Akkad, and ancient Arabia; in each of these religions, her role was the queen consort of a central deity, if not the supreme deity. There is evidence that statues of Asherah were kept in early Yahwist temples, and there are some indications that the temple in Jerusalem was intended to be the sole temple to Yahweh, with other temples originally having been dedicated to other deities. The early Canaanites considered Asherah to be the wife or consort of ʼĒl, but as the ancient Israelites' religion evolved, she became the wife of Yahweh, or alternatively (according to other ancient sources) his mother. This is believed to have been a consequence of an ongoing trend of religious syncretism within Yahwism—Yahweh became conflated with ʼĒl, taking on all of his qualities, including his marriage to Asherah. Yahweh first supplanted ʼĒl as supreme deity, and later merged with him. This trend of syncretic assimilation is theorized by Mark S. Smith to have continued for many generations, with Ba'al and Asherah eventually merging with Yahweh as well, and their qualities and stories being ascribed to Yahweh instead, such as Ba'al's identification as a storm god. He also proposes that beginning after the 9th century BCE, Yahweh (having already assimilated several ancient Canaanite deities) began to develop some idiosyncratic qualities, as a result of having been conflated with some Canaanite gods, while simultaneously being distinguished from and described in opposition to other remnants of the Canaanite faith. Some of the earliest injunctions and admonitions in the Hebrew Bible are commandments to abstain from certain ancient Canaanite practices, such as worship of Ba'al and Asherah, child sacrifice as associated with Moloch and Ba'al, worship of the sun and moon, and cults of "high places." This has been argued to mark the transition from monolatry to monotheism, since this is when the idea of idolatry began to emerge and encompass all forms of Canaanite worship except those associated with Yahweh. The ancient Canaanite religion was still popular in the region, and coexisted with Yahwism and the early form of Judaism that evolved from it. However, the ancient Israelites eventually began to see the Canaanites as adherents of an entirely separate and idolatrous faith and compete with them. The oldest books of the Hebrew Bible reflect this competition, as in the Book of Hosea and in the Book of Nahum, whose authors lament the "apostasy" of the people of