The traditions reveal a tendency to legitimate new circumstances. Priesthoods, whose traditions connect them with the south, are subordinated; the ecclesiastical records are re-shaped or re-adjusted; and a picture is presented of hierarchical jealousies and rivalries which (it was thought) were settled once and for all in the days of the exodus from Egypt. Many features gain in significance as the account of the Exodus, the foundation of Israel, is read in the light of the age when, after the advent of a new element from Babylonia, the Pentateuch assumed its present shape; it must suffice to mention the supremacy of the Aaronite priests and the glorification of uncompromising hostility to foreign marriages.[61] The most "unhistorical" tradition has some significance for the development of thought or of history-writing, and thus its internal features are ultimately of historical value. Only from an exhaustive comparison of controlling data can the scattered hints be collected and classified. There is much that is suggestive, for example, in the relation between the "post-exilic" additions to the prophecies and their immediately earlier form; or in the singular prominence of the Judaean family of Perez (its elevation over Zerah, a half-Edomite family, Gen. xxxviii.; its connexion with the Davidic dynasty, Ruth iv.; its position as head of all the Judaean sub-divisions, 1 Chron. ii. 5 sqq.); or in the late insertion of local tradition encircling Jerusalem; or in the perplexing attitude of the histories towards the district of Benjamin and its famous sanctuary of Bethel (only about 10 m. north of Jerusalem). Although these and other phenomena cannot yet be safely placed in a historical frame, the methodical labours of past scholars have shed much light upon the obscurities of the exilic and post-exilic ages, and one must await the more comprehensive study of the two or three centuries which are of the first importance for biblical history and theology.