Is Baal real?

A:

Gods are real to those who believe in them, and not real to those who do not believe. Keel and Uehlinger (Gods, Goddesses and Images of God in Ancient Israel) say that Yahweh (YHWH) and Baal were almost synonymous in Israel during Iron Age IIB, the period from approximately 925 to 722 BCE, the end of the Israelite kingdom. Baal would therefore have been as real to the Israelites as was Yahweh, the God who eventually dominated Judaism. After the Babylonian Exile, Baal had been banished by the Jews to a distant and possibly manufactured history, and was no longer real.