Sodom and Lot, historicity and plausibility of Genesis 19

That doesn't seem likely to me, arachnophilia. 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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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.

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there were several specific examples talked about above.

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None relevant to the idea of CORPORATE responsibility

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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.

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No I am not - that is specifically why I referred to the Heroic cultures. They ARE individualist cultures, and they predate the corporate cultures by some way.Re leviticus quote: This is irrelevant; Irish law up until the C19th made everyone responsible for prividing a traveller with food and "whiskey to his need". That does NOT imply that whole settlements would be held collectively responsible for one persons failure - quite the opposite.

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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.

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The answer is "it is entirely unsupported". You are now retreating from your position - allegoriews and parables concering hospitality as avirtue do not in any way accord with whole settlements being wiped out becuase of one individuals failings.Please support your argument or withdraw it.

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they do support the idea that hospitality was a commonly expected virtue. and sodom was not wiped out due to one person's failings. the story says quite the opposite. it was wiped out in spite of one person's success.

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At no point did I dispute such hospitality was seen as virtuous, did I? What I disputed that it was an established mythology applying to corporate guilt. You said: "inhospitality to guests." was the reason that Sodom was destroyed, and supported this by claiming:

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you can find thousands of other similar tales around the world. one in every nearby culture, for sure. in fact, there's even another (less famous) identicaly story elsewhere in the bible.

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So where are they? You claim that this is a widespread cultural phenomenon, and yet cannot cite a single supporting case. If there are so many, and it really is such a widespread meme, please show other examples. If you cannot do so, then this claim should be withdrawn as having anything to do with the mythical destruction of Sodom.

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the only difference, as he points out, is that the entire society is not punished. i'm not arguing that genocide is a common theme in the stories. it's not. but genocide does seem to be a common theme in the bible.

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And thats exactly the difference I was pointing out - it makes no sense to see Sodom as having suffered such a collective fate becuase hospitality is a personal, not collectove, virtue.

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you're starting to sound like a fundi. just because i haven't the time to go to library and crack the big old stith-thompson doesn't mean there isn't any story like sodom. but it's spring break, and i have to catch up on a big project on campus, so maybe i will.

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Nonsense - round these parts you can't even recommend a book without being both willing and able to relentlessly defend the authors every statement.

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tell me, do you honestly think genesis is NOT condemning two whole groups of people in this verse?

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Eh? Of course it is but who cares?

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and as i said before, and will again, reading this story with an idividualist mindset is anachronistic.

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Youre wrong - reading the story with a corporate mindset is mistaken. It should be quite clear that the region displays the Heroic cultural complex in all its glory.

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and as well, if you'd read the story, it makes it painfully clear that lot is the only virtuous man in the city. it's not that the whole group is being punished as a collective for one man's inhospitality

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Thats exactly my point. Thats why the answer "lack of hospitality" cannot be correct; it does not jibe with the local metaphors at all.

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exactly. i recommended the book, stith-thompson's "motif-index of folk literature." but he doesn't really make a lot of statements. it is, afterall, an index. not an essay. it lists stories, and how to find them.

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Fine - then I suggest you have substantially overstated your case in claiming that there were many examples of whole groups being destroyed based on virtues like hospitality. Hospitally is a Heroic virtue in every context in which I have encountered it, and not a corporate virtue.

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so how is the punishment of an entire city a foriegn concept? why is it out of place?

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The REASON you give is unsustainable. Have you bothered reading my posts?

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how do you know the lot story derived from a heroic culture? you don't, at all, especially considering the FACT that many stories in genesis come from other cultures, but have a judaic spin. and in this case, the judaic spin might the destruction of the whole city, since condemning whole groups of people is not exactly uncommon in the torah.

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Because the Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Hittite societies were all Heroic, and all contributed to the culture that became Judaism. Thats the default status of ancient middle eastern societies. The story of the destruction of Sodom has to be set in a Heroic context, and in this milieu dea that corporate inhospitality would merit such punishment does not fly.

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do tell then, what is it about? homosexuality?

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Shrug - if anything, its likely to be simple conquest. But, in order to account for why the event should have such prominence, I also favour theories that some sort of natural disaster wiped out these cities.

