Without the worship angle, the commandment makes no sense-
it could be boiled down to-
I am your God-
To quote Bernard McGuirk’s Cardinal Egan*- “WhatDoesn’tBelongAndWhy?”
(*There’s a reference that will become increasingly remote.)
OR
I am your God-
But thank you for at least breaking it down and trying to make sense of it. That’s more explanation than I’ve gotten before as to WHY the worship thing should be connected to the making thing.
WhyNot, there are certainly plenty of Orthodox Jews who interpret ‘making a graven image’ in the absolute strict sense, as you say. I believe there are some who even have problems with photographs (which I personally think is going way beyond the ‘fence’).
I personally see with the distinction between objects where the object is being ‘worshipped’ i.e. as being inhabited, as it were, by a ‘god’ and where an object is being ‘venerated’ (i.e. as Malacandra described) - but I personally would be uncomfortable in a synagogue which had images of humans or animals in the sanctuary.
About the graven images, there are a few issues:
Everything we have is from God. If we take a part of God’s creation and dedicate it to a false God, it’s insulting to say the least.
Instead of worshiping the creation, or part of it, we should worship the Creator.
The issue of crosses, and other Christian symbols, I’m not sure of, I can see it both ways. There is a concept of sanctification, where objects (and people) are set aside in the service of God, and could cover objects like crosses. IIRC there is scripture that we (people) should not make likenesses of things in heaven or under the earth, the cross was on the earth, so it may be OK on that bases, as well as Jesus as man (and child), Mary, the Dove that descended onto Jesus as the Holy Spirit, and possibly this could extend to future events such as the rider of the white horse, as that will be on earth.
I think I may have related this story once before, in another thread.
I was raised Reform Jewish. When I was about 7 or 8 my sunday school class was learning about monotheism. The teacher explained that Abraham was the first monotheist, the first person to be lieve in only one God, rather than many. I raised my hand and asked, “What if Abraham was wrong? What if we discover someday that there really are many Gods?” (I hadn’t yet thought of the possibility that there are no Gods at all.) The teacher replied “We believe that there’s only one God.” I remember trying to rephrase the question, but she never really answered it. And in all the 50+ years since then, no one else has either.
I believe that it is possible that beings which would have been called gods did exist; although they have likely all been exiled to the void by now. More demons than just the Devil himself rebelled against God, and some may have chosen to strike out on their own. As to whether or not any specific deity ever existed, I can’t say. Some most likey were actual humans who had some mythic stories told about them, and others were fictitious, or conglomerations of several sources.
However, I have reasons to believe in THE supreme maker of al things,a nd I do. Everythig else is just pallid in comparison.
Convert Folk Shintoist, raised Russian Orthodox.
I believe in lots of gods, small and large, powerful and weak. I do not believe that adding a capital “G” to the word ought to denote one particular deity either for that matter. 
As to the second matter, I’ve never really thought much about why the Christian god decided to ban images. Even when I was small he seemed a bit…inconsistent in his messages and behaviours.
I think truly, this is the no competition and exclusivity clause of the commandments, more earthly and shrewd than any other. This was Moses saying my God is the biggest, the baddest, the oldest… Respect! Booyah.
Life is well, you have a good harvest…give it up to God! Pay me my tithe.
Your kids are starving and your goats got Tetanus and died? Fuck you, pay me! You broke a commandment and God is unhappy. Get right with God.
You turn your back, you’re heretical.
I think it depends on how you define God. There are gods and there is God. The reason we capitalize it is because it is a proper name, like Allah. If there is a Supreme Being (which is what I would call God), then there can be only one, owing to the definition of supreme. (It’s a superlative.) We who believe in God may perceive Him/Her/It in different ways, but if He/She/It is the Supreme Being, then we are all perceiving the same Being. There may also be gods, but I have no particular interest in them, and I don’t begrudge anyone who does. That’s my take on it anyway.
Uhmmm- actually Torah Law actually mandates a tithe only on one’s increase. Starving kids & dead goats count as deductions, possibly making one eligible to recieve tithes, not pay them.
So vent your spleen elsewhere.
What if God takes your child in a Levitican stoning, your duty by many commandments.
His Word.
Why? That certainly isn’t the view polytheists took. (take?)
I’m a traditionalist polytheist on this account: of course other tribes have other gods, that’s part of how you know they’re other tribes. Figuring They have as good a chance of existing as any other god doesn’t obligate me to do anything with Them or about Them unless I happen to be on Their turf, in which case acknowledgement is just polite.
Other people’s gods just aren’t that big a deal.
I frankly do not care enough about Hashem’s commandments to have an opinion on their nuances of meaning or origin.
I come into this coversation under “any other deity”
Since I am a polytheist the existance of gods other than just those I, personally, believe in is a non-issue.
Since I am not a monotheist, much less a monotheist of an Abrahamic religion, this is also a non-issue since the rules of those who worship Yahweh/Jesus/Allah don’t apply to my faith… but since you ask I’d say the sentiment was that of their god, but the exact wording is that passed down by oral tradition than by generations of translators and scribes.
Regardless, the meaning is pretty clear: “If you are one of My people I will be your supreme deity.”
For your particular polytheistic beliefs, is there one god who is a ‘creator god’ or is creation/the Big Bang &c explained in some other way?
[I and many other monotheists, and I am sure many/most polytheists, do not find a conflict between the Big Bang & evolution and belief in God, and so I’m not asking about that here - just the status of a god or gods with regard to creation.]
Well, it’s a creator Goddess, but that’s more in the sense of being first than anything else. First doesn’t necessarially mean mightiest (for example, Zeus was not the creater god in the Greek pantheon, but he was the ruler of the gods. Among the Norse, Odin was not only not the prime creator, he was ruler only over the Aesir). Our understanding of the divine is, of necessity, filtered through limited human perceptions. Any conflict between religion/spirituality and science/reason is almost certainly due to our human limitations and not the exterior universe. The creation myths in my faith usually talk about “giving birth to the world” but it’s understood as a metaphor, not a literal truth. No one actually believes the Earth was squirted out of a cosmic but flesh-and-blood vagina, m’kay?
Thanks! I’ve always found the Greek story of Uranus/Gaia/Cronus to be fascinating in its physicality.
Theravada Buddhist here. While I do believe that Brahma created the physical, material universe, this is not a power that is entirely unique to him - lesser powers of creation are given to numerous other beings, most notably Sakkha, the Pali name of Indra, and in any case eventually Brahma is going to die and somebody else is going to take his post and create the next iteration of the universe after it too grinds to dust. That is to say, for having good enough bright karma, being able to design the universe is a kind of prize you can win.
No problem there. I don’t believe that the gods have or had the ability to create or destroy entire universes. Rather, the gods are manifestations of belief, and their sphere of influence is limited to those that believe in them. For example, at his prime, osiris was probably a pretty heavy hitter; now…not so much.
In my primary religion, there are at least a half-dozen different creation myths ascribing the process of creation to a variety of gods; these have generally coherent similarities which amount to “Before the beginning there was a whole lot of potentiality without form; that potential manifested (either in the form of a god or as some other set of things that gave rise to a god); things have been differentiating since then.”
If you’re asking if there’s a single creator, not really; as I said, the myths all name different entities. A single coherent concept – I’d say yes. The stories are all different approaches for the same set of concepts. It certainly discourages the development of such stupidities as mythological literalism, though, which I’m all in favor of.