vii.12;
1Samuel ii. 27-36). But, in point-of fact, if a prosperous man of
Ephraim or Benjamin made a pilgrimage to the joyful festival at
Shiloh at the turn of the year, the reason for his doing so was not
that he could have had no opportunity at his home in Ramah or
Gibeah for eating and drinking before the Lord. Any strict
centralisation is for that period inconceivable, alike in the
religious as in every other sphere. This is seen even in the
circumstance that the destruction of the temple of Shiloh, the
priesthood of which we find officiating at Nob a little later, did
not exercise the smallest modifying influence upon the character
and position of the cultus; Shiloh disappears quietly from the
scene, and is not mentioned again until we learn from Jeremiah that
at least from the time when Solomon's temple was founded its temple
lay in ruins.
For the period during which the temple of Jerusalem was not yet in
existence, even the latest redaction of the historical books (which
perhaps does not everywhere proceed from the same hand, but all
dates from the same period--that of the Babylonian exile--and has
its origin in the same spirit) leaves untouched the multiplicity
of altars and of holy places.
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