Sodom and Lot, historicity and plausibility of Genesis 19

contracycle writes:

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Hospitality is certainly a very important virtue in these societies, but usually as a property of personal, rather than institutional, reputation. I'm not sure it would have made sense to those people to think of a city as being inhospitable.

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But that's exactly what the Bible talks about whenever it approaches what the sin of Sodom was. It wasn't about sex. It was that Sodom was a rich city that did absolutely nothing to aid the people surrounding it. There was no hospitality within the entire city.Ezekiel 16:49: Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.16:50: And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.And lest one be disingenuous and think that the "abomination" is a reference to homosexuality, read the whole chapter. The only sex mentioned is prostitution (apparently Egyptians have big penises.)If thinking a city is full of greedy bastards is a bit of a stretch, surely thinking that every single person in the city (Gen 19:4 says that the entire town was outside Lot's door) is gay is even more of a stretch.To understand Gen 19, one must read Gen 14.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

I don't remember the exact name of one of the myth, but I remember the story. Some Greek god goes to some town to see how people are. Everyone treats the guy like crap, except two old people. The god says, "Thank you, I'll spare you and kill everyone else" and everyone else dies in a flood.The old couple gets lonely, so the god tells them to plant a bunch of bones and they turn into more people.Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I used to read Greek Mythology as a kid.

That's the story of Baucis and Philemon. Zeus and Apollo (though sometimes it's Zeus and Hermes) visit Phrygia and are treated poorly except for this one couple who take them in and share their meager provisions. Strangely, they stretch to feed them all, the food is excellent, the wine never stops flowing, and the couple eventually realize just who it is they are dining with.Frightened, they beg mercy and the gods laugh saying that they were the only ones who were good to them. They can have anything they wish. Their only wish is that when they die, they die together. So the two gods establish a temple for them to be the priest and priestess of and, when they grew old and their time came, they were turned into trees: He an oak and she a linden tree, their branches intertwined forever.You are conflating it with the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha.Lycaon sacrifices a boy to Zeus and Zeus is disgusted and sends a thunderbolt to the house and turns Lycaon into a wolf (thus the term "lycanthrope" from the Greek "lykaos" for "wolf"). Zeus then goes to visit the sons of Lycaon in the guise of a poor servant and they serve him a stew made of the remains of their younger brother Nyctimus, whom they had just killed. He turns them all into wolves and restores Nyctimus to life.Given the truly horrendous behaviour, Zeus decides to destroy the world by a flood. However, Prometheus foresaw this and warned his son, Deucalion, and his wife, Pyrrha (daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora), to build a boat for them to survive the storm (no animals are saved.)When the waters receded and they had landed on Mt. Parnassus, they then make their way to the Oracle of Themis who tells them to throw the bones of their mother over their shoulders. They realize that the Oracle is talking about Gaia, the earth, and that her bones are rocks and stones. The ones Deucalion throws over his shoulder become men while the ones Pyrrha throw become women.Deucalion and Pyrrha are the parents of Helen...that Helen.One can see the connection of the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha to the story of Ut-Napishtim from Babylonian mythology. Not only do they both survive a flood but Ut-Napishtim is the one who discovers how to make wine...and "Deucalion" means "new wine sailor" while "Pyrrha" means "wine red."Pyrrha also happens to be the sister of Ariadne, wife of Dionysus, god of wine.But one distinction of the Greek flood myth is that Deucalion and Pyrrha aren't the only survivors: Megaron and Cerambus manage to survive, the former by cranes waking him in time for him to climb Mt. Gerania and the latter by nymphs turning him into a scarab where he flies to the top of Mt. Parnassus to wait it out.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

I think Ut-Napishtim (He Who Saw Life) deluge myth is Sumerian/Akkadian.The Babylonian deluge myth involves Enki,Enlil, and Atrahasis. This message has been edited by custard, 02-26-2005 03:47 AM

I believe Arach is indulging in a bit of hyperbole. But as he said, this type of myth is archetypal. Ssometimes its the city that is destroyed, sometimes the whole world, sometimes the just the king/ruler.Rrhain listed some, but you can pick just about any culture's mythology and find one on the net.

custard responds to me:

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I think Ut-Napishtim (He Who Saw Life) deluge myth is Sumerian/Akkadian.

