Continuity and Discontinuity Redux

I posted previously on the relationship between true and false religion; it does not seem to be a simple dichotomy, as any study of particularly the Old Testament and its Ancient Near East (ANE) analogues will show. What are we to make of the many similarities between Israelite religion and that of other nations? In Proverbs and Psalms, literary dependency can be shown definitively: parts of the Old Testament are adaptations of other civil and religious documents and traditions. What, then, distinguishes true religion? Waltke gives a helpful perspective in his commentary on Proverbs:

"Proverbs' similarity to pagan literature is part and parcel of Scripture's incarnation within its historical milieu. Its theological significance does not depend on the originality of its individual sentences or sayings any more than the theological significance of the so-called Book of the Covenant (Exodus 21-23) rests on the originality of its individual commandments. Its commandments can by paralleled at point after point in the Babylonina, Assyrian, and Hittite laws, and they clearly reflect a common body of ancient Near Eastern legal tradition. The same is true of Israel's hymns; they are stamped by a hymnology common to the ancient Near East. The theological significance of the Old Testament rests rather on the connection of all its literature with the LORD, the God of Israel. The theological significance of Proverbs lies in its affirmation that the LORD brought "wisdom" into existence, revealed it to humanity, and, as Guarantor, upholds its revealed moral order."
~Bruce Waltke, The Book of Proverbs, p.66