Unless someone discovers some lost ancient scrolls in a cave, we'll probably never have more sources on ancient Phoenician religion.
It's clear that the ancients did not have a neat, systematized framework for religion. The later Greeks sort of attempted this, but weakly. It appears as if Phoenicia and Egypt came the closest to recognizing each other's systems. It seems like a general rule that the ancients believed that all their gods were probably part of one single system. The question is which elements are later merged for convenience and which elements have a common source. We might also speculate that there was a common system which granted many elements which incorporated local cults, then were reincorporated back into those cults and evolved from there.
I find it remarkable that Odin has his sacred tree, and someone decided to put a serpent around it. For example.
If I had to guess, I'd say there were multiple rounds of syncretism. First, an astro-theological system taught far and wide. Then, local variants reincorporated into a single system at crucial cultural contact points. And again, with just enough memory each time for there to be awareness of a common origin - giving impetus to the need to keep reconciling different cults.
What we DO have are esoteric texts. These might preserve some of the content of these ancient systems in greater detail. More than likely, all this knowledge was processed, remembered and disseminated by priestly classes. This leaves us the knowledge without the kind of context a historian would provide.
I don't think Philo would have had knowledge of ancient Phoenician cults, given his apparent lack of knowledge on the subject. Then again, do we have all his writings? And should we assume he didn't have an agenda which would keep him from mentioning these connections? I've associated Philo with the political activities of his family, and through the Flavians grant that they almost nearly gained control of Rome. Perhaps Philo knew the Jewish religion's sources very well, and was aware of the embarrassment associated with this knowledge. Hence the need to universalize and abstract Judaism. I'd guess he synthesized Jewish and Egyptian esoterica, packaging it in a contemporary framework.
In the ancient Near East, the parallels with golden calf worship, the basic myth of the twins, and so forth, repeat too often. There is more than just syncretism occurring, in my opinion.
Adonis is Hadad, and the cult is linked to Tammuz. It seems as if we can say this is Ieoud. Perhaps, however, we have no basis with which to link Ieoud to Yahweh. The use of Yaw in Ugaritic texts, and the association of Lotan with Leviathan (and the Levites) suggest to me that Iahu is more probably of that origin rather than some lower Canaanite rip-off of Koze. It seems more likely that someone was trying to argue that Koze and Hadad were Yahweh, then suggest that there was a pre-existent folk belief in a unique Yahweh that happened to have all their characteristics.
If Ieoud is Adonis/Hadad, and our "Cronus" is El, then who is Yahweh?
Yam appears to be a version of Typhon, and Hadad is as Zeus (Zeus Kaisos), driving him from Olympus. Yam is a son of Cronus, while Hadad in this myth is son of Dagon (perhaps a lazy syncretism, which is interesting because Dagon is more Koze-like). We know that more ancient Greek literature is confused about divine genealogies. We might have a juxtaposition of Tartarus against Uranus, as if the Titans of Canaan were not all descended just from the latter.
Yam is called Judge Nahar (river). And Hadad is promised a kingdom without end (like David). Maybe the biblical construct of the judges is echoing a Yahwist period, or is invoking the idea of one. Regardless, an inherent conflict between Yahweh and Ba'al is reflected in the Bible's history of Israel. Maybe the highland peoples worship Dagonite gods, and the lowland "river" or coastal peoples worship the exiled judge. Hebrew may derive from Eber which means river, giving it a loose connection to the meaning of Yehudim (if we assume Yam is Yahweh).
We can imagine a quaint, timeless rivalry between brothers. Lowlanders and highlanders. Maybe the migration of lowlanders to the highlands leads to the elevation of Yahweh and his assumption of Dagonite traits.
Nevertheless, while we have a war between Yam and Baal in the Ugaritic texts, we also have Hadad sacrificing his own son, or a Zeus overthrowing a Cronus. Thus, there's a father-son myth, and a brothers myth. With Abraham, the myths are combined.