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ezekiel seems to think hospitality was an issue.

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No, Ezekial seems to think POVERTY is an issue - no mention is made of foreigners, outsiders or strangers in that bit.

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possibly. look up the book and tell me.

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Thank you I'm well enough familiar with the topic at hand. Seeing as you are making the claim, YOU look it up.This message has been edited by contracycle, 03-09-2005 04:05 AM

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why is it unsustainable? i've shown proof that societal generalization is common in genesis, that this story is similar to many other myths that are all obviously about hospitality, and, oh look, i was wrong, the offending town IS destroyed in the greek myth:

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Its unsustainable becuase your claim is that this is one example of a thread of storytelling in which whole settlements are punished collectively for a lack of hospitality. There is no such strand in Heroic cultures. Even the Greek myth shows INDIVIDUALS being REWARDED for their PERSONAL generosity. Even if this myth was construed as being about corporate responsibility toward hospitality, it would be only one example, and insuffient support for your claim that the story is "obviously" one of "thousands" of "similar" stories.

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and destruction of a "corporation" is a foreign concept to heroic cultures? or just that they would be held responsible, in this case for all of their own individual crimes as the story makes clear.

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They would be held responsible for individual sins. So, if anyone had gone around claiming that god had wiped out Sodom for the sins of SOME of its citizens, that would have been perceived as an example of an unjust god, in the regional context. Thats exactly why the bible tries to make the whole city population individually sinful.

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in the greek story, everyone else is destroyed. there are mesopotamian myths that involve everyone being destoryed (such as the story noah was copied from). in gilgamesh story, a very obviously heroic tale, utnapishtim is a past hero, if ONLY because he survived the destruction of everyone else. this is not an unusual tale.

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I have dealt with the greek myth above - you are equally mistaken about the Mesopotamian myth. The key lies in Untapisthims actual involvement in the flood incident himself, not his subsequent appearance in Gilgamesh. The gods decide to extermiunate humanity as humans are making too much noise and hassle; Enlil resolves to do this via a flood. But Ea has a soft spot for humans and sends Ut. a vision warning him of wehat is going to happen. Ut. builds his boat and survives, but when Enlil finds this out he is enraged. But Ea argues back that such a mass punishment was wholly innapropriate, and argues instead:Ea opened his mouth to speak,
Saying to valiant Enlil:'Thou wisest of the gods, thou hero,
How couldst thou, unreasoning, bring on the deluge?
On the sinner impose his sin,
On the transgressor impose his transgression!(Yet) be lenient, lest he be cut off, Be patient,
lest he be dislodgedInstead of thy bringing on the deluge,
Would that a lion had risen up to diminish mankind!
Instead of thy brining on the deluge,
Would that a wolf had risen up to diminish mankind!
Instead of thy bringing on the deluge,
Would that a famine had risen up to lay low mankind!
Instead of thy bringing on the deluge,
Would that pestilence had risen up to smite down mankind!Thus, ea's argument is precisely that natural justice should have taken its the course and the individual sinner been individually punished, not all humanity wiped out. Furthermore, Ea goes on to escape Enlils wrath by pointing out that he didn't tell Ut. directly but instead sent him a vision - and Ea cannot be held responsible for Ut. correctly interpreting the vision.Theres no trace of colelctive responsibility in this myth - what it actually does is establish personal, rather than corporate, accountability as the right way to proceed.

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and what exactly ARE you arguing, anyways? if their crime is homosexuality, isn't it the same issue of corporate responsibility?

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The sum total of my argument is that it is invalid and wrong to claim that the biblical story of sodom is one of a series of stories about corporate responsibility, and so a corporate failure of hospitality cannot be construed as a satisfying reason for the events, whatever they were.

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however, we are talking about THE STORY ITSELF. what does it mean? what is it saying? if it's not dealing with some kind of corporate responsibility, what IS IT dealing with? you're refuting a story as culturally inappropriate, but have failed to proved any explanation for the fact that it EXISTS.

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Its a rationalisation of conquest, as you and I agree. Thats all that needs to be said. All the "moral turpitude" stuff is rationalisation. But it is still wrong to see this story as making an argument about corporate responsibility, becuase it is not.

