I have been researching a little on this topic and wanted to share some information I found. Its interestingly noted in the info below that Israel it seems believed in several gods and not just one.
"The distribution of the god El therefore extends from 3rd century Akkadian culture eastward through Aram and Phoenicia and downward through northern Palestine to Jerusalem. Yahweh, with his home in the deserts of southern Levant, traveled north with the migration of the Hebrews to come into competition with or displaced Baal as El's traditional vizier, illustrated most clearly by Psalm
29 where Yahweh, originally a bedouin war god of the desert is here portrayed as a storm
god and the functional equivalent of Enlil=Hadad=Baal. The most probable time for the
incorporation of Yahweh into El's pantheon is with the emergence of Israel in the 13th
century when the peoples of northern and southern Palestine formed a political alliance and
forged a new collective identity that finally failed with Jeroboam's session. At this time El and
Yahweh became alienated (Ps 82) and returned to their own people reassuming their original
autonomy. While popular Yahwism continued in the North, the official religion was the
traditional worship of El and Baal until the destruction of the nation in 722 BCE at which
time Elohistic traditions, particularly the Elohistic Psalter, was redacted and the divine names
El and Yahweh were made synonymous."
I was also reading that Israel while in captivity in Egypt worshipped El or Elohim (plural). Moses was introduced to the worship of one god by his adoptive Egyptian family and during his time in the desert became a worshipper of Yahweh (suppousedly the God of the desert at that time) Moses returned and convinced the israelites that Yahweh and El were one and the same, therefore fusing both deities into Yahweh-El, Israels one God after that. Anyone else read about this?? Any thoughts, comments??