I read quite a lot of the Bible when I was a kid, largely as a result of mandatory Christian-centric religious education.

Having read this superb and fascinating book, I keep meaning to re-read it more thoroughly with new eyes.

One thing I found especially fascinating was the slow development of the concept of monotheism: the Jews first combined the Creator, their tribal god and animistic beliefs into a single god and believed him to have stated "thou shalt have no other gods before me". Only later did they refine this henotheistic position into a strictly monotheistic view that there were no other gods.

And note the different names for God - Adonai, ha-Shem, "!Baal", El - which all come from different bits of other gods. Canaanite, Phoenician and Egyptian religion all had influences.

At one point Yahweh was seen as a god of the hills who had little influence on the plains...