Subject: Re: Kegbreath cuts LDS from list
Not "present". But one can't edit the "scriptures". And it clearly says "gods". So, it is part of the Abrahamic tradition. Jews are actually stuck with it.

No, they're not. You can't edit the scriptures, but you can interpret them. And hoo boy, do we Jews interpret the heck out of the Torah. The Talmud's 2,700 pages long. The Torah contains passages that on their face contradict each other, so Jews have to figure out how to reconcile that.

Judaism interprets that line the way you would say, "I don't believe in ghosts." The fact that ghosts are mentioned in a sentence doesn't mean they exist in the real world - it just means they exist as ideas, or concepts, or constructs, or things that other people believe in. So too the admonition to have no other gods before G-d - everyone else around you is worshipping local gods, and you shouldn't do that. It doesn't mean the other gods exist. In fact, the official Jewish line is that they don't and didn't. All the folks worshipping the local gods and idols were wrong - they were making offerings and calling out to emptiness.

Since they can't change the "inspired word of god", the chief deity -allegedly- said "thou shalt have no gods before me". Plural. The Jews -as I understand it- accepted such existence, but only worshipped their guy. Been a long time since I saw the movie, but the Jews would accept Crom even as they worshipped the Sky God that was -by definition- above Crom. (Forget the name of that god...been a long time.)

As noted upthread, Judaism did not spring into existence fully-formed from the head of Zeus (a god that we can refer to in a sentence, but does not exist). Judaism evolved from the inarguably polytheistic ancient Canaanite religions - as did the scriptures, which were written over about four to five centuries (per modern scholarship). But it's been about 2,500 years since Jews "accepted" any gods but the god of the Torah. We've been purely monotheistic for longer than Christianity has existed.

The text of what is now the Torah was finalized a few centuries BCE, roughly during the Babylonian exile. The component elements were chosen from then-existing materials from several different sources (not necessarily individual authors). Modern scholarship identifies four. The two versions of the Decalogue were from the Elohist Source and the Deuteronomist Source - and those sources probably date back to 700-800 BCE, back when Judaism was a little more monolatrist and less monotheist. But the language was included and has to be reconciled with the passages from the most recent - Priestly - source from 300-400 BCE, which pretty unambiguously say that there are no other gods.

Synthesizing the inconsistent passages, the Torah says that there's only one god, and that other "gods" are merely human constructs or mundane idols that those worshippers mistakenly believe to be divine. And those other "gods" are what the Decalogue refers to.