When God says "Thou shalt have no other God than me, for I am a jealous God." Does he acknowledge the suggestion that there are other Gods? Assuming for a moment, for the sake of argument, there is a God - could he be worried about the competition when he says this?
Other Gods?
- Thread starter ULTRA
- Start date
obviously. it shows a primitive psychology. it shows a psychology that would act out of self-interest of power being it's number one motive.
not a great surprise since that is how life is in general. strangely, not all life though. there are some anomalies of people or traits where other traits or motives are more important such as love.
not a great surprise since that is how life is in general. strangely, not all life though. there are some anomalies of people or traits where other traits or motives are more important such as love.
*************
M*W: First, at the time that god was supposed to have said this, it was more likely stated by Hammurabi much earlier and then plagarized by the Hebrew monotheistic god writers.
Secondly, the Hebrew monotheistic god is a misnomer. The ancient Hebrews (aka Canaanites) were polytheistic, more specifically into sun/moon/and other pagan gods worship. What made the new Hebrews monotheistic was sun worship. They gave up their polytheistic beliefs and narrowed their worship to the sun, thanks to the Moses of the Old Testament. But just who was Moses of the OT? What the OT doesn't explain is that Moses was not only Egyptian and a pharaoh (Amenhotep IV aka Akhenaten), but he was the fanatical leader of the tribe of Habiru who were the ancestors of the Hebrews. Moses promoted sun (Aten) worship down in Egypt. My point is that monotheism was originally the worship of the one god, the Sun. I highly doubt the Sun was a jealous god. The authors of the OT anthropomorphized the sun, moon, stars, planets and constellations, making them appear to be human characters throughout the bible.
Thirdly, since there are no gods outside of the human imagination, any human-like characteristics (emotions, etc.) of said gods are pure fantasy.
i think it just means when we put other things before god, and worship other things that aren't of god. money, vanity, hatred, egos, lust...when these things influence our thoughts and behavior, we are in essence worshipping them, or worshipping ourselves, and not god.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
I think that many historians think that the early Hebrews were henotheists, not monotheists. In other words, they accepted that multiple gods existed that were worshipped by various ethnic groups. The Hebrews' god was supposed to be Yahweh, they had established a covenant with him, and no disloyalty was permitted.
That wasn't all that unusual. Sumerian cities typically had particular patron gods. When one city conquered another, the earthly war was just an image of strife in heaven, in which the triumphant city's god had achieved a position of advantage over the defeated city's god.
Even in Christian times, the idea persisted that other people's gods, while not being precisely gods themselves, were still supernatural powers -- daemons re-conceived as malevolent deceitful demons.
That kind of thinking may have only gradually evolved into full-scale monotheism, where the Hebrews simply dismissed all of their neighbor's gods as imaginary and false.
It's interesting that monotheists are kinda-atheists, dismissing the existence of gods all over the place -- except when it comes to their own chosen deity where everything is suddenly supposed to be totally different. When they are confronted with other people's deities, we see them using using arguments (it's superstition! it's credulity! there's no evidence!) very similar to the arguments the atheists subsequently deployed against all deities.
Sure. This was written before Jehovah got promoted, through the power of the Roman empire, to supreme being. There are plenty of references to other deities in the OT - presumably because the Council of Nicea couldn't edit out every whiff of the original, tribal religion. Every nation had its own gods; that's why people were discouraged from socializing.
Would this be an example of a human being applying meaning to words in the bible?
People will make the bible mean what they want it to mean. Only reason the bible has any value is because people apply value to it. Either you believe the bible as fact or you don't.
i would say it's applying some common sense, which i realize a lot of people have a problem with when it comes to religion. if you were to look at the bible in a more comprehensive way, there are no other gods; just the one. but in the bible, there's account after account of people worshipping other things above or in place of god.
i don't view it as fact..i view it as reference..
The Old Testament is one book among many holy books. Some expanded upon the original premise, others came before it yet remain, and others sprang from it into something completly different.
I think the defining moment was Mohammed destroying all the false gods at the Quaaba and reinforcing the belief in a one true God.
I think the defining moment was Mohammed destroying all the false gods at the Quaaba and reinforcing the belief in a one true God.
There should be more goddesses.
Greek Goddesses
NOW I'M A BELIEVER!! :xctd:
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
My wife says the reason that it's always men who invent religions is so we never have to say, "I don't know."
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
There's a middle ground between fact and lie: metaphor. Religions are nothing more or less than collections of metaphors that help us understand life. The problem with many Abrahamists is that they don't understand the concept of metaphor, so everything has to be either true or false.