When Magicians Collide

כ"ו באדר תש"ע
Keowulf 28

In follow-up The Magical Lesson of the Golden Calf, two more interpretations are offered up by DovBear:

According to some modern interpreters the golden calf story was written during the era of Israelite kings and it is really a disguised attack on Jeroboam and Aaron's descendants.

Some modern interpreters propose that a Levite wrote the golden calf story for the purpose of discrediting the Aaronid priesthood. As made clear in 1 Kings 12:31 Jeroboam didn't permit Levities to serve in his temples; the honor was reserved for Aaronids. According to this approach, the golden calf story was really written to discredit Jeroboam's calves and to discredit the Aaronid priests who served them.

A second modern interpretation is slightly different. This view proposes that the golden calf story was originally written (perhaps by an Aaronid priest) to justify Jeroboam's calves which, at first (the theory goes) were meant to serve the same purpose as the cherubim served in the southern Temple. Just as the people brought material to Moshe for the purpose of building the tabernacle and its utensils (including the cherubim), they also brought gold to Aaron for a similar purpose.

These two modern interpretations further support my theory that the episode with the golden calf illustrates a confrontation between two magicians (namely, Moses [a Levite] and Aaron [a Kohen]) and two approaches to magic - one playing on the superstitions of others to influence them (Moses' approach) and the other which emphasizes spiritual accountability and views magic as a method of spiritual development and evolving consciousness (Aaron's approach).