Criticism has drawn the conclusion that the Pentateuchal legislation could not have been in existence at the time when the city of Laish was taken by the tribe of Dan. The conclusion, however, by no means follows. It is quite certain that it was not drawn by the compiler of the Book of Judges, who has preserved the narrative for us; and, after all, he is more likely to have understood the ideas and feelings of the Israelites of an earlier generation than is a European critic of the nineteenth century. In fact, he has given us an explanation of the contradiction between the Mosaic law and early Israelitish practice, which not only satisfies all the conditions of the problem, but is on the whole more probable than the rough-and-ready solution of modern criticism. Israel in Canaan in the first throes of the invasion was a very different Israel from that which had lived in the desert under the immediate control and superintendence of the legislator. It was disorganised, it was lawless, it was broken up into fragments which were surrounded on all sides by an alien population whose superior culture and wealth, when it could not be seized or destroyed, necessarily exercised a profound influence over the ruder tribes of marauders from the desert. The Israelites inevitably fell under the spell; they intermarried with the natives, and adopted their gods and religious ideas. The proof that this is the true explanation of the disregard or forgetfulness of the Mosaic law which characterised the age of the Judges is furnished by the fact that this disregard or forgetfulness was not universal. Throughout the age of the Judges Israel possessed a central sanctuary, little though it seems to have been frequented, and in this central sanctuary the worship of Yahveh was conducted by ‘the sons of Aaron,’ who kept alive the memory of the legislation in the wilderness. At Shiloh there was no image, whether graven or molten, no figures of the teraphim, no idolatrous rites. Instead of an image there was the ark of the covenant, with nothing within it except the tables of the law.[287] Shiloh was the only place in Israel where the Pentateuchal enactments could be observed, and it is only at Shiloh that we find them to have been so. But the influence of Shiloh did not extend far. It did not even become the central sanctuary of Ephraim. The history of Micah is alone sufficient to prove this. Ephraimite as he was, Shiloh and its priesthood had no existence for him; his gods and his priests were part of his own household. Equally conclusive is the history of Gideon.