the law, the demands of which have been completely ignored in the original narrative.  Until the cultus has become in some measure centralised the priests have no locus standi; for when each man sacrifices for himself and his household, upon an altar which he improvises as best he can for the passing need, where is the occasion for people whose professional and essential function is that of sacrificing for others?  The circumstance of their being thus inconspicuous in the earliest period of the history of Israel is connected with the fact that as yet there are few great sanctuaries.  But as soon as these begin to occur, the priests immediately appear.  Thus we find Eli and his sons at the old house of God belonging to the tribe of Ephraim at Shiloh.  Eli holds a very exalted position, his sons are depicted as high and mighty men, who deal with the worshippers not directly but through a servant, and show arrogant disregard of their duties to Jehovah.  The office is hereditary, and the priesthood already very numerous.  At least in the time of Saul, after they had migrated from Shiloh to Nob, on account of the destruction by the Philistines of the temple at the former place, they numbered more than eighty-five men, who, however, are not necessarily proper blood-relations of Eli, although reckoning themselves as belonging to his clan (1Samuel xxii. 11). 1

*********************************************** 1.  In 1Samuel i. seq., indeed, we read only of Eli and his two sons and one servant, and even David and Solomon appear to have had only a priest or two at the chief temple.  Are we to suppose that Doeg, single-handed, could have made away with eighty-five men ? ************************************************

One sanctuary more is referred to towards the close of the period of the Judges,—­that at Dan beside the source of the Jordan.  A rich Ephraimite, Micah, had set up to Jehovah a silver-covered image, and lodged it in an appropriate house.  At first he appointed one of his sons to be its priest, afterwards Jonathan ben Gershom ben Moses, a homeless Levite of Bethlehem-Judah, whom he counted himself happy in being able to retain for a yearly salary of ten pieces of silver, besides clothing and maintenance.  When, however, the Danites, hard pressed by the Philistines, removed from their ancient settlements in order to establish a new home for themselves on the slopes of Hermon in the north, they in passing carried off both Micah’s image and his priest; what led them to do so was the report of their spies who had formerly lodged with Micah and there obtained an oracle.  It was in this way that Jonathan came to Dan and became the founder of the family which retained the priesthood at this afterwards so important sanctuary down to the period of the deportation of the Danites at the Assyrian captivity (Judges xvii., xviii.).  His position seems very different from that of Eli.  The only point of resemblance is that both are hereditary