Do not have any other gods before me. (worship, quote, faith)

[Daniel O. McClellan]

Originally Posted by Dredre

28 Bible Passages Teaching One God (http://www.irr.org/MIT/one-god.html - broken link)

28 passages teaching one God? Here are 28 teaching multiple gods:
Gen 1:26: And God said, let us make man in our image.
Gen 3:22: And the Lord God said, Behold, then man has become as one of us, knowing good and evil.
Gen 6:2: And the Sons of God saw the daughters of humanity.
Gen 11:17: Let us go down, and there confound their language.
Exod 15:11: Who is like you, O Yhwh, among the gods?
Exod 18:11: Now I know that Yhwh is greater than all gods.
Exod 22:8: The case of both parties will come before the gods, and the one whom the gods condemn shall pay double to his neighbor.
Exod 22:28: You shall not revile the gods.
Deut 4:19: Lest you lift up your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and stars, and all the host of heaven, and you go after them, and worship them, and serve that which Yhwh your God has allotted to all the people under heaven.
Deut 10:17: For Yhwh your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords.
Deut 32:8: He set the boundaries of the people according to the number of the Sons of God.Deut 32:43: Worship him, all you gods.
1 Sam 28:13: And the king said to her, Don't be afraid. What did you see? And the woman said to Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth. (Notice the prophet Samuel is one of these gods)
1 Chr 16:25: The Lord ... is to be feared above all gods.
Ps 82:1: God stands in the Council of El, he judges among the gods.
Ps 82:6: I have said, You are gods.
Ps 86:8: Among the gods there is none like you, O Lord.
Ps 89:7-8 (ET 6-7): Who in the skies can be compared to Yhwh? Who among the Sons of God is like Yhwh? A God greatly feared in the council of the Holy Ones, and feared above all those around him.
Ps 96:4: For the Lord ... is to be feared above all gods.
Ps 97:7: Worship him, all you gods.
Ps 135:5: Our Lord is above all gods.
Ps 136:2: O give thanks to the God of gods.
Jer 10:11: The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens.(how will they perish in the future if they don't exist?)
Zeph 2:11: The Lord will be terrible to them: for he will famish all the gods of the earth.
Job 1:6: And on a certain day the Sons of God came to present themselves before Yhwh.
Job 2:1: And on a certain day the Sons of God came to present themselves before Yhwh.
Jo 10:33-34: The Jews answered him, saying, We do not stone you for a good work; but for blasphemy; and because you, being a man, make yourself God. Jesus responded to them, Is it not written in your law, I have said, You are gods?
1 Cor 8:5: In fact, there are many gods, and many lords.

For reasons why the standard objections to these texts are all wrong, see my discussions here, here, and here. For reasons why none of IRR's 28 actually rejects the existence of other gods, see my discussion here. "Savior" also doesn't necessarily mean "god," and it's interesting that the list brings that up, since multiple "saviors" are mentioned throughout the Hebrew Bible. See, for instance, Neh 9:27; Obad 1:21. This also weakens the rhetorical strength of the assertion that "there is no other god," since "there is no other savior" obviously isn't unilaterally true. Saying "God is one," also doesn't really say anything about other gods, it's just a predication confined to the being of God.

If anyone brings up objections addressed in the discussions to which I linked above I will refer them to those links. If anyone would like to address those discussions directly I will be happy to do so here.

[smartygurl]

Originally Posted by Gplex

Isn't this an admission that there is other gods (a slip of the tongue?)

That's what it seems like to me.

[smartygurl]

Originally Posted by Ilene Wright

. It is a commandment to not worship anything AS A god, other than God Himself. This could be anything, from Buddha to money.

Then it should say,"Thou shalt not worship anything like a god before me."

[Katzpur]

Originally Posted by Gplex

For those who believe the bible to be true. Isn't this an admission from god him/her/it self, that there are other gods, besides the god in the bible?

