# The First Commandment Proves It... **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 17, 2003, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954 "2003-03-17T08:09:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2003, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/1 "2003-03-17T08:09:38Z")
The first commandment states: AM THE LORD THY GOD, THOU SHALT NOT HAVE strange gods BEFORE ME. If this is the word of God, I see two problems with this. 1.) It appears that our God is admitting that there are other gods. 2.) Our God doesn’t want “strange” gods before him/her, does that imply that normal gods can go before him? Are there divisions of normal and strange Gods? Why did God feel it necessary to specify “strange”? It seems to me, my traditional Christian teachings of one, very large, and very powerful God was misleading. Perhaps the Romans/Greeks had it right. Could this be Zeus, trying to regain power? ---
**Author:** ![Doomtrain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/0ea827/32.png) [@Doomtrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doomtrain)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2003, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/2 "2003-03-17T08:17:54Z")
This is god saying he’s jealous of those worthy of worship, like Great Cthulu. ---
**Author:** ![GuyMontag](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ad7895/32.png) [@GuyMontag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuyMontag)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2003, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/3 "2003-03-17T11:09:01Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by emacknight \* > \*\*The first commandment states: > > 1.) It appears that our God is admitting that there are other gods. > > \*\* Not necessarily. A “god” can be anything to anyone. For instance, money can be your “god”, so when God say no other god before me, he is saying don’t put money before me. ---
**Author:** ![Doomtrain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/0ea827/32.png) [@Doomtrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doomtrain)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2003, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/4 "2003-03-17T11:57:57Z")
Or maybe he’s saying you shouldn’t put, like, Gene Simmons (the God of Thunder and Rock N Roo-oo-oll!) ahead of him. ---
**Author:** ![rumraisin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8e7dd6/32.png) [@rumraisin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rumraisin)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2003, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/5 "2003-03-17T12:02:45Z")
In response to question 1, a “god” refers to something you worship. It doesn’t mean that the thing is actually a god, with godlike qualities. For eg, if you worship a block of wood, that’s your god. As for question 2, “Strange” doesn’t mean “weird”. It simply means other, different etc. The concordance defines the word thus[here](http://bible.crosswalk.com/Lexicons/Hebrew/heb.cgi?number=0312&version=kjv). ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2003, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/6 "2003-03-17T12:10:34Z")
**11TH COMANDMENT** _Thou shalt not post in the wrong forum._ Now go child and repent in Great Debates! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2003, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/7 "2003-03-17T15:18:36Z")
Sorry Shakes, I have to keep it here because I don’t know enough about God, the Bible, or religion to post it anywhere else. And its really just my opinion that the 10 commandments are the word of God, and God used the term god, which implies that there are others. > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by rumraisin \* > \*\*In response to question 1, a “god” refers to something you worship. It doesn’t mean that the thing is actually a god, with godlike qualities. For eg, if you worship a block of wood, that’s your god. > \*\* But my impression of the 10 commandments is that this above all is the Word of God, such that God went through the trouble of putting these in stone by Himself. God then choose to refer to Himself as capital G God, and everything else as small g gods. I don’t want to try and argue what His intonation was when stressing Himself as God. And I know its wrong to try and assume God thinks the way we do, but I’m bothered that He used this word. Couldn’t He have a word other than god to refer to things like rocks and logs? IMHO, this shows that there are many gods, but only one God. ---
**Author:** ![Neurotik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2003, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/8 "2003-03-17T15:25:07Z")
This really should be in GD. But you are wrong, it doesn’t show anything of the sort. First, let’s remember that the originals weren’t in English. But in Hebrew. So you can throw anything about capitals or anything else out the window. Second, **rumraisin** is right. Having no gods before him doesn’t necessarily mean that there are other personal gods out there with powers. It could, but it could not. Actually, reading your last sentence, you are correct there are many gods, but only one God. It just doens’t mean that those other gods are personal gods. They could just as easily be money or women or personal power or Star Trek. But there is only one god worthy of your worship - that is God. ---
