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Home -- Content: Series 7 (Laws) -- Translation: English -- Book: 1 (Tora) -- Part: 2 (Negative) -- Prohibition: 1 -- Text The Sharia of Moses in the TORA 1 - BELIEVING IN, OR ASCRIBING ANY DEITY TO ANY BUT HIMExodus 20:3 -- “You shall have no other gods before Me.”
“Whoever permits the thought to enter his mind that there is in existence any deity beside this (God) transgresses a negative commandment… and denies the essence of religion, for this doctrine is the great principle on which everything depends* Whoever transgresses this commandment is an outright apostate, having neither merit nor portion in Israel**. * Mishneh Torah, Mada, Hilchoth Yesode ha-Torah, I, 6 ** ibid., Hilchoth Teshubah III, 14 Maimonides includes five classes of heretics under the terms of this commandment: “One who says that there is no God, and that the world has no Sovereign Ruler; one who says that there is a Sovereign Power, but that power is vested in two or more beings; one who says that there is one Sovereign Ruler, but that He is a body and has form; one who denies that He alone is the First Cause and Rock of the Universe; and one who worships any power beside Him, to serve as a mediator between himself and the Sovereign of the universe*.” * ibid., Hilchoth Teshubah III, 15. Cf. Abraham ibn Ezra, Commentary to the Pentateuch, Ex. XX, 2
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