Too simplistic

If the first response was overly historicized, this second one is overly apologetic—too confessional even, and to the extreme—but unnecessarily so, or perhaps better, in ways that are just too simple, especially theologically, if not also historically. To take the latter point first, there is more than sufficient historical reason to deem a number of instances in the Bible as heavily and directly dependent on ANE antecedents in an appreciative, not solely contrarian way. One simply has to admit this point, and let the comparative “team” put some points on the board, as it were. How could it be otherwise? Why shouldn’t it be otherwise? Ancient Israel was, after all, part of the ancient world and located on a prime piece of real estate: an important crossroad between the superpowers to the south, north, east, and (later) west.—Brent A. Strawn in Divine Doppelgängers: YHWH’s Ancient Look-Alikes, p. 144 (emphasis original)