this post was submitted on 30 May 2025
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"I am the Lord thy God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery and you shall have no other gods before me"
That's not a mistranslation, that's the entire first commandment. The old testament openly acknowledges the "existence" of competing deities.
Remember that when this was written down for the first time, it was super strange to have only one all powerful God. There were hundreds of gods that the Jews would have been at least aware of. Even if the whole Exodus thing is not accurate to Jewish history in particular, which it likely isn't, no one but the Jews had only one God they prayed to. At the time, you prayed to whoever you thought got that particular job done. The first commandment says no, set them all aside and worship me and me alone.
Which is exactly why the second commandment is about not making idols.
Also the whole Egypt thing was probably the Hitites, who got diaspora'd and many of whom probably ended up finding the Jewish people and integrated with them. There's literally 0 physical evidence of large scale Jewish enslavement in ancient Egypt.
Man, imagine being really devout, so devout you become a Saint, then instead of hanging out in Heaven you have to do paperwork for people praying to you.
"Saint" is just an old word for "Team Leader" is it not?
Well, there was that one time ancient Egypt suddenly took a turn to monotheism (arguably more correctly monolatrism). Which lead to an alternative theory of Exodus as the story of Atenist priests fleeing Egypt after Akhenaten's death and deciding to have another go at monotheism with the Isrealites...
You are correct about the meaning being not to have other gods, I didn't say it was a mistranslation. I said they are purposefully taking the alternate and more popular meaning of the word "before". In the scripture it means 'in front of' or 'in my sight'. They take the meaning as 'in line in front of'. Because of the eccentricities of English and many other languages, the meaning could be taken either way if you didn't have context. Also, the joke hinges on ignoring that mentioning other gods doesn't mean they exist or exist in the way they are purported to exist. In that German translation from the post I was replying to, the translation was more specific and didn't lend as much confusion.
The way it sounds in full is like "I saved you from a tyrant you were forced to serve and worship! Therefore you must serve and worship me!"
I'm not the only one reading it like that, right?
The old testament is full of kinda fucked up, ~~borderline~~ abusive demands.
NVM he has you cut the tip of your dick off as an act of devotion it's full on abusive.