For example, Judaism (and therefore also Christianity and Islam) has its roots in Canaanite polytheism. The Canaanite pantheon of gods was called the Elohim (meaning “children of El”), with the sky god El, also called El Elyon (“the most high of all gods”), and his wife Asherah at the head of the pantheon, with the other gods (the “sons of El”) in the second tier, and minor deities in the third tier.

A group of Canaanites settled in the area which is today known as Israel during and after the chaos caused by the Bronze Age collapse around 1200 BCE, and they took their gods (the Elohim) with them. They were the first Israelites and there is plenty of biblical and archaeological evidence that the early Israelites have worshipped El’s wife Asherah, as well as some of the other gods, for example the storm and rain god Baal, one of the sons of El.

All but the most conservative scholars of archaeology and history today agree that the creation story in Genesis was borrowed from the Canaanite and earlier Mesopotamian mythology and “cosmogony”, that the Egyptian captivity and exodus of Israelites never happened, that the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) were at best legendary figures, and that the story of the exodus from Egypt and the subsequent conquering of Canaan were carefully constructed stories, but that the early Israelites were instead Canaanites as described above.