What is important, however, for the present object is, to observe that clearly at this date the population of the Holy Land must have consisted mainly of the descendants of the old races, who had been conquered but not exterminated by the Israelites. Such a sentence as, "for the Canaanites were then in the land," could not have been written till long after the time when the Jews were intermarrying freely with Canaanite wives. Nor does it seem possible that codes, such as those of Leviticus, Numbers, and the Priests' Code, could have been generally known and accepted as sacred books written by Moses under Divine inspiration, when the rulers, nobles, and even priests and Levites acted in such apparent ignorance of them. In fact we are told in Nehemiah that Ezra read and explained the Book of the Law, whatever that may have included, to the people, who apparently had no previous knowledge of it. By far the most important landmark, however, in the history of the Old Testament, is afforded by the account in 2 Kings xxii. and xxiii. of the discovery of the Book of the Law in the Temple in the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah. It says that Shaphan the scribe, having been sent by the king to Hilkiah the high priest, to obtain an account of the silver collected from the people for the repairs of the Temple, Hilkiah told him that he had "found the Book of the Law in the house of the Lord." Shaphan brought it to the king and read it to him; whereupon Josiah, in great consternation at finding that so many of its injunctions had been violated, and that such dreadful penalties were threatened, rent his clothes, and being confirmed in his fears by Huldah the prophetess, proceeded to take stringent measures to stamp out idolatry, which, from the account given in 2 Kings xxiii., seems to have been almost universal. We read of vessels consecrated to Baal and to the host of heaven in the Temple itself, and of horses and chariots of the Sun at its entrance; of idolatrous priests who had been ordained by the kings of Judah to burn incense "unto Baal, to the Sun, and to the Moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven"; and of high places close to Jerusalem, with groves, images, and altars, which had been built by Solomon to Ashtaroth, the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and Milcom the god of the Ammonites, and had apparently remained undisturbed and places of popular worship ever since the time of Solomon.