Proponents of this view lump together pagan religions as if they were one religion when making comparisons . every canaanite citystate appears to have their own variant religion , including jerusalem . but they are variations on a closely related theme . these are closely related cultures . their alphabets vary a little but their languages are close to identical semitic languages . they build identical fourhorned altars . archaeologically , they only hint you ' re dealing with an israelite site and not some other canaanite group is that there are no pig bones , and even then that ' s not a sure thing . the enuma elish , to which angel refers above , happens to be written in akkadian , which is the oldest known semitic language , and responsible for shaping the canaanite languages . However , when the individual myths themselves are studied , major differences are soon discovered . there are definitely differences , yes . these are individual cultures with their own traditions and such , and they have their own take on common narratives . but this isn ' t one of those goofy parallel christs kind of arguments . these are legitimately related cultures , and myths that are obviously related . the parallel christs argument falls apart when you discover that krishna wasn ' t born of a virgin , horus was born of a dead god , dionysus was born twice , and mithras wasn ' t born at all . but you can go read the enuma elish yourself , and discover that marduk kills the dragon tiamat . and you can go read the baal cycle yourself , and discover that hadad kills the dragon lotan . and you can go read the greek myths yourself and discover that zeus kills the serpentine titan typon . and you can read the bible yourself and discover that yahweh kills the dragon leviathan . you can go visit the mountain zeus lives on , olympus . and you can go visit the mountain baal lived on , zaphon . and you can visit the mountain yahweh lived on , zion . this just isn ' t the same kind of nonsense it stands up to research , and in fact is one of the more fascinating areas of research in academic biblical studies .