I think that sound like a point for a Hebrew (the language) scholar, to interpret the original text. If I said “I have only one book, and no other books”, there could be others books around. But if I said “I have only one wife, and no other” that doesn’t suggest that I have other wives cluttering up the living room, only that I could. Any Hebrew scholars around?
Maybe so, but it doesn’t mean that there ARE any other books. And that’s why we cannot conclude that ancient Judaism acknowledged the existence of other deities.
Not a Hebrew scholar but if the text is accurately translated, the fact that it says not to place other gods “before me” implies that other gods exist (or how could they be given preeminence?). Yahweh also calls himself a “jealous God” which would be senseless if there was nothing to be jealous of.
The supporting evidence for henotheism (if not flat out polytheism) in Judea is pretty strong in the archaeology until about the 7th or 8th century BCE. Yahweh actually had a girlfriend at one point. There are hundreds of figurines and images of a goddess called Asherah who is identified in inscriptions as a consort of Yahweh, or as “Yahweh’s Asherah.”
Like I said before, there is no strong evidence of a montheistic culture in Judea until post-exillic times.
The idols are generally not worshipped- it is the idea behind them. Idols are used to focus worship, but are not usually items of worship outside of their symbolic value. Most polytheistic gods represent aspects of the world. Most polytheistic people recognize that worshipping an aspect of the world is a little tricky to get your head around, so they personify them and create physical reminders of them. There is a lot of metaphor in any religion, and polytheistic religions are a little more aware and okay with that than most montheistic relgions.
It’s kind of like a communion host. Nobody worships them, even if they believe they are turned in to Jesus. And while many believe that communion hosts do become Jesus’s body, it’s a little more complicated and nuanced than that.
People pray to images of Christ or the Madonna as well. They aren’t literally worshipping those images. It’s just that focusing on an image is a way to facilitate a sense of communication.
Not at all. Especially when at the very beginning the Bible states “And God said, let *us * make man in *our * image, after *our * likeness…” (Gen. 1:26) Who, here, is He addressing as His equal? Christian mythology described God and His angels, but considering the power we attribute to these angels, and that we consider them to be of divine nature, are there not similarities between these stories and the polytheistic religions of other ancient nations?
E. M. Forster wrote a short story about a man who dies and goes to Heaven, and finds all the gods there. He sees the old forgotten ones languishing because nobody worships them any more, but the ones still being worshiped are feeding on the energy from their worshipers. So this man finds another man (Forster was gay, you know), and the two men decide to leave this boring scene together, and their individual souls are reabsorbed into the world.
People are fully capable of worshipping something that doesn’t exist. Heck, the skeptics here have often accused Christians of doing that very thing.
The command not to place other gods before Yahweh does NOT imply that those gods actually exist. The Hebrews were not to worship those gods, whether they existed or not. It’s just that simple.
T. Pratchett wrote a longer story about a god who decides to incarnate in order to check up on his worshippers, and finds that all the belief is being foccused on the Church and not on Him, so all the body he can manage is a rather elderly tortoise. Eventually his one true believer is saved by what appears to be a miracle and he gains enough energy from the resulting belief to manifest as a more godly supra-human (Pratchett isn’t gay, you know) and the believer lives the rest of a long and blessed life in peace, and meets Death in the afterlife rather than going on to any kind of Heaven.
/price of tea in China
How can you put gods that don’t exist “before me?” How can Yahweh be “jealous” of gods that don’t exist? And what about all of the other internal and external evidence that the Hebrews were not originally monotheistic?
Never mind. I can’t argue with faith positions. I already acknowledged that.
Boy, that God is sure one Omnipotent Mf.
Jg.1:19
“And the Lord was with Judah; and he drove out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.”
Ummmm…
Diogenes:
Re: the “other gods” line in the Ten Commandments: of course some things worshipped by other peoples existed. Some nations worshipped the sun. Some worshipped certain totem animals. Some worshipped anthromoprhizations of those things. The issue of “before me” is that they may not be considered to have any power independent of G-d. G-d is the source of all powers both natural and supernatural and only he should be acknowledged by the Israelites at all.
Good point. The pagans worshipped those items and regarded them as “gods,” even though they weren’t.
By believing that they exist, even though they don’t, and then worshipping them. It’s that simple.
Here is a flood of support for bible writers beliving in more than one god. One guess for what site I get it from.
Ps.97:7
“Worship him, all ye gods.”
Ps.82:1
“God standeth in the congregation of the mighty, he judgeth among the gods.”
Num.33:4
“Upon their gods also theLORD executed judgments.”
Ex.22:28
“Thou shalt not revile the gods.”
Is.45:5-6
“I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me.”
One of these does not belong.
Un fortunately (ain’t it always the way) it was lost in a shipwreck.
But I just got a new tablet, even more puzzling.
new tablet
Actually, Catholics do worship the consecrated elements. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church
The Latin term for the veneration given to God, and the consecrated elements, is latria, as opposed to the veneration given to saints (dulia), and the Virgin (hyperdulia).
This is an apologetic response, not an analytical one based on an objective examination of all other evidence. An unbiased investigation of Palestinian archaeology as well as some internal evidence within the Hebrew Bible itself shows that it is highly likely that montheistic Judaism emerged from what was originally a henotheistic culture. This is an uncontroversial assumption among students of the ancient Middle East but I understand and acknowledge and appreciate that millions of people are going to dispute it.
God wrote that with his own hand? Wow. I never thought God’s handwriting would look so much like Photoshop.
Of course God wrote it with his own hand. He just made it look like Photoshop to weed out the evil doubters and atheists.
Testy