The age of the laws now set in the framework of the Origins is a distinct question, or rather, as will be understood from what has been said above, it is a separate question for every law, and often for successive paragraphs of the same law. And behind the question of the age of the law in its present formulation is frequently the remoter problem of the age of the institution or custom. Various criteria are available in the history of the Kingdoms, in the prophets, in other collections of laws, and in Ezekiel's programme for the New Jerusalem (Ezek. 40 ff.). It must be enough here to say that the older laws in P go back, substantially in their present shape, to the days of the kingdom, and in many cases represent a prescriptive usage which is of remote antiquity; while the latest additions to P were made at a time so recent that they had not found entry into the copies from which the earliest Greek version was made in the third century B.C. J and E are both older than Deuteronomy. In Genesis, as has already been noted, they recite the foundation legends of Shechem, Bethel, Hebron, Beersheba, and other of the holy places of Canaan, telling how the patriarchs built the altars, set up the sacred stones, planted the sacred trees, dug the holy wells, and offered sacrifice to their own God at these spots, by this origin legitimating as Israelite sanctuaries what were, at the time of the conquest and long after, Canaanite "high places." Similarly, in Joshua, Gilgal and Shiloh are Israelite foundations. These were all, in the time of the kingdoms, holy places of great repute, frequented by pilgrims from distant quarters; but there were others, of less ancient pretensions, which attained equal celebrity. Dan, for instance, which came into the hands of the Israelites in the time of the Judges, claimed a priesthood descended from Moses, and became proverbial for the tenacity with which the good old traditions of Israel were preserved there. The narratives in Judges, Samuel, and Kings show that every town and village had its own holy place, with an altar and a sacred stone, and sometimes a hall for feasts (e.g. 1 Sam. ix. 22), and that temporary altars were built whenever and wherever there was reason. This practice is presumed in an ancient fragment of a law, Exod. xx. 24-26, which prescribes that all offerings must be made at an altar, which may be a mound of earth or a heap of field-stones (not hewn stone), and promises that at every place where God has given signs of his presence he will come to the sacrifice and bless the offerer. This rule, which probably originally stood in the context of J, expressly sanctions the local altars and sacrifices which are so abhorrent to the deuteronomic reformers of the seventh century.