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My understanding is that the flood story of Ut-Napishtim is from the Epic of Gilgamesh which, again by my understanding, is Assyrian-Babylonian. The Sumerian version is of Ziusudra. However, this mythology is not my greatest forte and I will handily bow to someone who knows better.

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The Babylonian deluge myth involves Enki,Enlil, and Atrahasis.

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See, and my understanding is that that was the Sumerian version. I may be getting the two confused.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Looks like the confusion is probably mine. Not that the significant amount of overlap between what is actually Sumerian and what is actually Babylonian on the net helps.This type of entry is common: It doesn't help that the names of the Sumerian and Babylonian gods are essentially the same, and that they both share Gilgamesh as a hero, but your version is probably more accurate as the majority of the sources I find ascribe the Epic of Gilgamesh to "Babylonians.": Good stuff.This message has been edited by custard, 02-26-2005 04:44 AM

there's a great big old set of books at your local university library by a guy named stith thompson called "the motif-index of folk-literature." the real title is much longer, but you can find it by that. go there, and look up hospitality myths in that book. it's a collection of basically all the myths, folk-tales, and legends up until about the invention of the internet chain-mail urban legend.thousands may have been an exageration, but i would be suprised if you found any less than several hundred such hospitality myths. and various other types of hospitality myths.i would look it up myself and post the list, but unfortunately it's really tricky to find online and it's about 5 am right now. however, others already did post the most famous such story.

not sure it was much of a hyperbole, actually. like you said, look up a culture, they probably have one. it's almost as pervasive as flood mythology. but i gave him a reference. lets see if he goes and looks up the good old stith thompson and comes back with a good count for me.

I did because it sounded cool! I could not find an online version, but I could pay $90 for one

See message 14

i think i might do it if i'm bored between classes on monday. i'd almost be willing to bet you that 90 bucks that there's at least 200 accounts, probably a lot more.

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today, yes. several thousand years ago, no. it's well documented that nearly every ancient society care about hospitality as a whole. even if this were an isolated case, you would not have a point due to multiple references provided above.

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No I don't think so. Becuase hospitality used to be a part of the heros heroism, and IMO has little to do with the normative aspects of a religion as a device for social order.I don't think I've ever come across a hospitality issue related to society as a whole, except where society is itself embodied in one ruler. Certainly the ancient Irish socities conducted a significant personal competition in generosity - hospitality was NOT a property of the settlement or social group, it was a virtue of the individual.Now, given the tone in response to the thread I raised on Gavin Menzies book, I don't at all see why I should be expected to accept an unsupported claim, regardless of the "thousands" you claim to have seen. Please provide some for discussion.

there were several specific examples talked about above.you make the mistake of thinking in modern individualized terms. yes, heroes were expected to demonstrate certain qualities. but that does not mean that other people were not.clearly the levites were:

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Lev 19:33-34

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And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. [But] the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I [am] the LORD your God.

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that verse above is clearly directed at the entire society, and how egypt treated them.it's not an unsupported claim. you're welcome to go look up hospitality myths in stith thompson's book. i'll leave it up to you to tell me exactly how unsupported this claim is. how many entries are there? notice always that the virtuous characters are NEVER heroes of any sort. lot is an average family man. so is the guy in greek legend.

wmscott responds to me:

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See message 14

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See message 16.To understand Gen 19, one must read Gen 14.Your analysis of Jude 7 is off, too. There is no mention of homosexuality there. Fornication, yes. Temple prostitution, yes. But homosexuality, no.And it is extremely disingenuous of you to say that when the Bible says "Sodom," it doesn't really mean "Sodom."

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!