Cultural Diffusion

According to Alter's footnotes and our discussion in class psalm 18's description of God is one that borrows heavily on Canaanite tradition. Apparently at one time the Isrealites vanquished the Canaanites from the promise land, and in this time they inherited some of the Canaanites linguistic and religious traditions. This begs the question, what other parts of jewish and now christian tradition are stolen from other cultures? and does it really matter?

Without doing any real research, I do seem to remember that a lot of modern christian tradition is borrowed off of pagan ritual. For instance the specific date of christmas, and the christmas tree. With this in mind it would not be a stretch to assume that a lot of modern religious tradition has been borrowed from one culture or another throughout the years.

The answer to the question of whether this matters or not is a little more difficult to answer. In my opinion it doesn't. For instance, the description of God in psalm 18 is powerful and poetic, and thus I have to give props to the Canaanites. the language helps the reader of the psalm to reach a greater understanding of the power and grace of god that the psalmist was attempting to portray. And turning to the Christian tradition, its not the date or trees that make christmas, its the meaning behind those very human constructs. People are always going to have their own view of religion, and as a result no two people ever worship in the same matter. This being said, what does it matter if some details of a religion are borrowed from another culture, what really matter is the personal spiritual connection that the religion creates.