**Author:** ![Humble\_Servant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/47e85d/32.png) [@Humble\_Servant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humble_Servant)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2003, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/9 "2003-03-17T16:08:22Z")
I don’t know whether you are being serious or not, **emacknight** , but it’s not a bad question to treat seriously, so I will, but in a casual way in the spirit of the OP. The Commandments are of course in the OT. It’s the Judeo- part of the Judeo-Christian tradition that deserves the first credit for monotheism. The Greek and Roman governments (if not the people) were more than willing to go the syncretist route–they adopted gods from the nations they conquered, sometimes equating them with an existing god and sometimes just adding to the pantheon. Any religion that wants to spread over the world will find itself tempted to do the same thing, as Christianity sometimes did in adopting holidays and customs. Judaism never did this–it championed strict monotheism (it could do this because it didn’t much care if anyone else adopted its God). People will argue about whether Babylonian legends are reflected in OT stories, but it is the jealous, monotheistic God that differentiates the OT from everything that came before, despite other cultural bits and pieces. G. K. Chesterton in **Everlasting Man** makes this point: Polytheism doesn’t work from a philosophical or even an intuitive perspective–we tend to laugh at the pissing contests of the Greek and Roman gods, and the Greek philosophy of Parmenides and Plato (looking to a single source) is what still resonates. Man may make up many gods, but none of them but the ultimate power god will satisfy–why would you bother with Hermes when you can have Zeus? (If it is because Zeus is too big and important for you and you think you will be better able to get Hermes’ attention, well that’s fine, but then you find yourself in the untenable position of needing to quantify and divide godly traits and powers, the very reason we tend to laugh at the Greek and Roman pantheon–something Chesterton says is impossible to do for a true god.) That’s less coherent than I’d like, but I have Chesteron entirely in mind and [**Everlasting Man** turns out to be on line](http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/chesterton/everlasting/content.htm) if you want this explanation from the horse’s mouth. (Finally, don’t get too hung up on the word “gods.” The original Hebrew word for “gods” is not likely the term used for God, and “gods” may be used for angels and other lesser beings in both the Bible and in modern theological works.) ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_Wright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@Steve\_Wright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_Wright)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2003, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/10 "2003-03-17T16:13:39Z")
It’s commonly held that the Judaeo-Christian religion began with what’s called a _henotheistic_ model, in which the God of the Bible would be the God of the nation of Israel, and the success of the nation of Israel would prove that their God was better than anybody else’s. This idea makes sense in anthropological terms, but there’s not much to support it in the Bible _as it currently stands_; it consistently decries “gods” other than God as being powerless and _nonexistent_ - idols are merely “the work of a man’s hands”. In the contest between Elijah and the priests of Baal, for example, it’s fairly clear that Elijah beats them because he’s praying to a God that actually exists, whereas they’re not. I can only think, off the top of my head, of two people with supernatural powers in the Old Testament who aren’t Jewish or don’t believe in the Jewish God; these are the prophet Balaam (the one with the talking ass) and the Witch of Endor whom Saul consults. In both these cases, the source of their powers is left rather undefined, and it may well be God, working in mysterious ways, as is His wont … or it may be a relic of pre-monotheistic belief systems. If this gets moved to GD, there are people there with actual Biblical knowledge who can tell you more than I can. ---
**Author:** ![Homebrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@Homebrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Homebrew)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2003, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/11 "2003-03-17T17:30:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Humble Servant \* > \*\*G. K. Chesterton in **Everlasting Man** makes this point: Polytheism doesn’t work from a philosophical or even an intuitive perspective–we tend to laugh at the pissing contests of the Greek and Roman gods, and the Greek philosophy of Parmenides and Plato (looking to a single source) is what still resonates. \*\* To futher the Great Debate, for many people the idea of _any_ Supernatural Diety doesn’t work from a philiosophical or intuitive perspective. “God”, even a monotheistic one, doesn’t resonate. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2003, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/12 "2003-03-18T03:17:53Z")
Off to Great Debates. ---
