intriguing possibilities concerning its role in biblical tradition. The
final verse in each of the Judges 5 and Psalm 68 citations points to an older phase in which the
deity was El (later adopting the name Yahweh).
13) Isaiah 1:24 uses the expression: ’ăbîr yiśrā’ēl, “the mighty bull of Israel”, in the parallel
expressions hā’ādôn yhwh ṣĕbā’ôt || ’ăbîr yiśrā’ēl. Do we have any reason for construing it as *šōr
’ēl, “Bull El”? The construct ’ăbîr is certainly understood by most commentators to be simply a
reference to the power of the god, with no obvious sense of its iconic implications. But this is
only to be expected of centuries of Jewish and Christian exposition. It does not make it right.
However, if we bring into the discussion additional verses such as Isaiah 49:26 (yhwh môšîcēk ||
wĕgō’ălēk ’ăbîr yacăqôb)—also occurring in Psalm 132:2, 5 (’abbîr)—Genesis 49:24cd, where we
have identified a parallel usage ’ăbîr yacăqôb || rōceh *bĕnê šōr ’ēl) and Isaiah 60:16 ( yhwh || ’ăbîr
yacăqôb), we see that “Israel” here denotes the patriarch interchangeably with the nation, and the
taurine overtones present with all three chief patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, have to be
taken into account. It is significant that the usage is carried on into the work of Trito-Isaiah,
giving us a later terminus ad quem for the formula: it is still an active trope (before subsequent
disguising) into the post-exilic era.
These examples of candidates for reassessment in the light of Hosea 8:6 and Deuteronomy 32:8
will no doubt be regarded with varying degrees of acceptance or scepticism. It seems to me that
they are among the most promising among the very large number of references to bĕnê yiśrā’ēl in
the Hebrew Bible, and that if any credence be given to the expositions of Tur-Sinai and Joosten
outlined above, then there is at least a case to answer in some further instances. The obvious
objection to this proposal is that in these two instances, the formula relates to specifically
theological matters: in the first instance to the bull-idol Hosea is attacking, and in the second to
the number of gods in the pantheon. We cannot simply transfer these findings, it may be argued,
to the people of Israel. But I think that the transfer is legitimate, both because of frequent
allusions to divine parentage, and in the broader linguistic usage, in that two instances of
yiśrā’ēl—an ethnicon and therefore not inherently cultic in its general usage—being
reinterpreted as *( y) šōr ’ēl must allow at least the possibility that further instances will be found.
Theology and ideology are really inseparable here. Two analogous cases may be cited in support,
Moab and Ammon. In each case, there is a divine title contained in the name, ’Ab, “Father”, in
the case of Moab, and cAmmon, a diminutive of cAmm, “Kinsman” or “Uncle”, in the case of

18
Ammon (whose citizens were called bĕnê cammôn, “sons of Ammon”). Thus two neighbouring
communities regarded themselves as the offspring of their national god66.
(6) The Eponyms of Israel: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
Let us, in the light of the discussion above, briefly re-examine the patriarchal figures. The term
“son of God”, Ugaritic bn ilm, Hebrew ben ’ĕlōhîm, older *ben ’ēl on the evidence of Deuteronomy
32:8-9, relating to the pantheon in the former context, as well as to kings (bnm il, KTU 1.16 i 10)
and to both men and gods in the latter, must be taken seriously. If the “Israelites” are bĕnê yiśrā’ēl,
and the latter form hides an older šōr ’ēl, then the Israelites, like the gods, are “sons of Bull El”,
inviting an enquiry into their genealogy. That they have a divine pedigree is not surprising, for
the king explicitly has one, without any alterations to the textual reading, in Psalms 2:7, 89:26 and
110:3 (following the LXX: 109:3). And divine status among other ancient Near Eastern kings and
eponyms is implicit, and in some circumstances explicit. It is not a far cry to seeing the Israelites,
subjects of the king, or at least certain representative figures such as their eponymous ancestors,
as not merely “sons of God”, but as gods, at least in their remote origin, whatever tradition has
latterly done to them. I have suggested that Moses’ horns in Exodus 34:29, 30 pointed to such a
conception67.
Three persons in my view stand out very clearly as candidates for this original divine status,
the eponyms of the tribes, the first chief patriarchs, Jacob, Isaac and Abraham. I shall deal with
them in this reverse order.
Jacob, we have seen to be clearly associated with the aurochs in the Hebrew text of Genesis.
Jacob is the birth name of the patriarch in the saga of his life (Genesis 25:26: yacăqôb, from Öcāqēb,
“grasp”). He is later renamed Israel (yiśrā’ēl). The new name is explained in Genesis 32:29 as
“Israel, since you have struggled with God” ( yiśrā’ēl kî śārîtā cim-’ĕlōhîm). This is forced: it is
clearly a folk etymology. An Ugaritic explanation has been attempted, based on the apparent
incidence of the personal name there, but while plausible, it has no philological link with the
present explanation68. The “explanatory” verb supposed to account for it, śārāh, is linked only by
assonance. A serious etymology would explain it as theophoric, “El is righteous”, or perhaps “El
rules” or the like.
It should also be noted that in the narrative where this renaming occurs (Genesis 32:23-33),
Jacob’s night encounter with an unnamed assailant, Jacob names the place Peniel (pĕnî’ēl),
because, as he says, “I have seen God face to face” (kî-rā’îtî ’ĕlōhîm pānîm ’el pānîm, v. 31). The
divine name El (’ēl) has been altered (neutralised?) in the developing text into ’ĕlōhîm. Jacob has
seen El face to face. It is tempting to see in the new name the divine title isolated above, šōr ’ēl,
perhaps preceded by “son (of)”, yielding the singular form *ben šōr ’ēl. After all, the deity is his
father according to Genesis 49:24-25 (§6 above). The element ya-qub-bu appears in an Ugaritic

