The reply to the objection that one and the same word is not likely to have been used by the same or contemporaneous writers in two different senses, and that the word has a uniform traditional interpretation, is that in the Hebrew, as in the English, considerable ambiguity occurs, and that the same word sometimes has two meanings of the most distinct and irreconcilable character. As regards the second objection, says Dr. Beke, which is based on the unbroken chain of tradition for about two thousand years, it can only hold good on the assumption that the originators of the tradition were infallible. If not, an error, whether committed intentionally or unintentionally in the first instance, does not become a truth by dint of repetition; any more than truth can become error by being as persistently rejected. The Doctor contends that when the Jews became intimately connected with Egypt, and witnessed there the adoration of the sacred bull Apis, they fell into the error of regarding as a golden calf the _egel_, or conical representation of the flame of fire, which their forefathers, and after them the Ten Tribes, had worshipped as the similitude of the Eternal, but of which they themselves, as Jews, had lost the signification. If this was the case, it is only natural that the error should have been maintained traditionally until pointed out. So stands the argument with regard to the theory of its being a golden cone, and not the figure of a calf that Aaron made out of the people's ornaments, and the worship of which so naturally provoked the wrath of Moses. There is much to be said in its favour, though not enough, perhaps, to make it conclusive. The propounder of it expressed his regret that he was under the necessity of protesting against the allegation that he had imputed to the Israelites what he calls the obscene phallic worship. "Most expressly," he says, "did I say that the molten golden image made by Aaron at Mount Sinai was a plain conical figure, intended to represent the God who had delivered the people from their bondage in the land of Mitzraim, in the form in which alone He had been manifested to them and to their inspired leader and legislator, namely that of the flame of fire." This is perfectly true, but those who are intimately acquainted with the phallic faiths of the world will find it difficult to disassociate the conical form of idol from those representations of the human physical organ which have been found as objects of adoration in so many parts of both the eastern and western hemispheres.