Question - When did the Phoenician/Canaanite decline to obscurity?

[Analytical Engine]

After watching Bible's Burried Secrets by Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou, I got thinking about Ba'al-based religion.

I've been looking all over, and I can't seem to find when the Phoenician/Canaanite religions declined into oblivion. Greek and Roman writers comment on them, and it probably still existed in some form during Rome's Imperial period.

I guess it probably fell out of favour during the Christianisation of the empire, but I haven't been able to find anything yet to confirm this...

Can anyone (like Leo, for instance ) help me out here?

Basically, I was thinking about making a scenario with a Ba'al-based dominant religion, but with the more icky stuff removed, with a formalised canon and a priestly hierarchy; a bit like Judaism/Christianity really...

 

[Errnge]

I've been looking all over, and I can't seem to find when the Phoenician/Canaanite religions declined into oblivion. Greek and Roman writers comment on them, and it probably still existed in some form during Rome's Imperial period.

...

Basically, I was thinking about making a scenario with a Ba'al-based dominant religion, but with the more icky stuff removed, with a formalised canon and a priestly hierarchy; a bit like Judaism/Christianity really...

Carthage worshipped Ba'al. They were, after all, direct descendants of the Phoenicians.

I think what led to the ultimate decline of Ba'al in the East was the Maccabees and their ousting of the Greeks and other pagans. I'm not sure if this is correct, but i think it is the last instance where pagans are mentioned to be in large numbers inside Judea. Samaria, IIRC, was still heavy with pagans even until the time of Jesus Christ

 

[Lysandros Aikiedes]

The traditional Phoenician religion in the Levant largely merged with the demographically-dominant Hellenistic culture of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires, and the Religio Romana after that. Ditto with the Liby-Phoenicians in North Africa after the Roman conquest.

If Hannibal Barca totally annihilates Rome during the Second Punic War in the Late Third Century BCE like he intended to, then this buys a lot of time for the Carthaginian Empire to recover. From there, Canaanite culture has a fresh start.

 

[robertp6165]

The traditional Phoenician religion in the Levant largely merged with the demographically-dominant Hellenistic culture of the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires, and the Religio Romana after that. Ditto with the Liby-Phoenicians in North Africa after the Roman conquest.

Yeah, the Greeks and Romans pretty much went into a place and adopted all the local gods and goddesses, identifying them with their own. The locals generally went along with it and pretty soon, the native cults were gone, absorbed into the Graeco-Roman mainstream.