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someone wrote this story, at some point in time. if they're not talking about hospitality, or even homosexuality, and some kind "corporate responsibility" for a city depicted as full of sinners, what is it talking about? show me another way to read it.

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"They were evil-doers and got what they deserved"

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what does hospitality have to do with foriegners? helping the needy who are from the city and helping the needy from outside the city are essentially the same.

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No, they are very very very far from the same thing. An outsider is not One Of Us. Those of us who are poor deserve to be poor. Those whom we encounter, and do not know to be justly poor, may have a claim on our duty of hospitality. Thats doesn't apply to enemy groups of course, but thats partly the point - hsopitality has quite a restricted context.

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no, apparently, you are not. you're basically denying a story exists, because for whatever reason it doesn't make sense.

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Thats total nonsense - all I have objected to is YOUR interpretation of what the story means. And I have objected on the basis that your proposed interpretation is at odds with regional cultural values, and would not have been recognised by people who lived at that time.

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the story says the entire city was punished. when god's chatting with abraham, he speaks of the sin of THE ENTIRE CITY. if you're so familiar with it, please do tell what it's about, in terms other than "corporate responsibility."

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Thats right, becuase they were ALL individually sinful, as the story strives to make plain. Its exactly NOT a story of corporate responsibility.

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in the story, the angels are in need of shelter for the night, and food. how is that different than a homeless man?

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In the local culture, only people with wealth travelled. Homeless people had to look after themselves - hospitality is a kind of political act. Travelling nobles can and do claim hospitality - the local poor are ignored, because they are deserving of their poverty.

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otherwise, if you can't find an alternative, stop arguing.

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I have done so repeatedly - the story is NOT a moral homily about the duty of hospitality, it is an assertion that the sinful suffered their deserved fate.

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and the rest of the town PUNISHED. please READ the posts i direct you to.

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PLEASE READ THE POSTS DIRECTED TO YOU

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in this case, it's still godly/angelic visitors who reward hospitality. what are you smoking, and can i have some?

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Imposing a conclusion from your world onto the ancient world is a silly method. You must deal with stories as they are told in the cultures that tell them - not interpreted by the standards of your culture.

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no duh. you're arguing this like it's somehow contrary to what i'm saying. it's not. you don't get it, do you? it's JUST A STORY. that's how it was written.

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No, it is directly contrary to what you are saying. I am beginning to wonder if YOU know what you are saying.[quot6e] is the story even talking about corporate responsibility if everyone else, or damned near everyone else is sinful?[/quote]No its not - thats exactly my argument. Thats why your proposition that this is a collective hospitality issue is mistaken.

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please, please, please disconnect for just a moment from the idea that sodom may have been a real place. for this purpose it's not. it never was, and it never will be. what does the story mean?

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Well I think thats a rather fatuous assumption. Furthermore, I have not proposed that I have any insight to what the story means specifically.

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my point was simply that destruction of everyone for EVEN NO POINT AT ALL is not a foreign concept to these people. why do you not have a problem with a story talking about destroying the earth because it's noisy, but have one with a story where a city gest destroyed for a different reason? is the flood not about corporate responsibility for the noise?

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No. I mean, WTF? First of all I seriously doubt that any such destruction was NOT accompanied by a mythical rationalisation: I'm, not aware of a "shit happens" attitude to cities being wiped out. I don't have a problem with a city being detroyed for "a different reason", but the reason you propose is wholly innapropriate to the context. It can and should be rejected.

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you're being ridiculous.

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... and the horse you rode in on.

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and yet the world is still destroyed, AS A WHOLE, in a flood. what's your point again? and if it's punishing each sinner for his own sin, how is that NOT the case with the sodom myth, considering one man is saved in each?

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Yes.. and the gods admitted that THEY WERE WRONG TO DO SO. Thats why it remains totally wrong to project this position to whoever wrote about Sodom. It would not have made sense to the people hearing the story - it would have painted god as immoral and unjust.

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and this is DEMONSTRATABLY WRONG. and it HAS BEEN DEMONSTRATED IN THIS THREAD. the story is identical to the greek myth.

