Modern criticism has asked how it is possible that all this could have been the case if a written Law actually existed. But the question forgets to take account of the circumstances of the time. A knowledge of reading and writing was confined to a particular class, that of the scribes; Israel was divided; intercommunication was difficult, and a Law which presupposed a camp of nomads continually under the eye of their legislator, was not adapted to the changed conditions in which the Israelites found themselves. Moreover, it must be remembered that the Israelites were for the most part a peasantry living in scattered villages; the inhabitants of the towns were Canaanites either by race or marriage. The one were too ignorant, the others too alien, to be affected by the Mosaic Code. Nevertheless, the Code was preserved at Shiloh. Here there was an Aaronic priesthood, and the few notices that we possess of the worship carried on there show that it was in accordance with the Mosaic Law. Outside Shiloh, among those who still remained true to the faith of their fathers, the Law was remembered and presumably observed. Of this the Song of Deborah is a witness. The God of Israel, in whose name Barak and Deborah went forth against the heathen, is the Yahveh of the Pentateuch, not the Baal of Canaan. The history of Israel in the age of the Judges is, religiously as well as politically, the history of degeneracy, not of development. In fact, religion and politics cannot be separated one from the other in the history of the ancient East, least of all in the history of the Hebrews. The one presupposes the other, and the political decay of the nation is a sure sign of its religious retrogression. The same causes which broke up its political unity broke up its religious unity as well. The knowledge and worship of Yahveh lingered in Ephraim, because in Ephraim alone the old ideal and spirit of Israel continued to survive. Ephraim was, as it were, the heart and core of Israel; it had led the attack upon Palestine, and its blood was purer than that of the other tribes. It remained more genuinely Israelite, with less admixture of foreign blood.