The joke hinges on misusing an alternate meaning to an English word that is a translation already from ancient Hebrew (likely via Latin). I am pretty sure the artist is well aware of this. Of course, some people will read this comic and think they discovered some profound contradiction...

God: An Anatomy is a great book that goes more into this if you want to read more about the ancient conception of the Abrahamic god. Very little of it has survived into Christianity.

"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.

You people are the best.

It's important to remember at all times that every single thing religious, was made up by very stupid people. Either stupid for living 1,000-5,000 years ago, and having zero education, or for thinking that other people would buy that bullshit.

Confusion happens when things don't make sense. Religions don't make sense because they're hasty lies. You know people that constantly lie. They may even be religious. You're going to trust knowledge of an afterlife to a hallucination they had? lol. No.

That's why religions brainwash small children using fear.

The Bible itself acknowledges other gods. When God made Man "in our image" he was speaking to the pantheon of gods.

There are other examples, but I'm no scholar and my toast is almost ready.

100 languages, 100 different translations. Then translated from dead languages. Then changed to suit a tyrant. Then translated back to another language.

If you think any of that original fiction is still there, you're a fucking idiot. If you don't think it's fiction, you're an even bigger idiot.

Maat - Wikipedia

(en.wikipedia.org)

Oh, plus “only this god, not those”

A tablet written in the very early Bronze Age, when Semites were surrounded by (and often participating in) all sorts of alternative cults and pagan pantheons would naturally mention other gods.

It would be weirder if the early biblical texts didn't mention any other gods.

Iirc the Bible never says there is only one god. Only that the Israelites should only worship Yahweh.

stupid for living 1,000-5,000 years ago, and having zero education, or for thinking that other people would buy that bullshit

This is why I'm always a bit askance when presented with Atheism as some kind of enlightened philosophy.

Just kicking in the door and shouting "Everyone who conceived of a being more powerful than themselves and attempted to extrapolate the natural world into an explainable series of events was FUCKING DUMB AS SHIT" is kinda simple-minded and divorced from any historical perspective on its face.

Nevermind the chauvinism and the egotism of this bland dogmatic assertion. You're casually dismissing whole intermediate strains of philosophical and literary development, because people 5000 years ago weren't spoon-fed a level of education (mixed with its own heady brand of western War on Terror propaganda) you received a few years ago.

That’s why religions brainwash small children using fear.

Trying to explain to my five year old why transendentalism is going to ruin their life and perpetuate generations of human suffering without scaring them. Maybe if I lead in with "Catholics are going to rape you! Stay away from the church!" they'll get the core logic and reason without experiencing any kind of reflexive emotional response.

At the time, you prayed to whoever you thought got that particular job done

Then Catholics came along and replaced this with patron saints.

(technically Catholics believe they are asking the patron to intercede and advocate for whatever the devotee is asking for, but it's still funny to me that they still fill the roles of the lesser gods of antiquity)

This is the point of view that I've had since elementary school after a game of "Telephone".

If you can't put 6 people in a line, whisper something to the first, and have the same thing come from the last, what are the chances any of those books contain any original text? Especially when you have sycophantic rulers like Orange Hitler looking to bilk the masses and trying to rule the world.

Religion is a tool of fear and control to keep the population where you want them. It is broadly and repeatedly used to justify the absolute worst actions in humanity. Religion is the fuel that makes individuals hate entire countries of people they have never met.

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.

Literally been carrying that all my life, too. It definitely doesn’t seem like most people took that message away from the game.

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.

Considering 3 major world religions claim the text was inspired by their god, the discrepancies make it at least highly suspicious.

A dove drops a feather next to a towering stack of completed requests. St. Anthony picks it up and sighs

"This guy is asking me to find his keys for the tenth time this week! I wish I was the patron saint of memory, because this guy really needs one, ugh."

no one but the Jews had only one God they prayed to.

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...

It wasn't just other cultural groups that had other gods -- proto-Judaism was polytheistic.