For this purpose men were chosen who claimed to be of the race of Moses and Aaron, just as the service of the sacred ark at Shiloh was in the hands of this family; but men of other origin and tribes were not excluded even from the priesthood at the ark.[187] In such a want of any defined and influential position of the priesthood, in the want of any church organisation, it was only the superior personal power of the priests at Shiloh which could protect the religious feeling and traditional custom against the influences of the new surroundings, and Canaanitish rites. Tradition, at any rate from the first third of the eleventh century B.C., had no good to tell of the morals of the priests at Shiloh. To those who came to bring an offering the servant of the priest said, "Give flesh to roast for the priest; he will not have it sodden but raw." If the person sacrificing replied, "We will burn only the fat, then take what you desire," the servant answered, "You must give it me now, and if you will not I shall take it by force." If the priest desired cooked flesh from the sacrifice, he sent his servant, who struck with his three-pronged fork into the cauldron, and what he brought out was the priest's. The religious views of the Israelites, not sufficiently represented among themselves, were the more exposed to the influence of the rites of the Canaanites, as these rites belonged to tribes of kindred nature and character. In this way it came about that the Canaanitish gods Baal and Astarte were worshipped beside Jehovah, the god of Israel, and that in one or two places the old worship was perhaps entirely driven out by these new gods. But even where this did not take place, it was owing to the example and impulse of the Syrian modes of worship that images were here and there set up on the altars of Jehovah. When the conception of the divine nature in the spirit of a nation passes beyond the first undefined feeling and intimation,--when it receives a plainer and more expressive shape in the minds of men, and the first steps of artistic and technical skill, or the example of neighbours, are coincident with this advance,--the general result is that men desire to see the ruling powers fixed in distinct forms, then the gods are presented in a realistic manner in visible forms and images. And thus it was among the Israelites. The command of Moses given in opposition to the images of Egypt (I. 354) was long since forgotten. Michah, a man of the tribe of Ephraim, caused a goldsmith to make a carved and molten image of Jehovah of 200 shekels of silver; and set it up in a temple on Mount Ephraim, establishing as a priest a Levite, the "descendant of Moses." When a part of Dan marched northwards in order to win for themselves abodes there, which they could not conquer from the Philistines, the men of Dan carried off this image along with the Levite and set it up in the city of Laish (Dan), which they took from the Sidonians (I. 371), and the