I do find it interesting that Judge Nahar seems to describe the role of Osiris, who judges the dead and whose power over the Nile leads to the death and rebirth of vegetation there. Baal's next rivalry, after Yam, is with Mot who is god of the dead. Here is when he dresses a son (golden calf) in his robes as his substitute to death. These myths parallel the sacred cows of Memphis, where Ptah plays a prominent role (and the myth is repeated in Daedalus). Kothar-wa-Khasis is said to be from Egypt, and plays the role of Hiram of Tyre in building Baal a large palace which is obviously the origin of Solomon's temple. Solomon's temple then, must be seen as the house of Baal.
One interpretation is that the myth is cyclical. After defeating Mot, Baal grows old and his son returns from the underworld. He overthrows Baal, who becomes the new Yam.
The cyclical interpretation works best if one treats Baal and Yam not as father and son, but as twins. Slavic myths, which do incorporate the celestial storm and chaos dragon, have the bipolar twins as two seasonal aspects of the same being.
Greece's Castor and Pollux invoke an association with Orion (Adonis?), including a seasonal aspect. Nergal of Babylon is an Osiris-like god with a dual aspect.
Perhaps our original mythic structure is of the twins who are each other's father and son, trading places as lord of death seasonally. An astronomical metaphor. In Canaan, the Sea and the Mountain. In Egypt, the River and the Desert.
Hadad overthrows Yam. Next, Mot the lord of death is served bread and wine, but hungers for flesh and is offended (Cain and Abel, except here Cain offers the bread to Abel and Able is offended instead of God). For unknown reasons, curiously missing from the text, Baal must give his kingdom to Mot. So, on the advice of the female aspect of the Sun, Baal dresses up his son with a heifer as himself and offers it to death.
Mot then eats this pseudo-Baal and goes on a rampage that displeases El, allowing Baal to return and overthrow Mot from Mount Zephon.
It appears to me that maybe this narrative is suggesting that Mot is Baal. A sort of Jekyll and Hyde situation, where Hadad goes mad from fear of death. I say this because Mot is in the role of Cronus in eating the flesh of Baal's son. This also reminds of Hathor, whose rage must be satiated with blood and who is also associated with the Apis Bull and links to the presence of Shapash in the Baal Cycle.
Thus, I interpret the Baal Cycle as implying that Yam/Hadad/Mot are the same bipolar deity. That Osiris and Set are the same entity. Seasonally, one aspect lies dormant in the underworld and has a madness that seeks blood and life, while the other rules benevolently. The sacrifice seems to be - as the Apis Bull - a means to satiate the madness of the death aspect of this entity. Or in Phoenicia, child sacrifice.
What is hard to unravel is the idea of a battle between the two. Don't we elevate this child as Ieoud to the level of Adonis?
Osiris and Isis, Tammuz and Inanna, Adonis and Aphrodite. It seems to have a common origin.
Both the father and the son have the same story. I can only explain this by comparing Anat and Isis. It is Anat who finds Baal after he goes missing.
When the text recontinues, Anat is searching in the netherworld for the shade of her brother. She demands that Mot restores him to her. However, Mot answers that he had searched for him over the earth, where he found him at the entrance of his domain, and then he simply ate him. Anat continues her search, until she loses patience, and she seizes Mot, and attacks him, attacking him with a sword, shaking him, burning him, crushing him, then throwing his remains to the birds. When the text continues, Anat returns to El and announces that Mot is dead. El then has a dream which tells him that Baʿal lives. Shortly after that, Baʿal returns. However, soon Mot comes back to life and complains to Baʿal of the treatment he has received. He demands that Baʿal surrender one of Mot's brothers. When Mot has returned, Baʿal sends messengers telling him that he will banish him, and that if he is hungry, he may eat the servants of Baʿal. However, this fails to please Mot, and so the two gods fight on Mount Zephon until exhausted. Shapash arrives and warns Mot that fighting Baʿal is useless, and that El is now on Baʿal's side and will overturn Mot's throne. Mot is afraid, and so declares that Baʿal is king.
So, the story must be this: Yam was Baal's father, whom he overthrew. Baal begins to die, and in his decay and madness becomes Mot. Knowing Baal is Mot, certain gods trick Baal into selecting a false son for Mot, and then later as Mot he eats the son thinking this will defeat Baal. Meanwhile, Anat produces Baal's actual son in secret - as Isis did with Horus. The real son grows up after being in hiding (like Zeus) to be the new Baal, overthrowing his father who is now called Yam.
