In my opinion (and in the opinion of many other students of ancient Middle Eastern religions) that’s exactly what it meant, but most Christian and Jewish traditionalists would argue vociferously, of course.
There are other hints or vestiges of polytheism and/or henotheism still preserved in the Hebrew Bible as well as much archaeological evidence. Judaism may not have become truly monotheistic untl after the Babylonian exile.
No, I don’t think they were. That’s the point.
Do you have any historical or sociological evidence to support your claim? Or is this all empty speculation?
[QUOTE=John Mace]
Would it wrong to interpret “thou shalt have no other gods before me” as a tacit recognition of the “other gods”? QUOTE]
Yes, it would. That statement doesn’t acknowledge that other gods exist. Rather, it simply means that one should not worship those gods – regardless of whether they exist or not.
Well, like JThunder just demonstrated, not everyone agrees; that’s why I mentioned it.
I acknowledged that religious traditionalists would disagree. They have no choice but to disagree. The opinion of historians and archaeologists does not much favor an early emergence of monotheism, though.
I’m confused - which god? The real one or one of the false ones?
Can you post a screenshot of the stone tablet? It sounds like it would make good wallpaper for my desktop.
Thou shalt have no other “gods” before me.
What I can’t wrap my brain around is why people would make a “god” with their own hands, out of metal or wood or whatever, and then worship it as a god. And yet, if the Bible is to be believed, people were all too ready to do just that (the most famous example being that incident with the Golden Calf), so that this got included as one of the Big No-No’s in the Ten Commandments.
Hey man, don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it.
They didn’t. The idols were only symbols. They were not literally believed to be gods themselves, just representations.
It’s not so different from modern times. When I hear people talk about God, I often hear them say that God wants a certain thing or does things a certain way because otherwise, they wouldn’t want to worship him; therefore, he must be the way they want him to be.
Obviously, if a God existed he would be what he is, not what you want him to be; these people are “building” their own gods just like a modern Golden Calf; they just build an idea, instead of an object.
Those who are truly interested in this question would do well to pick up a copy of the December 2005 “Atlantic Monthly” magazine which contains an article called something like “Is God An Accident?”
The article essentially makes the case that our pattern-seeking brains strive to make sense of the world and are endowed with a sense of object persistence. Thus we react to, for example, the death of a loved one by seeing it fitting into some sort of plan and that their soul, even though we can’t perceive it, is still somewhere “out there”. From that point, it’s a short hop to a dualistic world outlook with deities to fill in the missing piece of the patterns around us. And this is all reinforced by strong social instincts to reinforce group consciousness and differentiate ourselves from outsiders.
So basically, we invented god because we couldn’t help doing otherwise.
Not a regular here, but…
Re: the OP
Back up from the maze a bit and it will be clearer. Religions are political institutions that carry a lot of power. To wield the most power you need the most people. For that you need to discredit the Gods before you, thus gaining converts.
At the ‘worshiper’ level it might seem confusing but at the ‘we-have-a-new-idea’ stage, you need certain things to happen. One being propagation of you new idea. That requires stamping out the old ideas.
It’s simple: All gods humans have ever worshipped are real. And they’re all involved in running the universe. And most of the time, they don’t get along.
Explains a lot, doesn’t it? 
I presume you’re right (though the idea of making and then worshipping a representation still seems pretty odd to me). Yet, reading the Bible, I get the impression that sometimes they were believed to be, or believed to be believed to be, gods themselves.
Der Trihs, good point.
All organized religions have the twin goals of the accumulation of wealth and the gaining of power over their adherants.
I don’t think that’s relevant. The claim was made that the statement “Thou shalt have no other gods…” denote a tacit acknowledgement that those gods exist. The burden of proof rests on those who make that claim… and for the reason that I cited earlier, the stated conclusion simply does not follow.
You’ve made that rather grandiose and all-encompassing claim numerous times now, Clothahump. So far, I have yet to see you present even a shred of evidence for your claim.
Hint: Citing a few religions that do have that goal doesn’t cut it. After all, you claim that ALL religions are guilty of this. Heck, I doubt that you could even name 10% of all the world’s religions, much less every single one of them.
Especially mine! 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subgenius