66
In Wyatt 1994b: 408-10 I suggested that Lot, father of the “twin” sons, was an avatar of El (“the Secret One”).
This fits in with the wider pattern of El and his consort (sometimes geminated) as parents of key figures in the
national tradition which I have previously explored, Ishmael (Wyatt 1994a), including the king.
67
See above, n. 56.
68
See Gordon 1969: 415 (§19.1164), and Gröndahl 1967: 146, yšril (PRU 5, 69.3 = RS 19.049 B, 3 = KTU 4.623.3), which
both regarded as equivalent to yiśrā’ēl. Perhaps the same form appears in Old South Arabic, which has close
links with Ugaritic, as yšryl (HALOT: 442; yšril: Dijkstra, DDD2, entry Jacob, 460).

19
personal name (Abdi[ÌR]ya-qub-bu, “Servant of Yaqubbu”) as though functioning as a divine
epithet69.
This story may be seen as a pivotal passage in the entire patriarchal tradition. And in this
context, the etymology, however false, is the key. Jacob is returning from his journey to the east,
like Abram in his initial migration, a cypher for returning exiles. Hitherto, he has been a son of
the bull-god, in the old dispensation. Henceforth, the bull is transformed into an aniconic deity,
from ancient tribal god into the universal god of post-exilic Judaism. So the old name ben šōr ’ēl
(or the like) is changed into yiśrā’ēl, as Abram’s was changed into Abraham, where the bull
element (see below) also disappears, and the same transformational symbolism is at work. And
the reconciliation with Esau is precisely a message of universalism addressed to a narrow post-
exilic sectarianism.
If we turn to Isaac—a remarkably shadowy figure in the Genesis narrative, having little
autonomy of his own, but featuring primarily as a foil to either his father or his son—we find an
aetiology for his name in the accounts of Sarah laughing (Genesis 18:12: wattiṣḥaq sārāh, at his
annunciation; and 21:6: ṣĕḥōq lî ’ĕlōhîm; kol haššōmēac yiṣḥaq-lî, “God has made me laugh [or is it
“God has laughed at me”?]; everyone hearing will laugh because of me”, at his birth). If the first
were a perfect match for his name, it should be not yiṣḥaq, but tiṣḥaq (“she laughed”). There is
however a match in the second clause of the second reference. It is not of course essential that
there be a perfect match in such a folk etymology, if that is how we are to evaluate it, but we have
an extraordinary parallel from Ugarit in the theogonic text KTU 1.12.12-13, where on hearing that
his wife (or wives) is (are) bearing twin sons, we read that
il.yẓḥq.bm 13 lb.
12 El laughed in his heart
wymgḏ.bm kbd and convulsed with laughter in his liver.

Note that El the father laughs. He laughs a great deal in Ugaritic poetry70! The Ugaritic verb ẓḥq
corresponds exactly to the Hebrew form of the patriarch’s name (Öṣḥq). Behind Sarah’s
incredulous laugh in Genesis lies the father’s joy at hearing of his own prowess in fathering sons71.
Laughter does not prove paternity, of course. We have only an association here. But Isaac does
fit into the broader theogonic tradition occurring in Ugaritic texts, and echoed in a number of
biblical narratives. His birth-tradition and that of Ishmael strikingly echo the Ugaritic tradition.
Let us turn finally to Abraham (’ābrāhām). This extended form of his name is given in the divine
promise of Genesis 17:5, changing it from the former Abram (’ābrām). We have a nice word-play
here, which acknowledges the semantic shift. The name will no longer indicate whatever ’ābrām
means, but in its altered form will mean, on the assumed folk etymology, “Father of a multitude”.