**Author:** ![DreadCthulhu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/db5fbb/32.png) [@DreadCthulhu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DreadCthulhu)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2003, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/13 "2003-03-18T04:02:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by GMRyujin \* > \*\*This is god saying he’s jealous of those worthy of worship, like Great Cthulu. \*\* Who are you calling worthy of worship you little… oh wait… that was complement… too late to call off the deep ones… oh well. ---
**Author:** ![Apos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/838e76/32.png) [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2003, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/14 "2003-03-18T05:52:18Z")
—Not necessarily. A “god” can be anything to anyone. For instance, money can be your “god”, so when God say no other god before me, he is saying don’t put money before me.— Seems like it would have then been clearer to just say “don’t put anything else before me.” instead of playing on a modern English idiom that didn’t even exist at the time (the sloppier form of “god” as being anything you “worship” with “worship” not exactly meaning the same thing either). —G. K. Chesterton in Everlasting Man makes this point: Polytheism doesn’t work from a philosophical or even an intuitive perspective— Making a point isn’t the same thing as proving it. We’ll leave the “philosophical” bit aside, but from an intuitive and emotional perspective, it’s easy to quote some likeable features of one thing, and ignore the likeable features of others. One could just as well say that the Greek Gods are more appealing because they psychologically interesting, or because they offer a real diversity in interests and realms that appeal to people with different interests and goals for the time being. But maybe Chesterton just thinks that nothing other than power and dominance is important. Other people may not see it that way. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2003, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/15 "2003-03-18T06:28:08Z")
> [@](#): > > **Humble Servant** said: > > G. K. Chesterton in Everlasting Man makes this point: Polytheism doesn’t work from a philosophical or even an intuitive perspective–we tend to laugh at the pissing contests of the Greek and Roman gods, and the Greek philosophy of Parmenides and Plato (looking to a single source) is what still resonates. Man may make up many gods, but none of them but the ultimate power god will satisfy–why would you bother with Hermes when you can have Zeus? (If it is because Zeus is too big and important for you and you think you will be better able to get Hermes’ attention, well that’s fine, but then you find yourself in the untenable position of needing to quantify and divide godly traits and powers, the very reason we tend to laugh at the Greek and Roman pantheon–something Chesterton says is impossible to do for a true god.) Polytheism works just fine for any number of religions, notably Hinduism. maybe it didn’t work for Chesterton, but Chesterton had a pro-Christian bias. **Steve Wright** pretty much has the right idea, here. Judaism did not start out as true monotheism. YHWH was just one tribal god out of many. The Jews believed that other deities existed, they just thought that theirs was the best. Steve is also right that this fact is not well reflected in the Bible other than the kind of vague references to other Gods as seen in the commandments. The earliest appearance of true monotheism seems to have occurred in Egypt under the pharaoh, Akhenaten ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2003, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/16 "2003-03-18T06:32:58Z")
Damn it, didn’t mean to hit submit. As I was saying. Monotheism seems to have first appeared under the pharaoh Akhenaten in the twelfth century BCE. The Hebrew might have brought that monotheism with them in their migrations out of Egypt. The first commandment may have been an early attempt to articulate it. Much of the Mesopotamian mythology found in Genesis was polytheistic in its original form. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2003, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/17 "2003-03-18T06:43:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Steve Wright \* > It’s commonly held that the Judaeo-Christian religion began with what’s called a _henotheistic_ model, in which the God of the Bible would be the God of the nation of Israel, and the success of the nation of Israel would prove that their God was better than anybody else’s. > > This idea makes sense in anthropological terms, but there’s not much to support it in the Bible _as it currently stands_; it consistently decries “gods” other than God as being powerless and _nonexistent_ - idols are merely “the work of a man’s hands”. There may perhaps be a trace of an older henotheistic belief in [2 Kings, chapter 3](http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=2KGS+3&language=english&version=NIV&showfn=on&showxref=on). Israel and Judah (along with Edom, at that point dominated by Judah) have formed an alliance to subdue Moab (an errant vassal state of Israel). Elisha the prophet confidently predicts victory for the allied armies: > [@](#): > > “This is an easy thing in the eyes of the LORD ; he will also hand Moab over to you. You will overthrow every fortified city and every major town. You will cut down every good tree, stop up all the springs, and ruin every good field with stones.” (verses 18-19) And indeed the Bible portrays Yahweh as sending miraculous rains to save the allied armies, which had been in danger of running out of water in the desert. The attack on Moab does initially