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Ah, weell then clearly the whole Nativity story is about hospitality, wight, what with the travails of Joseph and Mary and having to sleep in astable, right?The fact of the matter is a superficial resemblance does not in any way support your point. Furthermore, the allegedely "thousands" of similar stories remain conspicuous by their absence, don't they?I think you are persisting in this point merely out of pride.

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i don't think of it as a rationalization of conquest. i'm fairly certain the conquest of the sister cities took place long before the writing of this passage in genesis, and by people who were not from israel.

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i find it more likely a hebraic spin on local tradition regarding the fall of the two cities. i don't see anything rational about it, and nothing about conquest

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Shrug. I don't have to provide a better theory to shoot holes in yours - you have to to pose a theory that resists attack. And I have already suggested an alternate explanation to explain the prominence of this story in the local tradiction - some archeologists argue that Sodom was hit by an earthquake that triggered a natural gas explosion and then slid the city into the dead sea; this matches with references to Sodom being surrounded by tar pits and the land burning after being smote by god.

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ok, now what was their evil? and show me where it says they were individually sentanced and punished?

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Who am I to say what their evil was? But what the bible does do is make it clear that Lot was the only innocent man, and that all the others were evil. Thats explicit in the story. You HAVE READ the story, haven't you?

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what is the reason genesis presents for the destruction of sodom?

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Hassling gods angels, and lack of morality, whatever is meant by that.

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the story presents an entire city being destroyed, because it is full of some kind of sin. read that as corporate responsibility if you want. but that's what the story says.

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Yes exactly SOME KIND OF SIN. Not lack of hospitality specifically.

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it has not only been shown in this thread that it is identical to other hospitality tales (some from heroic cultures!), but that genesis tends to generalize and stereotype entire cultures. therefor, neither is it at odds with anything, but you're arguing against WHAT THE STORY ITSELF SAYS.

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I am most cetainly NOT arguing against what the bible says, I am arguing against your erroneous and anachronistic interpretation of what the bible says. If you can show these identical hopitality tales, please do so - I have now aksed you for them on multiple occassions. The one tale you have provided in no way makes the case you want it to make - in fact it makes the opposite, because the characters involved did NOT suffer as they would have done if they been held collectively responsible. Your argument is in tatters.

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even though several people presented cases in which it is (ie: the greek myth), or where even single violations of guest-host relationships lead to destructions of great cities (like, you know, in the trojan war). now, you're not gonna tell me these stories aren't about that theme, since greece is clearly heroic, are you?

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Presented cases unsuccesfully. The Trojan war is also clearly not a case of an hospitality issue - it is overtly about the kidnapping of Helen. Its quite clear that this is the lesson the Greeks took from the story, seeing as they went on to name themselves Hellenes.

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that's nice, but traditionally, until the stay in egypt, the hebrews are a NOMADIC PEOPLE. everyone travelled. lot may have been a counterexample, but he didn't stay too long, did he?

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A fair point but it further undermines your argument - in Nomadic cultures, hospitality is once again an individual, not a corporate, responsibility.

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and it's kind of absurd to look at it through a blatantly modern republican stance, you know that? i don't think capitalism and social darwinism was always the norm.

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Umm yes, thats my whole point - your proposition is anachronistic and impossible in the temporal context. Nothing in MY argument depends in any way on capitalism or darwinism.

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that was afterall, the question i answered and you took objection too. so, provide me with an alternative sin.

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IMO the bible does not really make it clear what it is they are supposed to have done. One argument I have seen Christians advance is that the Sodomites hated god, and thus attacked his angels. I think its plausible that the "angels" were foreign aristos against whom the Sodomites had some grievance.

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i HAVE and they are filled with complete ignorance of the subject matter, even after explanation to the contrary by myself and others. in fact, there is not a single point i haven't addressed and DISPROVE

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Repetition of nonsense does not strnegthen your argument.

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you think hospitality is a modern virtue? are you nuts?

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No, idiot, only that it is a PERSONAL virtue in those societies.

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oh, i'm sorry, but capitalist economies and social darwinism aren't. that's right.

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This appears to be idiocy for idiocies sake.

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how is it directly contrary to what i'm saying? i said that the sin of sodom was inhospitality. that was all that i said. you brought up the idea of them being all accountable together. OF COURSE the authors made it so that everyone was sinful, even individually. but is that not a generalization of the whole city? is that not an attack on the people who lived there? is not motivated by some sort of prejudice?