Set and Osiris are not brothers, but rather Set is the hunger and despair of dying Osiris. His wraith, hungering for flesh. Set prosecutes Isis, who must nevertheless produce his son by deception. Set would eat his own son, as his madness is caused by his own fear of death (and replacement). There is a substitute. For the Greeks, it is the omphalos stone later sacred to the Delphic oracle (and Apollo, whom later Egyptians associate with Horus). Finally, Zeus/Adonis/Baal 2.0 comes out of hiding to overthrow his father just as his father once did for Yam.
There's also a hint here that Horus is born of a Frankenstein's monster of Osiris, who did in fact die. Esoterically, the new body can receive his soul again, but that Isis/Anat must hide from Osiris the wraith until the body is repaired and renewed.
The baetylus of Elagabalus recalls the penis of Osiris. With the baetylus, Anat can create a new body of Hadad's soul. However, Mot would drag it down to the underworld, and Anat too. This is also a fertility metaphor (and it all fits nicely with the Chronos aspect of the god). Thus, the meteor is the death of Hadad. Perhaps the 33 year cycle of the Leonids, marking in November the beginning of the Middle Eastern winter and rain season. The baetylus is the only part of his body which survives, and is sacred because from it Anat could resurrect Hadad, ending his wrathful phase as Mot/Yam. The end of the rainy season, in April/May, sees massive storms suggesting the ascendancy of Baal.
IN SUMMARY
Judge Nahar causes me to connect Yam to Osiris, or recognize that the ancients made this connection. If the fundamental myth has an astronomical origin, then the similar timing of the seasons in Canaan and Egypt could explain divergent localizations retaining core aspects. The fact that the overlapping foundations of these myths transcend localism, while the local variations are tied directly to local weather patterns and geography, tells me that both the Baal and Osiris myths arose from a common origin. Rather than contributing elements to each other over time.
Ieoud is Adonis, who is Hadad, who is Yam. Obviously, if the story was understood this way at one time, this doesn't mean it was understood that way at other times.
However, the effort of Philo to apply a philosophical veneer to the generations of the gods certainly invokes the cyclical pattern seen generation to generation (the continued reemergence of a Cronus).
Anyway, I don't think these myths really seem totally independent. And I think we'd be waiting a long time for an ancient source who was aware of it. Generally, I would not trust ancient sources to know better than us. We probably have a much better big picture, even if they had sources which we lack. They may know just as much as they're sharing, which is about what we know. However, we have more information from other cultures and from archeology and science.
We can abstract out patterns, but it's true we will not understand the genealogical development of ideas. Nevertheless, the patterns can help us identify additional sources which previously were not considered related.
Either way, the Slavic Chernobog and Belobog provide a template for Yam and Hadad being the same entity. Interpreting the cycle of Baal's death and resurrection through the Osiris myth. Slavic mythology also has the Zorya sisters which invoke the mythology seen in the whore-becomes-virgin typology associated with the two Marys. These live on the mythical island Bunyan, and there's a sacred stone there guarded by a serpent. This reminds of the Hesperides in the garden of Atlas, and the golden apples guarded by Lodan.
So, this is my new interpretation of Chronos as a bipolar deity, father and son, twins, Hadad and Yam, Cain and Abel, Osiris and Set. I don't know if that serves in interpreting Philo. Even if true, he may not have known it.
I would guess that the Hyksos presence in Egypt allowed for extended contact between Egyptian and Semitic civilizations, and while the bipolarity of the deity may have been known to them, their respective situations caused them to use the twin faces to symbolize their own conflict. Leading to a theology where each side split off the aspect of the god they didn't like, and treated him as a separate god. Therefore moving away from acknowledgment of the bipolarity.
After the Hyksos left, other than the brief emergence of Atenism, the cult of Amun supplanted and absorbed that of Atum in Lower Egypt. So, the evolution of Cronus from a bipolar god to the respective religious systems of Canaan and Egypt as we know them may have been catalyzed by the Hyksos invasion.