Other Gods

Following along with the weekly parsha last week (Shoftim), I noticed that the Artscroll chumash consistently translates the phrase Elohim Acherim as "gods of others".  This is not a translation but an unacknowledged commentary, or perhaps a twisting of meaning to avoid an uncomfortable truth.

Note to Rabbi Arthur Scroll (as a clever blogger put it a long time ago): The translation of Elohim Acherim is "other gods". 

"Gods of others" would be Elohei Acherim.

As Robert Wright convincingly points out in his book The Evolution of God, the plain meaning of the phrase Elohim Acherim, which occurs all over chumash, suggests that Judaism was not originally monotheistic in the sense that we currently understand the term.  As far as I can find, nowhere in the chumash does God state "I am the only God" or, "there are no other gods".  Instead, the implication of the first of the Ten Commandments and many, many other verses is that the Jews are not to worship any of the other gods - only Him...clearly implying that plenty of other Gods in fact exist for the Jews not to worship.

It would be a nice world indeed where translations could be trusted as translations and commentaries stated and acknowledged as such.  Curiously, Artscroll translates ayin tachas ayin... literally as an "eye for an eye..." despite the now traditional strained insistence in the commentaries that this is not at all what the verse ever intended....more on that later.