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Your are arguing your conclusion again, and giving me my argument at the same time. The sin of Sodom CANNOT be hospitality because hospitality cannnot be applied to a whole group collectively. *I* did NOT bring up the idea of them being held acocuntable together, I pointed out that was implicit in your argument.

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NO. my position was that it was inhospitality PERIOD. nothing else. no idea of collective, except in the fact that it was supposedly the entire city outside of lot's door.

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Yes - thats exactly why you can't get away from the collective. COLLECTIVE blame is the centre of your argument - and that is why it is invalid.

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but the authors of the text DID generalize the city.

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Yes thats right - thats exactly why we know that the issue could not have been inhospitality - becuase the authors were able to generalise it to all citizens.

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this is not something foriegn at all. genesis does it alot. ezekiel refers to "the sin of sodom" not "the individual sins of each and every one of it's inhabitants."

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Yes thats right - thats why we can be confident that thatever the sin is, its not hospitality.

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no, you've adequately demonstrated that you have no insight at all. you're just making an argument for the point of making an argument. you have repeatedly failed to note that even heroic cultures have hospitality myths, and that the NOMADIC hebrews operate under slightly different rules.

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No no - I am well aware that heroic societies have MANY MANY hopsitality stories of one sort or another. But they are all about the PERSONAL virtues of the individual. YOU are the one claiming that there are THOUSANDS of cillective hospitality myths, and yet when challenged it turnes out you cannot name any nor recount their details and instead refer to a book you once browsed in the library.Your alleged collectiviost hospitality myths remains conspicuous by their absence. On that grounds alone your claim is shown to be spurious - your claim this phenomenon is common, but can't identify any instances of it occurring.

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you have failed to show a reason or proof that the story couldn't have anything to do with hospitality, other than you're assumption that hospitality has to be a collective thing, and the hebrews were not collective. both of which have been demonstrated to be wrong, and another identical tale has been shown from a heroic culture.

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Both have most certainly NOT been shown to be wrong, as demonstrated by your construction above. What do you mean by "the hebrews were not collective"? Of course they were, in the way of nomadic peoples all over. On the other hand, they are a Heroic culture - these are not contradictory. And whats more, I have already debunked the alleged "identical" tale showing it to be nothing like identical.

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that's WRONG on every count buddy. now put up an alternative sin, or stop bickering

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No, YOU have been shown to be wrong. You;re the one interested in sin here, you select another.

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a person with a brain, i hope. do you think the people who read this story 2000 years ago sat around going "well, i don't know what they did, but god was pissed!" what happened to not being "aware of a 'shit happens' attitude to cities being wiped out?" what did they think it meant?

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All I know is, the bible does not appear to refere to their sins explicitly, merely says they were sinful. From that lack of evidence, I do NOT feel entitled to suck definitions out of my thumb, as you and the homophobes appear all too keen to do. I don't feel threatened by the lack of detail.

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and identical myth which is clearly about hospitality has been shown PAGES AGO

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And debunked pages ago.

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and i provided you with a reference to all of the similar stories. if i could find a copy of the darned book on the web, i'd have posted the list ages ago. but the book is six volumes, each quite thick, and it's JUST an index. you honestly think it doesn't have anything similar?

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Completely certain that it DOES have myths in which whole cities are destroyed for sundry sins, quite certain has NONE in which that sin is inhospitality. The Norse poem Grimnisnall, for example, has allegations of inhospitality as a central issue, but the inhospitable one meets a gory end alone.[quotes] whereas, i have demonstrated:
* the hebrew authors generalized on the basis of ethnic origins, especially in genesis (and later refer to sodom as a single entity)
* hospitality does not have be collective
* hospitality myths are not absent from even heroic cultures
* this myth is identical to a greek hospitality myththat makes you wrong in about every way possible, you have failed to substantiate your case.[/quote]Thats good acid your're dropping, apparently.
1) of courese the hebrew authors generalise, that has never been chaallenged and is thereforte irrelevant.
* I never claimed that hospitality myths were absent en bloc, I said COLLECTIVE hospitality myths are absent, so this is also irrelevant,
* and it is NOT identical to the greek myth IMO, as no collective punishment occurs - instead an individual reward is received, just like my model of hospitality myths would predict.So not only are two of your alleged "proofs" irrelevant, the last is wrong.

