My view is that, if we take the OT at face value for its theological-historical perspective, we see that the OT assumes and asserts that, at the beginning, humanity had the knowledge of the true God, and that this was lost. This knowledge was lost after Eden, and after the flood when things essentially are cast as starting over again. The Babel event is critical (I assume you were one of my former newsletter subscribers, so recall the sections on Babel). The “Deuteronomy 32 divine council worldview” has the nations in rebellion against the one true God (the implication is that they still had some knowledge of him). In response, God disinherits the nations and puts them under lesser elohim. This is the OT rationale for where the pagan pantheons come from. From that point on, I’d suggest that every nation began to practice and articulate their own “theology” of how the the gods did things, who/what they were, what the hierarchy was like, what the relationship between a supreme God and the other gods was like (the One to the many - and most ANE polytheistic systems did have a high god and so had thoughts on this). Israel’s theology is quite different in important places (the uniqueness of Yahweh is one such place - an uncreated, pre-existent being). In other ANE systems there were other gods (”the olden gods”) who created the high gods - usually the olden gods were identified with the elements of creation. They really had no equivalent idea to an uncreated Creator. So, there is a mix of “original” Israelite thinking and other elements. Were those other elements “borrowings”? Could be. But they might also be deliberate theological departures to make a polemic theological point. I tend to think that Israelite religion is an amalgam, but I also accept the God of Israel as the true God, and so I believe there was providential oversight that went into Israel’s own expression of the “the One and the many” (at least the orthodox Israelite view of Yahweh worship).

If that’s the case, how do we as Christians deal with the suggestion that some of our dogmatic beliefs like the co-regent personage of God were originally just concepts assimilated from other systems and that our God is just a balled-up version of Baal, Yam, Mot, Hadad, and whoever else.

I prefer to strip away the traditions and try to focus on the core of things but it seems now that peeling back these layers leads to empty nothingness. This troubles me greatly.