Golden calf God of Israel was associated with or pictured as a calf/bull deity through the process of religious assimilation and syncretism. Among the Egyptians' and Hebrews' neighbors in the ancient Near East and in the Aegean, the aurochs, the wild bull, was widely worshipped, often as the Lunar Bull and as the creature of El. When Moses went up into Biblical Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments (), he left the Israelites for forty days and forty nights. The Israelites feared that he would not return and demanded that Aaron make them "gods" to go before them (). Aaron gathered
Law given to Moses at Sinai and gravity of Biblical law as if they are written explicitly in the Torah. A classic example are the laws of Tefillin, small black leather boxes containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah. The corresponding halakhot, as expounded by the Oral Law, are mentioned four times in the Torah (, , , ). Law given to Moses at Sinai A Law given to Moses at Sinai (Hebrew "Halakhah le-Moshe mi-Sinai" הלכה למשה מסיני) refers to a halakhic law that is neither explicitly stated in the biblical laws nor derived from it by Talmudical hermeneutics but known from