History of Israel
The history of the emergence of Judaism and monotheism has been the subject of study since at least the 19th century and Julius Wellhausen's "Prolegomena to the History of Israel"; in the 20th century a work was William F. Albright's "Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan" (1968), which insisted on the essential otherness of Yahweh from the Canaanite gods from the very beginning of Israel's history. Smith and others believe that Israel and its religion emerged gradually from a West Semitic and Canaanite background.