Yes, there are, but for Christians, there is just one God, our eternal Father in Heaven, and one Lord, Jesus Christ. You're right, though, the Bible does speak of other gods. Most Christians refuse to acknowledge that.

[dobeable]

Originally Posted by InsaneInDaMembrane

Let's not forget Genesis 31:13 where we read:

I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed the pillar and where you made a vow to Me. Now arise, get out of this land, and return to the land of your family.

Here Jacob meets a tribal god who is in charge of the town of Bethel.This is a far cry from the later proclamations further down in the Bible where God is a god of everywhere.

What about Joshua who came after Moses? Supposedly AFTER Moses had brought the people into covenant with Yahweh, we still find Joshua having to exhort the same people (their children) to serve Yahweh just as his own family was doing ("as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD"). This on the heels of Moses' pact with Yahweh and the alleged conquering of Canaan in the name of Yahweh with Joshua at the helm.

What is also interesting is that Joshua exhorts his people to put away the gods of their fathers who lived across the river (Abrham, Nahor, etc) and serve their NEW god (Yahweh) and serve him only. Why the need? Doesn't this suggest there was STILL wholesale worship of other gods and seemingly an okay thing to do?

Finally, someone mentioned Ugarit (Ras Shamra) in modern day Syria. This community was contemporaneous to the early Israelite rise in Canaan. Their language is strikingly similar to that of Hebrew and they reflect the religious ideas of that time. They clearly knew of Yah/Yaw/Yw/Yahweh but not as the all-powerful, almighty, singular god that he is proclaimed to be later in the bible. At that time he was still a young lad and son of a father god known as El (Elyon). From the Ugaritic text (discovered in the early 1900s) we read:


sm . bny . yw . ilt ( KTU 1.1 IV 14)

Translated it says:

“The name of the son of god, Yahweh.”


Yes, Yahweh was one of those "other" gods. He (technically, his handlers) did not want other gods to be worshiped and would eventually kill and murder to keep it that way. What a great centralist policy!

itg sounds to me bye reading your post that Yahweh could have been some demigod and not particularly an expansion of the Supreme.....very interesting stuff though ,i never knew that the demigods where mentioned in the bible and although i dont know if Yahweh is God or a demigod,but it sounds like the others mentioned are!!

[InsaneInDaMembrane]

Originally Posted by dobeable

it sounds to me by reading your post that Yahweh could have been some demigod and not particularly an expansion of the Supreme.....very interesting stuff though ,i never knew that the demigods where mentioned in the bible and although i dont know if Yahweh is God or a demigod,but it sounds like the others mentioned are!!

Now you know.

[Asheville Native]

Originally Posted by Ilene Wright

The Bible tells me so~~~~~

look at DreDre's link for scriptures. You must trust the Word of God.

Except what you believe is the word of god was written by man, and translated, and edited and translated many many many times, each time man injected his own interpretation, phobias, fears, misunderstandings, and agenda.

Everytime a story is repeated, it is changed a little, that is human nature. What you cleave so closely to today may not even remotely resemble the original.

[Dusty Rhodes]

Originally Posted by Ilene Wright

The Bible tells me so~~~~~

look at DreDre's link for scriptures. You must trust the Word of God.

Why????? I suspect this version of god is just as fallible as the thousand or so differing gods that came before it, and, just as fallible as the thousand or so gods that will come after it. I'm not sure why humanity has this fixation with creating gods.

[Consent Withdrawn]

Originally Posted by Ilene Wright

NO, it is not an admission that other gods exist. It is a commandment to not worship anything AS A god, other than God Himself. This could be anything, from Buddha to money. In biblical times they worshipped many other "gods" as they called them, and the commandment to not worship such things is just that.....a commandment to worship only the one true God, not a gold statue.

It also seems to show an issue of insecurity on God's part. Only a pitiful and insecure being would demand worship. Good thing God is just a fairy tale.

[MaggieZ]

anything created by humans will have human traits... it's inevitable, we can only create things based on what we know at the time...