This proposal is based on my dissertation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2004). The ancient Canaanite divine council featured the high god El and his co-regent, Baal. While El was sovereign, it is Baal who is called "Most High" and "King of the Gods." Scholars of Israelite religion are well aware that the God of Israel received epithets from both deities, thus "merging" those two deities into the one. Scant attention has been paid, however to how Israel adapted the co-regent structure of the divine council for its own expression. In Israel, the high god "slot" was occupied by the invisible Yahweh. The co-regent slot was ALSO occupied by Yahweh, but in the form of a visible intermediary, thus providing a conceptual backdrop for binitarianism in later mystical Judaism.