Mga Sanggunian sa Mishnah para sa Deuteronomio 12:3: Mishnah Avodah Zarah

Proclos, son of a plosphos, asked Rabban Gamaliel in Acco when the latter was bathing in the bathhouse of aphrodite. He said to him, “It is written in your torah, ‘let nothing that has been proscribed stick to your hand (Deuteronomy 13:18)’; why are you bathing in the bathhouse of Aphrodite?” He replied to him, “We do not answer [questions relating to torah] in a bathhouse.” When he came out, he said to him, “I did not come into her domain, she has come into mine. People do not say, ‘the bath was made as an adornment for Aphrodite’; rather they say, ‘Aphrodite was made as an adornment for the bath.’ Another reason is, even if you were given a large sum of money, you would not enter the presence of your idol while you were nude or had experienced seminal emission, nor would you urinate before it. But this [statue of Aphrodite] stands by a sewer and all people urinate before it. [In the torah] it is only stated, “their gods” (Deuteronomy 12:3) what is treated as a god is prohibited, what is not treated as a deity is permitted.

If idolaters worship mountains and hills these are permitted; but what is upon them is prohibited, as it is says, “you shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them and take them” (Deut. 7:25). Rabbi Yose the Galilean says: [it says] “their gods on the mountains” (Deut. 12:, not their mountains which are their gods; “their gods on the hills” (ibid.), not their hills which are their gods. And why is an asherah prohibited? Because there was manual labour connected with it, and whatever has manual labour connected with it is prohibited. Rabbi Akiba said: let me expound and decide [the interpretation] before you: wherever you find a high mountain or elevated hill or green tree, know that an idolatrous object is there.