The ancient city of Ugarit was at modern Tell Ras Shamra. The main issue in this writing is whether Israelitism is Yahwistic Canaanitism of an Ugarit kind or is Ugarit paganized Israelitism? This is a very important issue. The conventional view is the first one. Hardly a scholar worked with a different scenario. Even your socalled conservative scholars who want to be biblically based, accepted the biblically adjusted dates for the Exodus by W. F. Albright as the thirteenth century under Raamses II and the entry afterwards as the basis for linking Israelite religion in their comparisons with the cuneiform texts that were found between the Dagon and Baal temples at Ugarit. The first library that was found between these two temples on the acropolis was of an epic kind and the hymns, songs, poems, epics are even until this day compared to the Psalms and other literature of the Old Testament with an axiom that Israel borrowed their religion from Ugarit after they entered into Canaan from Egypt. Ugarit first then Israel, they said. This is as Albright as you can get. Even the Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen devoted his whole life on the research of Raamses II for this very same reason that Albright suggested. As we have said before, we say it again, you cannot try to find evidence for the French Revolution in the Second World War. Hitler's times and that of Napoleon are too remote. This is exactly the methodological mistake Albright made and his emendation of the Bible led to many mishappenings on this issue and related to this issue. Searching for Late Bronze destruction levels two hundred years after the event may sometimes but mostly bring up conflicting data. It did and scholars threw out the baby with the bath water and the bath. William Dever does nothing else but just that. Publically Dever roam that there is no Bible on the tel where he is digging but privately he still feel that the Bible should be consulted as a source after the digging is all over. I have overheard him saying both statements on various occations.

There are a number of reasons from Ugarit why we say that Ugarit is actually a case of paganized Israelitism.

1. When the habiru or SA.GAZ peoples gave problems to Egypt in the early Amarna corpus (as separated from the peace and tranquility texts from Amarna, dating later) it coincide with the events of the book of Joshua and Judges during 1410-1405 BCE. The habiru were divided in secular habiru and religious habiru. The religious habiru went into Canaan but the secular habiru settled at Ugarit after the invasion. The influence of Israel after 1405 BCE was all the way to the Euphrates river, the book of Joshua and Judges are saying. Thus, the corpus of Mosaic works was brought with them by these secular habiru who through a process of semioses took local elements and infused it with Israelite wilderness songs, hymns, prayers, epics and a hybrid originated that shows lots of comparisons to songs, hymns, prayers, motifs in the Old Tesament.

2. The chronology of the Old Testament should be respected just like one respects the content thereof. And if not, there is no point to call oneself an Old Testament scholar. Rather say one is then an Old Testament critic participating in Old Testament transformational analysis and criticism rather than inductive analysis. One is using then the hermeneutics of suspicion rather than the hermeneutics of affirmation.

3. The cuneiform of Ugarit is, contrary to the style of cuneiform in general, written alphabetic.

4. There was an enormous earthquake sometime between 1380-1360 BCE according to Albright, Garstang and Schaefer but not according to R. North and Kathleen Kenyon (North 149).

5. There is a word tabernacle at Ugarit, namely m ll (see De Moor, Seasonal Patterns, p. 59 footnote 49 which is published in CTA 4.III.159 [4:II.65] at G24 between the temple of Baal and Dagan. The temple worshippers were aware of the word or concept of tabernacle in their corpus that was wellknown in the books of Moses (written between 1450-1411 BCE) and wellknown in the books of Joshua and the later post-Ugaritic literary time, namely in the book of Judges. This is not just coincidence. What value will tabernacle have for a people with two strong and big temple buildings unless it is a reference to a past when they were still migrating from Egypt participating with the religious habiru before they separated and settled in the north?

4. The street name is "Elyon" street. The street got its name presumably due to a text with that name or term on it. Between the Baal and Dagon temples there was also a street scholars termed Dagon street, library street because the library or rectory was found in it, Elyon street due to a text with that term and Mot street at the bottom due to a text in that area with that name.

5. In the Baal temple on the acropolis of Ugarit at area F22, they found the Baal Sapana stele. It compares very well with the term used by Moses in Exodus 14:2. The stele was found at G22 (see De Moor 200 footnote 7; see also R. North 149). Remember that Moses spent from 1490-1450 BCE in Midian. This term dating between 1280-1220 BCE at Ugarit is then predated by that of Moses in 1448 BCE.

6. In locality 44 (L8/9) they found ivory trays and on them are cherubim very similar to those found in the tabernacle, as is described in 1 Kings 6:23 (R. North). Again we have a connection to a situation nearly 200 years before the dating of these ivory trays.