It’s just hard to directly translate accurately from the original Klingon texts.
You want it, you’ve got it : https://www.biblestudytools.com/exodus/20-3-compare.html
All of the translations have something in common… they say have no “other gods”. They don’t say “there are no other gods”
There is some, but not the most part :
The Message Bible 3 No other gods, only me.
Knowing which some is the most accurate is a multi millennium debate, with not clear answer. Shall digging in ?
There’s a logical problem to a language-based religion, in that even a literal interpretation is still an interpretation. Your understanding is not infallible, and no one on Earth likely believes The Bible, 100% verbatim, yet many claim to.
If the source material is always fuzzy then who is to say what a real christian is? Who is the authority? What is? The book itself isn’t sentient and Jesus isn’t here to break any ties.
But then, you’ll get people who say they know God, that they talk to God and it would seem as though their belief and participation is, from their perspective, at least, beyond the limitations of the Christian source-code. They allegedly know God via dimensional speed-dial via… vibes. I don’t believe he does, but they do, so, rules of engagement, I temporarily have to believe he does until I’m done speaking to the person with mental health problems.
Living in the American south is like having multiple gears of belief to swap into like a 6-speed transmission based on who you’re talking to. Alright, what flavor of kool aid is this person drinking?..
I think it says “thou shalt have no other gods besides me.”
If you look into the Hebrew a little more, the word we translate here as “God” is “Elohim”, which is better translated as something like “spiritual beings”. This word is also used for angels, demons, etc.
In fact, the phrase “Lord of Lords” is “Elohim of Elohim”, making it a statement that he’s the greatest spiritual being, which is a lot more distinct from “King of Kings” than we usually notice when he’s referred to as “King of kings and Lord of lords”.
Elohim is even used once to refer to the “ghost” of Samuel, when Saul seeks out a medium to ask him for advice in 1 Samuel 28.
Yahweh was just one of many gods worshipped at that time. Which is why like 1/3 of the ten comandments are related to his own insecurities
This take is actually pretty close to the original reading. In the ancient near east it was a given that there were many deities. It’s not that the worldview of the Bible is a strict monotheism but taht YHWH is the supreme God and the source of all.
If Cthulhu is your number 2 you immediately need to check for hemmorhoids.
Nothing cleans you put better than a tablespoon of incomprehensible, mind shattering horror in your morning coffee.
Back in the day you would pick and choose the gods you worshipped, like from the greek or roman pantheon. But if you chose to worship God you would have to put him literally before the other gods.
This is my first wife Yahweh, and my second wife Amen-Ra.
Yaweh was one of the sons of El in Caananite religion, which has the same Noah myth, and the religion/people is based on one of his son’s decendants. El was accepted by Greeks as the same god as Zeus. Many other Caananite polytheistic gods had Greek equivalents.
When Moses wrote the tablets, he was basically doing a religious coup to claim the Hebrew/Israelite “subgod” was the primary god. Denouncing Idolatry, and “thou shalt not covet” was also a rebelion against the main/historical Phoenecian/Caananite religion to when Israelites war against Phoenecians “do not covet their idols, destroy them”.
“when Moses wrote the tablets”
The historical context here is really interesting, but this line is a head scratcher. A) god didn’t write the tablets, Moses did it himself, B) tacit support for historicity of Moses. It’s like not the religious viewpoint, but not the secular one either. Though I may be splitting hairs about a nonessential clause here.
- religion is capable of inventing a god that doesn’t exist.
- Israelites needed a propaganda boost to rebel against Phoenecians, and offshoot religion helps.
- Elders that went up to the mountaintop with Moses can unanimously be on board with Hasbara to fuel war against Phoenicians. Ends justify the lie.
- Yaweh becomes supreme god, and Phoenicians deserve death for failing to accept all commandments. Including/especially the very weird idolatry one, that gods would typically accept as narcissistic reverence. Though shalt kill all heretics.
In the Bible story God made the first set, but they were destroyed by Moses in a meltdown. Moses had to carve the rewritten replacements which are the ones that get written down.
Regardless of whether someone thinks Moses is historical, the story itself is a coup of sorts.
Unrelated, but has anyone else noticed the ten commandments read like a bad AI prompt?
Ah yeah forgot that part. Been awhile since Sunday school.
I’m into decolonization of Christianity, and one thing that’s really interesting is how saints were used by conquered peoples to preserve their gods and cultural practices i.e. syncretism. That’s one of the reasons Catholicism has remained more prominent than Protestantism in Latin America.
Catholicism outside of the Vatican is peganism and animism and ancestor worship with the labels scratched off.
And I’m mature enough in my atheism (really, post-atheist) to think that’s actually really cool.
My Filipino wife gave me a whole different view of their Catholicism. She has a rosary in the car and rubs it for protection, believes in Jesus and heaven, all that, but isn’t familiar with even the most well-known Bible stories and I have no idea if she’s even been to Mass. To her, the bible simply isn’t important in any way, and neither are the practices of the church. All very strange to my American senses, having been raised in a white-bread Presbyterian church.
I’m not a practitioner, but I’ve done a lot of reading on Voodoo.
African, Haitian, and New Orleans.
Often, at least in Haiti and New Orleans, Catholic saints are matched with a particular Loa (spirit, god, whatever you wanna call it)
This was due to Voodoo practitioners being killed for not being Christians in Haiti. Thus, they could worship Saint whoever visually, while still interacting with their own faith. It just traveled to the new world as people did.
The process is called Syncretism, and Voodoo is hardly the first or last instance of it happening.
As you mentioned, the church has done this too.
Easter? Eostre was a fertility deity associated with spring and rabbits.
Christmas? Yule.
It goes on.
What is “post-atheism”?
Recognizing that religion had an important place in the historical development of society (culture, government, labor, ownership, law, family, etc) and that being religious has a material basis that exists outside of our own ability to choose our beliefs.
Atheism isn’t a choice. Theism isn’t a choice. They are just products of our material conditions.
So, I don’t try to convince anyone about atheism; I’m honestly somewhat jealous that religious people can still believe in anything.
Start from the beginning. The text makes it absolutely clear that there “are other gods”.
A tablet written in the very early Bronze Age, when Semites were surrounded by (and often participating in) all sorts of alternative cults and pagan pantheons would naturally mention other gods.
It would be weirder if the early biblical texts didn’t mention any other gods.
Considering 3 major world religions claim the text was inspired by their god, the discrepancies make it at least highly suspicious.
It wasn’t just other cultural groups that had other gods – proto-Judaism was polytheistic.
God: An Anatomy is a great book that goes more into this if you want to read more about the ancient conception of the Abrahamic god. Very little of it has survived into Christianity.
The Bible itself acknowledges other gods. When God made Man “in our image” he was speaking to the pantheon of gods.
There are other examples, but I’m no scholar and my toast is almost ready.
No, he was speaking to the triune God, 3 in 1, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They are the same God.
No, he was speaking about Ahura Mazda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maat#42_Negative_Confessions_(Papyrus_of_Ani)
Oh, plus “only this god, not those”