succeed: > [@](#): > > But when the Moabites came to the camp of Israel, the Israelites rose up and fought them until they fled. And the Israelites invaded the land and slaughtered the Moabites. They destroyed the towns, and each man threw a stone on every good field until it was covered. They stopped up all the springs and cut down every good tree. Only Kir Hareseth was left with its stones in place, but men armed with slings surrounded it and attacked it as well. (vv. 24-25) But then, with Moab on the brink of total disaster, King Mesha sacrifices his own son to Chemosh, the Moabite god: > [@](#): > > When the king of Moab saw that the battle had gone against him, he took with him seven hundred swordsmen to break through to the king of Edom, but they failed. Then he took his firstborn son, who was to succeed him as king, and offered him as a sacrifice on the city wall. The fury against Israel was great; they withdrew and returned to their own land. And with that abrupt reversal of fortune, the allied campaign against Moab comes to an end; so does any further mention of it in the text of 2 Kings. (In modern translations, that’s where the chapter break between chapters 3 and 4 is; and [chapter 4](http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=2KGS+4&language=english&version=NIV&showfn=on&showxref=on) picks up with several stories of miracles associated with the prophet Elisha, with no mention of Moab.) There’s no mention of this being a temporary setback, either, or any explicit mention of “but the LORD was displeased with them, and allowed Moab to defeat them.” (In the rest of 2 Kings there’s a mention of “Moabite raiders” in [2 Kings 13:20-21](http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=2KGS+13:20-21&language=english&version=NIV&showfn=on&showxref=on); a reference to Josiah king of Judah ridding Jerusalem of the cults of various foreign gods, including Chemosh, in [2 Kings 23:13](http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=2KGS+23:13&language=english&version=NIV&showfn=on&showxref=on); and Moab is among the nations listed as being used by Yahweh to punish Judah in [2 Kings 24:2](http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=2KGS+24:2&language=english&version=NIV&showfn=on&showxref=on).) It rather does seem as if the story originally read that the Israelites, under their god, Yahweh, were initially successful in their campaign against Moab; but then the Moabites, having made a supreme and awful sacrifice to their god, Chemosh, were saved by his intervention while the Israelites were struck with the “fear of Chemosh”–and thus a henotheistic mirror image of assorted other Biblical tales of the Yahweh striking down or disheartening the enemies of the Israelites. (This interpretation is not original to me, by the way; it can be found, for example, in _Asimov’s Guide to the Bible_ in chapter 12 (2 Kings) of Book One: the Old Testament, article “Mesha”.) ---
**Author:** ![Humble\_Servant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/47e85d/32.png) [@Humble\_Servant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Humble_Servant)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2003, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/18 "2003-03-18T15:12:09Z")
I quite agree with everyone who has pointed out that Chesterton is a Christian apologist. Also, when I said he “makes the point” I meant simply to present Chesterton’s views, not indicate that he had proved them to be correct. > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Diogenes the Cynic \* > \*\*Steve Wright pretty much has the right idea, here. Judaism did not start out as true monotheism. YHWH was just one tribal god out of many. The Jews believed that other deities existed, they just thought that theirs was the best. Steve is also right that this fact is not well reflected in the Bible other than the kind of vague references to other Gods as seen in the commandments. The earliest appearance of true monotheism seems to have occurred in Egypt under the pharaoh, Akhenaten \*\* I tend to disagree with this. The “henotheistic” background “found” in the OT and in the history of the region seems to me to be an anthropological construction or theory, designed to help explain anthropologists explain what they think must be the movement from polytheism to monotheism. As **Steve** earlier indicated (his two examples plus the one from **MEBuckner** ), there is actually little evidence for this in the OT itself. I am not aware of much additional in the historic record that advances the argument. So, IMHO, I am not ready to accept the theory as a winner. Yes, there were other gods in the region (there are plenty of OT passages where the Jews backslide), but the OT itself is not, IMHO, anything other than monotheistic, and strongly so. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2003, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/19 "2003-03-18T19:25:30Z")
> [@](#): > > **Humble Servant** said: > but the OT itself is not, IMHO, anything other than monotheistic, and strongly so. True, but the OT wasn’t written until after monotheism had already taken hold. The YHWH cult existed long before the OT. ---
**Author:** ![Neurotik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2003, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-commandment-proves-it/161954/20 "2003-03-18T20:18:00Z")
Maybe so, but the OP is claming that the OT itself proves polytheism. That’s the real debate here, not what grew out of what historically speaking.