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so by the same token, evolution is invalid because the creationists poke holes in it? i'm sorry, but illogical and unprovable assumptions aren't exactly holes.

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Nonsense and you know it. IF a creationist COULD poke a hole in it, then there would be a hole, period. Who made the hole is irrleverant, and making such a whole would not necessarily support creationism.A theory has to stand up to all comers. Yours can't.

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these are people trying to rectify their religion with archaeology. there are no signs of an earthquake, or gas explosions. but there ARE signs of a battle, and a fire. that is, if this is even the same city.

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Thats nonsense, I fear. And particularly poisonous, as you are dismissing legitimate archeology mertely becuase you find it displeasing. Showing that a city called Sodom existed and was destroyed would NOT validate the bible in an of itself. It's harder to explain the myths purely as constructs. Thats aid I am not even claiming this argument is true - only that it fits with the prominence of the account and the attribution of godly vengeance better than mere conquest.

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but don't forget, we're talking about a STORY here, remember? not what happened. there's no need to match the bible to reality, especially not in genesis.

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Except that I approach anthropology as a structuralist, and the structuralists insist that no society maintains useless structures.

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genesis is very political, and here it is using this (possible) disaster to accuse the city or it's people of something.

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Indeed. And yet, the myth doesn't appear to have anything to do with hospitality or lack thereof.

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the original question was: what is it accusing them of? what is the evil it says they did? HOW are they trying to defame sodom?

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I don't know, and to be honest, don't particularly care. I'm not sure one is strictly required - if there were some sort of natural disaster, then it could be safely presumed they were guilty of something; this would accord with the biblical account, which refers to but does not discuss their sin. But I am confident that attributing this assumed sin to collective inhospitality is grossly anachronistic and IMO impossible as an interpretation of what the authors meant.

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you were the one saying it was not. however, the city is painted as sinful as a whole: every individual citizen in the wrong. the sin demonstrated is a breaking of guest-host relations.

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How so? Lot fulfills his host obligations perfectly - the guests were previously going to reside in the city square. There was no violation of hospitality in the story.I'm afraid you are suvcking this interpretation out of your thumb. It has no basis in the text or the context.

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you claimed that people then viewed the poor as responsible for their own poverty. that's social darwinism by definition, which neccessitates a capitalist economy. it's a blatantly anachronistic way to view this book.

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I'm afraid that is just completely insanely absurd. IIRC the bible says "the poor will always be with us". Social Darwinism is not in any way causally linked with Capitalism - it is much, much older than that and is expressed quite openly by the medieavl church - the lord in his castle, the peasant at his gate, the lord god raised them high or low and ordered there estate.Merely becuase YOU are only familiar with the ideas of social darwinism in capitalism does NOT mean thats the only place they were expressed. And my hostility to capitalism arises at least in part because it keeps these ancient theological shibboleths hanging around.

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and you have repeatedly been shown proof that inhospitality CAN and IS applied to a whole group in this and other stories. you have also been shown proof that whole groups are often generalized far beyond the bounds of reality in the book of genesis, so this is nothing unusual

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WHERE is it aplied to whole groups in other stories? I have done a net serach to check - all I get is people making THIS argument. Where are these multiple stories? Give me names, give me details. You nkeep asserting this stuff exists SO WHERE THE FUCK IS IT? Put up or shut up.And I have NOT disputed generalisation, I repeat. Please address the issue, and stop attacking straw men.

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no, it's not the center of anything. it's quite common in genesis. how about pride? is pride a collective sin? all of humanity is punished for their pride in genesis.

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Yes, its plausible for pride, not for hsopitality. This is ebcuyase hospitality is an economic action and that action has to be credited to an author.

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where do you get the notion that hospitality can't be collective anyways? you sure as hell haven't shown any evidence, and have ignored the evidence to the contrary.

