Why does God himself suggest that there are other Gods and he is not the only one?

Question

Take the Ten Commandments.

I am the Lord your God.... you shall have no other Gods before me.

You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me,

I mean this suggests to me that there are other Gods. God even admits that he is jealous of them. He wants to be number one on the block.

Does this therefore suggest that Buddhists, and Hindus and other religions worship real Gods too?

ebuz01 you certainly have a cheek. The bible is the one book that has been interpreted to breaking point to justify things like war, the death penalty etc and you accuse me of looking into it too much!!!! The cheek!

Guys and gals, are you really sure? It seems to me that God was just dissing the other Gods so that he would get more followers. It's a bit like Robbie Williams dissing Take That to steal their fans, or George Bush dissing John Kerry to get more votes.

Answer 1

I noticed that when I was just a little kid. The Bible mentions other gods copiously, despite adults telling me that other gods didn't exist. It is one of the first things that ever made me ask a question about my religion, and one of the first religious questions I ever got slapped for asking.

Answer 2

In ancient times, gods were considered to be bound by territory; for example Athena was goddess of Athens [although much later than Moses.] A war between two places was considered to be a disagreement between their respective gods! [Think of Homer, gods of Troy vs. gods of Greece!] When Abraham left his family to find the Promised Land, he became the first man to worship god in a manner not bound by territory; back in Ur, he would have been tied to the old clan-god system. W
hen the Law was revealed to Moses, some people might not have understood the idea that god was everywhere and not limited to one location. 'No other gods' was a way to recognise His transcendence over petty tribal disputes. So the other 'gods' are not recognised as having any real power, but rather as deceptions; true power rests with Yahweh.

Answer 3

The problem you are having with interpreting these passages is that you are not distinguishing the mental from the real. In objective, absolute reality God is the only god, in that He has all the power in the universe at His command and no one and no thing is equal to or greater than He. But, in the mental (that is, in the mind of a human) it is possible to believe that this power resides in someone else, or is distributed between many someones else.

God is instructing us in this passage to believe the truth about Him, and to reject the lie that He is not God. It does not suggest there are other gods, but rather was commanded because there is only one God! If one believes the lie that there are other gods besides God, it has many negative reprocussions. For one, it breaks our relationship with God, because we are dishonoring Him and disrespecting Him. It is hard to maintain a close and intimate relationship with someone if their attitude disrespects the very core of who you are. He is jealous because He wants to have a relationship with us, (which is what we were created for) and doesn't want us cought up in lies, where we try to make a "god" or "gods" in our image, in a form that pleases and is palatable to us, so that we can do what we want on our own terms.

Bhuddhists don't believe in gods, but what they worship would still fall under this category- a "god", or object of worship, created by and in their own minds. Hindus call their gods gods, but nothing is different. In this sense, atheists and agnostics have gods. Sometimes this god is human intellect, sometimes it's money, sometimes it's human relationships. Not that there is anything wrong with human intellect, money, or human relationships (God created two of the three), but these things become gods when a person devotes his life to it as his/her source of inner security, when it become the thing allowing the person to feel "in control" over their lives, creating a comfort zone which this god now presides over. But with God, we have to surrender control over our lives to Him, we have no physical or mental or emotional basis for being comfortable, but God will comfort us through His Spirit (which is VERY different from a pleasant little comfort zone).

Whew, ok, enough complicated stuff. I hope this has helped explain this passage better! And sorry it took so long to post, I got pulled away while writing it and had to finish it in the morning! Anywho, God bless!

Answer 4

"no other Gods" meaning that you shouldn't bow to some fake/ pagan statues (for example), something people made, something you made, another person whom you think is blessed etc.
The Buddhists/ Hindus etc bow to the SAME God as we do it's just that they have different names for it or appreciate more the person who delivered the message from God. The Buddhists believe in Buddha as that sort of a person but don't replace God.
Take Allah for example...that still is God but under a different name.
Therefore no matter how people put it we all believe in tha same God.

p.s. the God in the Bible is the God expressed through the view of humans who can say whether He is exactly like that?And take in account that when tha Bible was written the Church had the highest authority and in order to maintain it it had to make people afraid of it and of God. Remember eclipses? Well, the Church said it was the wrath of God and it did not explain the real phenomena behind it although it knew.
Through out the history the scope of the Church was to keep people in darkness. by not revealing the secrets they knew they had power...

Answer 5

And did you notice those "g's" are lower case? Maybe that's because God knows about the tendencies of the pagans and especially the pagan-god worshipping nation (Egypt) that the Israelites had just come out from to set-up chunks of wood adorned with gold, or a statue made out of rock and call it a "god". He was in no sense "acknowledging" other "gods" as though He had anything to fear. Read in Isaiah what He says about "false-gods". Then read what He says in the same book in chapters 44 and 45. I've never read anywhere else a "god" making those statements to anyone.

Answer 6

God himself knew that man would try and make other gods and was warning of the consequences, still is!

Of course He wants to be number one. He is!

Buddhist and Hindu and other gods are not real. They are all man made. They might have some worthy attributes, but ultimately they are not the living God nor can they atone for sin.

Answer 7

Why? Because there are a multitude of gods.

The people Moses lead out of Egypt were used to pantheons of numerous gods. And there were more new ones encountered when they left.

Pay attention to the term "Elohim". It is a plural noun with both male and female parts. Thruout the Bible there are many gods, Gods and other such.

Don't confuse the philosophical One God to the mythological and time honored recognition of the many dieties and energies in this world called gods.

People who say there is only One God need to pay closer attention to the actual words recorded of Jesus teachings.

Answer 8

gods can be things, like money, possessions, sports, etc. However what God is saying here, there are no other gods- but the Israelites made them up- to worship idols made of stone- which were no gods at all. He is not jealous of the "other gods"- He is jealous for His people- a total difference here.
"There is no God, besides Me"- says the Lord.

Answer 9

He does indeed. Don't let people who blindly accept what they're told without research tell you otherwise. There's also the fact 'he' has a habit of referring to 'himself' as 'we' and 'us'. 'Elohim' can easily be seen as meaning plural gods, especially if you know that the affix 'im' pluralises a noun in Hebrew, like one cherub, two cherubim.

Add to that Yahweh's apparent multiple personality disorder in the old testament, and I don't think the even the old testament god is meant to be one entity. I think the original concept of these gods was more like super powered humans than an elemental creative force. And a mob of them.

They're all as real and likely as each other.

Answer 10

You have misquoted the Bible -- and you won't be the first!!!

This is the first commandment: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

The reference to "other gods" is the idols that the Israelites would have built seeing that they just came of Egypt.

Answer 11

Of course there are many Gods, the Bible calls them the Elohim (Gods). Theologians interested in self-promotion gloss over this and promote the theological doctrine of monotheism, a word that appears nowhere in the Bible.