The Israelites: Monotheistic?

The question of whether ancient Israelites were monotheistic or not seems like a rhetorical one: Surely they were, as the Hebrew Bible and Jews today regard them as the chosen people who held a covenant with a single God, Hashem, the God of Moses (https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/people/related-articles/monotheism-in-the-hebrew-bible). However, according to Karen Armstrong in Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths, this is not necessarily the case. When Israelites were exiled in mass to Babylon in the sixth century BCE, they became unmistakably monotheistic (Armstrong 27), but this was more than an entire millennium after their first arrival in Canaan in the eighteenth century BCE. 

Israelites' belief in other gods is well supported by the Hebrew Bible, which regularly makes references to other divine characters, many of which existed in Canaan well before Israelite arrival. The early centuries of Israelite presence in Canaan seemed to be marked by tolerance towards the existing sacred spaces and deities worshiped by Canaanites. Abraham and many other Israelites worshiped the God El, who would later be fused with the more modern concept of Hashem, the God of Moses (Armstrong 26). However, many Israelites recognized and worshiped the fertility goddess Asherah along with other existing Syrian deities (Armstrong 27). Thus, earlier generations of Israelites seemed to live with the idea of a single, unique God along with existing gods worshiped mostly by Canaanites.

Above all, the merging of Israelites in Canaan represented a merging of two cultures, an "outsider" culture and an existing culture in Canaan. The Hebrew Bible through Exodus makes it very clear that Israelites were outsiders who migrated to Canaan because of divine intervention (Armstrong 24). The picture painted above changed dramatically after the besieging of Jerusalem and the exile of Israelites to Babylon. After this, Israelites began to reject the worship of pagan gods and instead of one God, Hashem (Armstrong 27). 

From this, we see that the notion that Israelites were completely monotheistic comes from the events that took place in much later generations. However, monotheism resulted out of evolution of faith due to persecution and was not an inherent characteristic of all Israelites since their arrival in Canaan.