69
Gröndahl 1967: 317; Dijkstra, DDD2: 460. The perhaps fanciful speculations of Meyer (1906: 281) cited by
Dijkstra, need not detain us.
70
El laughs: KTU 1.4 iv 28, 1.6 iii 16, 1.12 i 12-13 cited above. Anat laughs: 1.4 v 25, 1.17 vi 41, 1.18 i 22. Kothar laughs:
1.4 vii 21. Danilu (a king) laughs: 1.17 ii 10 (using the formula used of El in the first two instances). For an
interesting discussion of laughter in religion see Gilhus 1997.
71
Shahar and Shalem in KTU 1.23, Shahar and Qadmu in KTU 1.12. Both are divine; the former (Shahar) is the
dawn star, an allomorph of Athtar, who bears the epithet dmlk, “of kingship” in KTU 1.2 iii 12, 18, declaring him
to be a royal god, the apotheosis of kingship. His twin brother Qadmu in KTU 1.12 i 8, “the Easterner” or “the
Primordial”, is arguably the prototype of Kadmos “the Phoenician”, brother of Europa (Öcrb, the setting sun, the
west). The text requires restoration. See Wyatt 2002: 55 n. 83 and references. See de Moor 1987: 129, Wyatt
2002: 162, n. 2 (correcting translation to “[you make] us pregnant with Shahar || [you make] us give birth to
Qadmu!”.

20
So how is the original name to be construed? The thrust of our discussion so far almost wills us
to discern a taurine allusion. Is it perhaps to be read as “Father Aurochs”, where the rām of MT
may have formerly been vocalised rēm, which we saw above to be a biform of rĕ’ēm in Psalms
22:22, 29:6 and Job 39:9, perhaps more faithfully reflecting its pronunciation. It could be
construed as a personal name, “(the) Aurochs (god is my) Father”, or as a divine title “Aurochs
Father”. Either is syntactically plausible72. The change of name has the same role within the
development of Israelite religion into Judaism which we noted above with Jacob.
In looking at the three patriarchal figures, who sired the Israelites (“sons of Bull El”), I have
reached the point where it is tempting to identify each of them as originally a god, an avatar of
El, the bull god, and thus themselves bull-gods. This may sound quite bizarre to sensitive minds
used to taking the Bible seriously. But there are certainly problems in taking the patriarchs at
face value. They are at the least eponymous rather than historical figures, serving as the mythic
ancestors of peoples. Their present status, as three key individuals in a long genealogical line
stretching from Adam down to the twelve tribes of Israel, is entirely fictional and secondary,
consciously merging disparate tribes into two nations, and then, ideologically speaking for the
post-exilic community, one people “Israel”. Before the final growth of the tradition to present the
whole sweep from creation down to historical settlement in Palestine, the three would
themselves have been understood to be sons of El, theogony preceding anthropogony. Their
present relationship is a narration in genealogical terms of the complex relation of the peoples of
Palestine in the shift from the Late Bronze to the Iron Age.
My last section, discussing the putative divine origin of the patriarchs, will perhaps occasion
a wry smile among some readers. Surely the patriarchs are thoroughly grounded in history, even
if as individuals they are eponymous characters? They represent the antecedents of historical
Israel and Judah, in narratives of a legendary, even mythological nature (though this last
assessment is usually conceded only very reluctantly), but are nevertheless rooted firmly on
earth, as human beings. I think such a response points to the way in which scholars are all too
often themselves in thrall to historicism. In other cultures in the ancient world, ancestors are
often regarded as sons of gods, or even as gods themselves. Relevant examples are the founders
of Boeotian Thebes, either Cadmus (who in Greek tradition had human parents, King Agenor and
Queen Telephassa of Tyre, but perhaps betrays his ulterior origin as a son of El in the obscure
Ugaritic passage KTU 1.12 i 7-873), or Ogygos, the flood hero who was an avatar of Og, “last of the
Rephaim” in biblical tradition, and thus himself implicitly a member of the “assembly of Didanu”,
the deified dead kings of Ugarit (KTU 1.161 i 3 etc.)74. The two theogonic myths from Ugarit, KTU

