This book maintains that ancient Israel always had more than one god, and that the distinction between El and Yahweh was blurred by the Deuteronomist reformers. Barker sees vestiges of this distinction surviving in the Hebrew Bible, especially in the figure of the Angel of the Lord. She sees this distinction as informing many texts in the "intertestamental" period. She also believes that "Israel's Second God" was common among Jews of the post exilic period well into the Christian era, and that Philo's exposition of the second god owes more to his Jewish heritage than to interaction with Greek culture. Barker argues that the persistance of this second god helped with the acceptance of Christianity, with Jesus identified with Yahweh and the Angel and Father identified with El. ( )