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Yahweh was just one of many gods worshipped at that time. Which is why like 1/3 of the ten comandments are related to his own insecurities

Yaweh was one of the sons of El in Caananite religion, which has the same Noah myth, and the religion/people is based on one of his son's decendants. El was accepted by Greeks as the same god as Zeus. Many other Caananite polytheistic gods had Greek equivalents.

When Moses wrote the tablets, he was basically doing a religious coup to claim the Hebrew/Israelite "subgod" was the primary god. Denouncing Idolatry, and "thou shalt not covet" was also a rebelion against the main/historical Phoenecian/Caananite religion to when Israelites war against Phoenecians "do not covet their idols, destroy them".

It's just hard to directly translate accurately from the original Klingon texts.

This is my first wife Yahweh, and my second wife Amen-Ra.

This take is actually pretty close to the original reading. In the ancient near east it was a given that there were many deities. It's not that the worldview of the Bible is a strict monotheism but taht YHWH is the supreme God and the source of all.

If Cthulhu is your number 2 you immediately need to check for hemmorhoids.

Back in the day you would pick and choose the gods you worshipped, like from the greek or roman pantheon. But if you chose to worship God you would have to put him literally before the other gods.

There's a logical problem to a language-based religion, in that even a literal interpretation is still an interpretation. Your understanding is not infallible, and no one on Earth likely believes The Bible, 100% verbatim, yet many claim to.

If the source material is always fuzzy then who is to say what a real christian is? Who is the authority? What is? The book itself isn't sentient and Jesus isn't here to break any ties.

But then, you'll get people who say they know God, that they talk to God and it would seem as though their belief and participation is, from their perspective, at least, beyond the limitations of the Christian source-code. They allegedly know God via dimensional speed-dial via.... vibes. I don't believe he does, but they do, so, rules of engagement, I temporarily have to believe he does until I'm done speaking to the person with mental health problems.

Living in the American south is like having multiple gears of belief to swap into like a 6-speed transmission based on who you're talking to. Alright, what flavor of kool aid is this person drinking?...

If you look into the Hebrew a little more, the word we translate here as "God" is "Elohim", which is better translated as something like "spiritual beings". This word is also used for angels, demons, etc.

In fact, the phrase "Lord of Lords" is actually "Elohim of Elohim", making it a statement that he's the greatest spiritual being, which is a lot more distinct from "King of Kings" than we usually notice when he's referred to as "King of kings and Lord of lords".

Elohim is even used once to refer to the "ghost" of Samuel, when Saul seeks out a medium to ask him for advice in 1 Samuel 28.

You want it, you've got it : https://www.biblestudytools.com/exodus/20-3-compare.html

Now read in original language.

I think it says "thou shalt have no other gods besides me."

The German translation reads "Du sollst keine anderen Götter neben mir haben" so "[...] no other gods besides me", which explicitly forbids paying homage to other gods.

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.

I mean, there's even other godlike characters in the Bible. Satan may not be the most powerful deity in the book but he's canonically a deity. Same for angels and their ilk. Hell, even the later bits struggle to keep a lid on the numbers, jumping through hoops to make the claim that three deities is actually one.

Way back when, the religion that turned into Judaism was openly polytheistic, and simply held that Yahweh, the king of the pantheon and God of war and weather, was the only god worthy of worship.
Over time Yahweh merged with an adjoining religions god El, and started the transition to being the only god, instead of just the only worthy god.
This transition happened literally a thousand years after many of the earliest texts were written, so there's a lot of verbiage where the deity explains that the other gods aren't important, which is later clarified to them not existing, or really just being servants and not at all lower tier gods in a complex pantheon.
It's why there's so many weird turns of phrase, beyond it being thousands of years old and translated a lot.
"El" being a word that was used for both "a god" and "this god" didn't help. "The high god divided the world for all the gods, and our god God the only God and creator of all was given our land as he's the high god and father of God the only God of the sky and also that mountain".

Different parts of the world took a lot of the same root deities and went a different direction with them. There's a degree of overlap between aspects of ancient Greek religion and the Abrahamic religions because parts of each of them came from a common root. Just one mushed then together and made the grammar extra confusing. "King sky god", "water god", "afterlife god" being the children of mother and father cosmic creator gods. Also a big sea snakes who are up to no good. That one had legs, so to speak.

Correct me if I'm wrong, my knowledge of this history is iffy at best,

Iirc, Early Judaism wasn't monotheistic like it, Christianity, and Islam are now.

The people at the time had multiple gods, one of which was a minor god associated with storms. At some point this god was boosted into popularity and became the primary god of the old testament and eventually THE god of the 3 Religions.

The line being written like this could be a holdover from this extremely early culture which was initially Polytheistic.

OR it's just a funky translation and just ment to mean "Don't worship someone as a God like their any better than me.THE God."

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

Fun fact: In the Old Testament, God first calls himself as El Shaddai, which many scholars translate as "God of the Shaddai people". So, even He doesn't see Himself as the universal gods, just one of many.

A common misconception, it actually means alphabetically as god's true name is A. Aardvark.

Start from the beginning. The text makes it absolutely clear that there "are other gods".