no "gods"=exclusive devotion...

Yes. In the time described by the old testament , gods tended to be regional or serve a specific purpose. The Middle Eastern ancients were not committed to monotheism until later. In fact, when Moses went up mount Sinai, the people built an idol to Baal, one of their other gods. The god of Moses was demanding that he be the chief god, the number one deity. In exchange for this consideration, he would make the Israelites his chosen people, and bequeath them his promised land.

what if you believe there is a god but you think he is not the jealous, angry, unjust god from the bible?? its still god, god is god, he is the same idea no matter what you see him as. obviously worshipping something from our earth is stupid, not saying there isnt a cat god up there but... cmon seriously. god is not one being. and he is not outside of us looking down on us menacingly waiting for us to fuck up. if he created us he is part of us, if he didnt then he doesnt exist. i wont pretend to know what god is just because of what some dude wrote in a book. we can never understand god, existant or not. it is beyond human understanding and no religion knows any more than any other.

All the scriptures and mythologies point towards there being other gods besides the god of Abraham. In fact, the Old Testament scriptures state that quite plainly. YHWH (one of his many names) evidently was the victor in a contest to be the chief god. In the verse quoted above, he demands total allegiance to himself and no other. Politics and Alpha-male bully-tactics.

+4 In effect it means that at the time of Exodus most of the Israelites believed that other Gods existed but that Yahweh was the greatest of them. This belief lasted all the way up to around 700BC when Isaiah was written. Before this the Bible goes out of its way to avoid stating that other gods don't exist.Hence the wording of Ex 20:3. . They may have believed that Yahweh was their god and was the strongest of the gods but they weren't so sure of it that they were prepared to deny the existence of these other gods in their sacred writings. . In fact Yahweh himself confirms the existence of the Egyptian gods in Ex 12:12. .

still swallowing camels and straining at gnats...+3

God is everything, therefore you can't have anything lesser than. To focus your worship on something instead of God is taking you away from that concept is all.

1) Yes, and in my opinion, if those events have some historical basis, it is very possible that this was presented that way for a good reason: the people who were addressed by this were polytheists. So the first step was to have them accept that one of their gods was superior to the others. Nearly all translations of those verses use this formulation. So I think that the "besides" alternative that is given for before is actually "explanatory", but that that idea of pure monotheism is not present in the original verse. 2) "Looking at the 10 commandments, the foundations of Christian Morality (and self-preservation), we see that Yahweh acknowledges that there are other Gods out there. Specifically: “You shall have no other gods before me” Like most of the Bible, this can be interpreted in a number of ways. Upon first reading the natural response is to take this as Yahweh accepting there are other Gods and trying to assert his superiority over them. There is a subtle but important difference between “don’t believe in any other Gods” and “don’t worship any other Gods over me”. Any logical person would surely see this as a confession that other Gods exist. ut as I mentioned earlier, logic is not the religious person’s strong point, and as such they have attempted to explain away this little problem. The most popular “explanation” is that the commandment is referring to temptations, worldly goods etc., rather than actual Gods. This, of course, is patently ridiculous. To interpret the word “God” here as meaning something other than a supreme deity opens the possibility of interpreting it elsewhere in the Bible in the same way. Unless, of course, you choose to selectively apply this interpretation in the same way many Christians selectively believe only parts of the Bible. This undermines the entire concept of Yahweh as a deity as proposed by the Bible. The commandment is not the only hint that the writers of the Bible (bearing in mind it’s inspired by God) thought there was more than one God. The observant amongst you might have noticed that part way through Genesis the way God is referred to changes. Initially the word “Elohim” is used. Elohim is generally used as a plural, referring to Gods of polytheism. Much like the attempts to dismiss the use of the word “God” in certain circumstances, many have tried to claim that in some circumstances it refers to multiple Gods, whilst in others it refers to a single deity. Their deity, of course. Part way through Genesis, the word Elohim is replaced by Yahweh." Source and further information: http://www.the-atheist.com/who-are-the-other-christian-gods/ 3) Other Bible verses support the idea of "pure monotheism". For instance: "Isaiah 44:6 (New International Version) The LORD, Not Idols 6 "This is what the LORD says— Israel's King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God." Source and further information: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=%20Isaiah%2044:6%20&version=NIV This kind of contradictions is perfectly normal because the Bible is a collection of books which were written separately. 4) "Henotheism (Greek εá¼·ς θεÏŒς heis theos "one god") is a term coined by Max Müller, to mean worshiping a single god while accepting the existence or possible existence of other deities. Müller made the term central to his criticism of Western theological and religious exceptionalism (relative to Eastern religions), focusing on a cultural dogma which held "monotheism" to be both fundamentally well-defined and inherently superior to differing conceptions of God." Source and further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotheism "'You shall have no other gods before me,' and in the margin, 'You shall have no other gods besides me.' The first form is henotheism, the form in which Jahweh was the God for Israel, although there were other gods for other nations; the second form is monotheism, the belief that there is no other god besides Jahweh at all." Source and further information: "The Ten Commandments By William Barclay" http://books.google.com/books?id=HtlerPl89hAC&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq="You+shall+have+no+other+gods+before+me"+"You+shall+have+no+other+gods+besides+me"&source=bl&ots=wAAl0TZmoN&sig=MmYsO8wSCY60trmx3IcQRV0YC3E&hl=en&ei=ePy4Sq6aOdKa_Qbqh53nBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#v=onepage&q=%22You%20shall%20have%20no%20other%20gods%20before%20me%22%20%22You%20shall%20have%20no%20other%20gods%20besides%20me%22&f=false 5) Further information: - "How Many Gods Does God Say There Are?": http://www.wcg.org/lit/God/howmany.htm - "Worship Only One": http://thriceholy.net/onlyone.html - "There Is No Other God": http://www.bibleabookoftruth.com/ThereIsNoOtherGod.pdf - "Polytheism": http://thomstark.jesuspolitics.net/?p=499