Woah! I see where you are coming from conceptually, but I think that both "religions" had an idea of "Setting stuff aside for 'religious' type use". 'm not disputing that worshipping the Lord of Hosts isn't essentially different from worhsip this particular one of a multitude of "gods". But "consecrated" is an popular and easily accessible notion, as in: MOM! You WASHED them! And they were my lucky socks! Or," You will be MY people, a people set apart, and I will be your God."
I would have said that everyone has SOME idea of what holiness is, just enough to have a clue when those Christian weirdos come into th community and start talking about it.
And the more the Christian weirdos talk, the more some of them realize that their old idea was WAY off base. But there was some resonance. It's not like they came in and said, "Fgjzcy is ghlppny and requires azqwxfdtness". It was 'Jesus is the Son fo God and He requires Faith. Now lets talk about what we mean by "Jesus", "God", and "Faith", and in a couple of hunderd years we'll get around to talking about "Son".'
Not really.. holiness just means "clean" or not poluted..
Read Psalm 19...