72
Similar options are to be found with regard to Moses’ father Amram (Exodus 6:18: camrām, < *camrēm, “(My)
Kinsman/Uncle is an aurochs”). This alone should explain Moses’ horns!
73
See n. 69.
74
See Noegel 1998; Wyatt 2007c. There is a long tradition of divine kings in Mesopotamia, the tone being set by
the statement of the Sumerian king-list that “kingship was lowered from heaven”: ANET3 265. Shulgi was born
of divine parents, CS i 553. Gilgamesh was suckled by the (divine) wild cow (!) Ninsun, being two-thirds god,
and one-third man (Gilgamesh SBV I 47-48: George 2003: 541). Generally, with reference to divine
determinative used in the writing of royal names, see Frankfort 1948: 224-26, Vidal 2014. Frankfort cited Naram-
Sin of Akkad, all kings of Ur Three, kings of Isin, Rim-Sin of Larsa, some kings of Eshnunna, and some Kassite
kings. On Hittite divine kingship see Beckman 2012. Divinity was the norm in Egyptian kingship, the monarch
being variously Horus son of Ra, Horus son of Osiris, his ka Khonsu son of Amun, his infant form Nefertem son
of Ptah, and so on. Rameses II appears with three other gods (Amun, Ra and Ptah) in a divine quartet at Abu
Simbel. Other divine culture heroes are Romulus and Remus, sons of Mars by Rhea Silvia, daughter of Numitor
of Alba Longa; Sarpedon king of Lycia, son of Zeus and Europa, and his eponymous descendant, son of Zeus

21
1.12 and 1.23, which recount differing versions of the birth of El’s children by his daughter-wives—
Shahar and Qadmu noted above in the first, and Shahar and Shalem in the second—lie behind a
number of biblical hero birth-narratives: Ishmael, brother and once twin of Isaac in Genesis 16,
21, Ammon and Moab in Genesis 19:30-38, born to Lot by his daughter-wives, the “babes” of Psalm
875, and the king in Psalms 1976 and 11077. The coronation formula cited in Psalm 2:7 is explicit, and
attempts to downgrade its significance to the merely figurative are misguided. The use of the
same underlying mythic narrative by these various biblical passages indicates that an important
ideological agenda was at work, giving divine authority to human institutions such as kingship,
in the natural idiom of the time, by claiming that the king was divine. What is surprising in the
patriarchal narratives is the restraint with which the ideology is expressed.
As to the taurine implications of this discussion, I am entirely happy with the view that the
patriarchs are now thoroughly down-to-earth human forebears of the nation, albeit eponymous
and essentially mythical. The present text no longer sees bulls at every turn. But the evidence
treated here shows that they lurk unseen just below the surface, like archaeological traces. Their
ancestry is to be seen by the perceptive reader.
Indeed, a further possible echo of the aurochs survives in the figure of Behemoth in Job 40:15-
24 (Hebrew numbers), which begins the description of him in these terms:
15 hinneh-nā’22bĕhēmôt ’ăšer-cāśîtî cimmāk Consider now Behemoth, whom I made along with you:
ḥāṣîr kabbāqār yō’kēl he eats vegetation like* an ox. (*or: as)
16 hinneh-nā’ kōhō bĕmitnāyw Look at the power in his loins,
wĕ’ōnô bišrîrê biṭnô and the potency in his mighty78 belly!
79 80
yaḥpōṣ zĕnābô kĕmô-’ārez
17 His phallus hangs like a cedar spear ;
gîdê paḥădāw yĕśōrāgû the cords of his testicles81 are tightly knit82.

and Laodamia; and Lysanias of Arcadia, a form of Zeus. Just as the infant Zeus was born and hidden in a cave
on Mount Ida (Hesiod, Theogony 453-91), so, according to L. Ginzberg (Legends of the Jews i 188-89), was the
infant Abraham by his mother Emtelai, in a story perhaps influenced by the Greek tradition:
When her time approached, she left the city in great terror and wandered toward the desert, walking along the
edge of a valley, until she happened across a cave. She entered this refuge, and on the next day she was seized
with throes, and she gave birth to a son. The whole cave was filled with the light of the child’s countenance as
with the splendor of the sun, and the mother rejoiced exceedingly. The babe she bore was our father Abraham.
The idea of an Israelite/Judahite and a Greek (specifically Cretan) tradition being cognate is by no means
absurd. David employed mercenaries from Crete in his bodyguard, the “Cherethites (kĕrētîm) of 1 Samuel 30:14
etc. See HALOT: 501.
75
Wyatt 1994a: 410-13.
76
Wyatt 1995b.
77
Wyatt 1996: 270-72.
78
Note Pope’s discussion, 1973: 323.
79
zĕnābô: commonly translated as “tail”; but its phallic nuance is clear, as recognised by Pope 1973: 324. Cf. also
HALOT 274. The tail of an aurochs is hardly conspicuous! The whole passage describes the pent-up sexual
power of the bull.
80
For this nuance of the cedar cf. the description of the spear-brandishing Baal in KTU 1.4 vii 40-41 (Wyatt 2002:
111 and n. 165). It is the length of this shaft that is at issue.
81
paḥădāw: Literally “thighs”, but the euphemistic usage is common. The AV reads “stones”. HALOT 922 (also
alluding tentatively to the expression paḥad-yiṣḥāq in Genesis 31:42, 53—the testicular sense is particularly apt
in the latter verse) cites √pḥd II, appearing in Arabic faḫiḏ, faḫḏ, fiḫḏ, “thigh… haunch”. Pope 1973: 323-24, coyly
lapsed into Latin in discussing the sense, as he did in extenso in discussing v. 16!
82
The JB expression is apt.

