When I was in Graduate School, we were taught theories about how we humans wind up doing what we do to cope with our neediness. We learned about projection, the phenomena where we project our needs and difficulties on to someone else in order to get relief. And, we also learned about the theory of introjection wherein we adopt the ideas or attitudes of others in order to gain relief.
While God was in their midst the people projected all their needs on Him and said they would always follow Moses their deliverer. Remember, Moses wrote it down? And then Moses disappeared to Mt. Sinai for some personal time with the Lord and the people got antsy. Yesterday they saw Moses and today they did not. Thus, began the process of introjection. They began to look around for someone or something that would bring them relief. For them it was the memory of the gods of Egypt.
"This is that Moses who told the Israelites, God
will send you a prophet like me from your own
people. He was in the church in the wilderness,
and the angel spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and
with our fathers; and he received living words to
pass on to us. But our fathers refused to obey him.
They told Aaron, ' make us gods who will go before
us---we don't know what has happened to him!"
The martyr Stephen's address to the Jews in the Narrated Bible, Acts. 7
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