I am dismayed to read a Rabbi declare that the Word of God is the product of "both humans and God." Furthermore, I cannot stand it when religious authorities, like Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater, challenge ultimate truth because it offends the political correctness cabal or the sensibilities of intellectual man.
If there is no ultimate truth, then there is no God, and therefore there is no Jew. Yet since the Jew lives, that in itself testifies to the existence of God, and ultimately Ultimate Truth, whether our finite minds can understand this majesty or not.
Why did the Israelites build the Golden? They got impatient with Moses, who seemed to be taking his time on Mount Sinai. Yet the Israelites, like every human being, needed to trust in something — or rather Someone — greater, beyond themselves. Instead of waiting for the fullness of God's majesty, they rushed to create a creature comfort measure.
One of the most crushing and humbling realities about ultimate truth, which the Israelites learned the hard way, is that we must receive it by revelation, not conceive it through calculation. Idolatry, diminishing the Truth and God out of expediency, is sinful because man attempts to reach and control God using his pitifully limited resources.
When God imparted his law and His plan through the Jews,and ultimately to the world, He created a testimony of Himself declaring His Being and His Truth outside the frustrations of fad, fantasy, and fashion. No one, not even a religious authority, has any right or reason to challenge that.