22
While a variety of interpretations has been offered, most commentators seem to be of the opinion
that the beast graphically portrayed here is the hippopotamus, while his companion, Leviathan,
in the following verses, is a crocodile. Batto gave a survey of opinions on the problem of
identifying Behemoth as natural or supernatural83. What is indisputable is the basic sense of
“bovid” for the Hebrew term bĕhēmôt, which informs both Ugaritic and Hebrew usage84, and
ought to have some bearing on the identity of the beast. In the context of the discussion here, I
am inclined to pursue the line of enquiry of Pope and Day—who looked to a bovid form—and
suggest that he was specifically the aurochs, now firmly reduced from divine to natural, if still
quasi-mythical status. Both commentators muddied the waters in calling Behemoth a buffalo,
though Day also called him a wild ox. His argument seems rather incoherent, however: while
noting Couroyer’s discussion85, he chided him with inconsistency in that the “buffalo or wild ox”
had already appeared in Job 39:9-11, as though this somehow cast doubt on the present
identification. We noted above Vuure’s assessment of the extinction of the aurochs in the Near
East ca 1000 BC. Perhaps by the time of the composition of Job it had become a distant memory
of folklore, in addition to its residual iconographic significance.
As to Behemoth’s swamp-loving habits (Job 40:21-22), which might be regarded as favouring
the hippopotamus identification, we may compare the Ugaritic passage KTU 1.92, where in a
fragmentary text we discern a bull (ṯr, ll. 11, 13), which on my reading Athtart hunts, kills and offers
in sacrifice to Bull El her Father (ṯr il abh, l. 15)86. Aurochs (rumm) also head for cooling waters in
Thamak (ṯmk), KTU 1.10 ii 8-9. And while Baal goes on his hunt of the taurine offspring of El in
the desert in KTU 1.12, it must have ended in a swamp, where Baal falls when overcome by his
quarry, 1.12 ii 36-37, 55. In the latter line, Baal himself is compared to a mighty bull (ibr)87. It is
tempting to identify the location of some of this activity as Lake Hule, in view of the lake’s
presence within the Ugaritian purview, indicated by KTU 1.7 ii 9, 12 (Shamak, šmk), and 1.17 vi
20++ (Thamak, ṯmk), variant forms generally identified with Classical Semachonitis, EA
šamḫuna88. If this discussion is cogent, perhaps we should view Behemoth as a now-creaturely
form of the ancient aurochs, now demoted from his former divine status (Job 40:19).
It is interesting to see that the Ambrosiana Bible, published in Ulm in 1328, shows a triad of
creatures, identified as Leviathan, Behemoth and Ziz89. Leviathan is represented as a fishy
uroboros, Behemoth as an aurochs, and Ziz as a griffin. They evidently represent the paradigms
of marine, terrestrial and aerial life-forms respectively.

83
Batto 1999. See also Pope 1973: 320-29; Day 1985: 75-84;
84
HALOT: 111-12, giving “hippopotamus” and also “crocodile” (!) for bĕhēmôt in Job 40:15, and allowing “any big
animal” (citing Driver) and noting LXX θηρία; DUL3 216, bhmt (“animals, cattle…”; [Ar.:] “any quadruped”). Cf.
Wyatt 2002: 408 n. 24, where I accepted Margalit’s proposal to read bhm<t> at KTU 1.114.11, “meat”.
85
Couroyer 1975, noted in Day 1985: 78 n. 51.
86
Wyatt 2002: 370-74.
87
Wyatt 2002: 162-68.
88
DUL3: 814, 901 respectively, with bibliographical references. The toponym ṯmk of KTU 1.22 i 17, famous for its
wine, appears to have been on the flanks of Mount Hermon, and probably high above Hule.
89
See https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lev-Beh-Ziz.jpg .

23
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