The eleventh episode of the second season of the Retelling the Bible Podcast is posted today (August 25, 2018). You can listen to the episode and subscribe to the podcast by following one of these links or by searching for the podcast on your favourite platform:

SHOW NOTES

This episode is based on Genesis 19 in the Old Testament of the Bible. (Click the references to read the original story). Any direct biblical quotations in the episode are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

Here are a few of my thoughts on the episode.

The Historical Setting

Apart from what is written in the Bible, there is no historical evidence for the existence of characters such as Abraham, Sarah and Lot. Their stories are also not entirely consistent with their times. For example, the Book of Genesis assumes that these people rode camels at a time before the animals had even been domesticated.

The violent destruction of large cities like Sodom and Gomorrah that is described in this story is something that should have left clear traces for archeologists to discover. The fact that nothing has been found that fits the timeframe of the Genesis story means that we simply cannot tie this story to any proven historical events.

Many Biblical stories were undoubtedly remembered and passed down in order to help people understand and interpret the meaning of important historical events. I suspect that this story was not preserved for this purpose. Instead it seems to have been told as a moral lesson. Sodom and Gomorrah were the proverbial wicked cities that deserved to be destroyed and served as a warning to all other cities not to follow their example.

As such, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are mentioned often in the scriptures often.

Isaiah 1:9 is a typical example

If the Lord of hosts had not left us a few survivors,we would have been like Sodom,and become like Gomorrah.”

Although everyone in the Bible agrees that the cities were wicked, they do not agree on the cause of their wickedness.

This was their sin in the eyes of Ezekiel:

This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it. (Ezekiel 16:49,50)

This is what the Letter of Jude says in the New Testament:

Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which, in the same manner as they, indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 7)

It seems that prophets and preachers were only too happy to impute to the Sodomites whichever particular sins they were most interested in denouncing.

By the way, the particular “sin” that Jude is denouncing in that verse, what he calls “unnatural lust,” is not homosexuality. The actual Greek phrase he uses is “went after other flesh,” and the “other flesh” he is talking about is angel flesh. In his mind, the Sodomites were sinful because they wanted to rape angels; the gender of their victims is immaterial. We know this because Jude, just a few verses after this, quotes from the Book of Enoch, a popular book in his time that was kind of obsessed with the idea of sex between humans and angels.

The Sin of Sodom

The story in Genesis has its own take on the nature of the wickedness of Sodom. And, while the attempted rape of the angelic visitors does seem to be the final straw that leads to the destruction, I think that Genesis does not agree with Jude that this was the full nature of the city’s wickedness.

The story of the destruction of the cities is part of a longer story that begins in Genesis 18 with the arrival of three strangers at the tent of Abraham and Sarah. No sooner does Abraham see them than he falls on his knees and begs them to accept hospitality from him and his wife. In response to this extraordinary welcome, the strangers promise that the couple will finally be able to have the son that they have longed for for many years. At some point during this visit (it is unclear when) Abraham realizes that his visitors are indeed divine.

Myths and legends of divine visitors passing through towns and cities incognito were quite common in the ancient Mediterranean world. in them, the gods liberally bless those who offer hospitality (just as Abraham and Sarah are blessed with a child) while those who refuse to welcome the travelers are severely punished by the gods.

The Genesis story seems to fit the parameters of such legends and myths. The cities are punished for all of the ways in which they mistreat their angel visitors. The attempted rape of them is just the very worst example of their treatment of the strangers.

Two Women who take Control of their Destiny

But, as I explain in the episode, the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah are not my main concern in this story. I find the unnamed daughters of Lot to be fascinating characters. They remain completely passive throughout the story — used by their father to gain social advantages through marriage and later used as potential sex toys in an attempt to pacify an angry crowd. But then they suddenly step forward and decisively take control of their own destinies by choosing to become the mothers of two nations.

Even then, Genesis does not name them, but I felt that they had finally earned names so I called them Emmoab and Emammon. “Em” is a prefix that is sometimes used in Biblical Hebrew to mean, “The mother of.” For example, in Judges 5:7, Deborah is called Emisrael, Mother of Israel.

I realize that the way that they chose to take control of their own destinies is wrong. By having sex with their father they not only commit incest but also rape because they do so without their father’s consent. (Yes, legally and morally, totally inebriated people cannot consent to sex. I suspect that there are too many people who do not yet understand that.) We cannot defend them for that.

But maybe we can recognize that they had a terrible lot in life (pun intended) and literally had no acceptable or moral path forward. They made a choice and, from the Bible’s point of view, they seem to have found God’s blessing in that choice.

MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE

“AhDah” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/