 Alter suggested that it caused later transmitters of the text theological discomfort and probably provoked these transmitters deliberately to change it in the interests of piety.In Alter's interpretation of the older world-picture, a celestial entourage of subordinate divine beings or lesser deities surrounded the supreme God.In Alter's reading, the original assumed that God, in allotting portions of the earth to the various peoples, also allowed each people its own lesser deity.