while it may seem incongruous that the Israelites living in Canaan would have so eagerly adopted a Canaanite god as their own, the influence of Canaanite theology runs deep in the Bible—so deep, in fact, that it isn’t always so easy to draw a clear distinction ethnically, culturally, or even religiously between the Canaanites and the Israelites, certainly not in the early history of Israel (c. 1200–1000 B.C.E.).