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Thats becuase you have not SHOWN any eviodence to the contrary despite mny repeated requests.And it comes from my familiarity with bronze age cultures and the role of hospitality in those Heroic cultures. For example, the way in ancient Ireland someone could embarras a lord by whom they were wronged by starving themselves to death at the lords doorstep, thus impugning his hospitality. It would be senseless to see this as applied to the settlement as a whole - its a person to person transaction. And I am not aware of ANY circumstances in which this is not the case. Its completely contrary to the structure of Heroic societies in the bronze age and therefore requires sound evidence for the claim. Your whole model is anachronistic.

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are you REALLY not paying attention? i've pointed this out a number of times and you've never responded. how is the greek myth, blatantly about hospitality, any different than the hebrew tale? both towns are destroyed as a whole.

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Ah, so proof positive after all that you DON'T bother to read my posts. I have dealt with this: the populace are not the Subject of the story, they play a bit part. The whole story highlights the virtues of PERSONAL genoristy, and the rewards attendant on those who are so virtuous. you are massively over-interpreting the content to indicate this is a message about collectievity, when it is in fact a message about indivduality.Nonetheless, your argument would be much more compelling if you could show other precedent. The very similarity of this story and the biblical story raise doubts as to provenance and authenticity. So if, as you claimed, there was a broad-based tradition of collective responsibility stories related to hospitality, it would or should be easy to show the similarities. So why can't you produce any of these thousands for comparison? EVEN IF I granted your one, lonely story shows what you claim it shows - which I certainly do not - it would still only stand as an exception to the general case absence of such stories.

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you don't suppose that the creationists honestly think they really are poking holes, do you? just as you think you're doing. but you're both wrong.

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Don't be pathetic - there is no comparison because unlike other data supporting evolution, there is NO data supporting you. Further, your argument relies on facts that are not in evidence.

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so, they're collective, but don't have hospitality as a collective virtue? evidence, please.

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No - YOU are advancing the claim, YOU provide the evidence in support of your claim.Your argument is sturctured as follows:
- there is a known corpus of collective hospitality myths
- this myth is observably similar to those myths.How can you possibly support your claim without showing a) that such a corpus exists and b) what the similarities are?there is NO basis from the text to support interpreting it in the way your propose. There is NO corpus that makes this obviously the member of a set. There is NO basis for this argument apart, as far as I can tell, from attacking certain Christian ideas.

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i reject it on the basis that it's bad archaeology. it's one person (probably on the history channel) looking at the city and going "oh look, signs of fire. sulfur vents, and geothermal activity next door. maybe that's how god worked his miracle!" it's a supposition, and ignores the fact the city does not show signs of immediate destruction, but a war. they had time to properly bury their dead, for instance.

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And again, you leap to assumptions about work you have not examined merely because it does not fit your preconceptions. And if this is supposed to be christian apologetics, why does Ron Wyatt insist the city is not under the dead sea but somewhere else? I'm even quite willing to accept that archeological speculation of this kind can never be conclusive, but I do NOT reject the argument out of hand as "bad archeology".

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the story is making an accusation against a people, for whatever reason. i'm not the one interested in sin, the people who wrote the darned story are, and OP was. i just provided the best scholarly guess as to what it is, based on surrounding culture and context. you think i made this up?

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Yes. Becuase it is totally without precedent, and not at all scholarly.

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But it does. the citizens of sodom DO something in the story that inspires the angels to think lot's the only one worth saving.

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Actually, they don't mention Lot being worthy of anything - they merely give him due warning. And seeing as he was an alien living in Sodom, and known to them, its far more reasonable to see this as an alliance rather than a moral judgement. And the sin attributed to Sodom is attributed long before the angels arrive and meet lot.

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i thought you weren't aware of the "shit happens" philosophy of literature?

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Correct. Myths that say "they must have deserved it" are the opposite of "shit happens".

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i'm sure they meant to accuse sodom of a multitude of sins, and not one for the whole city, but the fact remains: the citizens are shown participating in one particular sin in the story. the harass the visitors.

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what would you call that?

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Warfare.Anyway, the citizens are NOT shown triggering their own demise becuase the angels set off with the intent of smiting the city beforehand.Your interpetation of the biblical sotry is mistaken; your interpretation of the greek story is mistaken; your alleged corpus does not exist; thus no similarity with the corpus can be shown.Your argument has no evidence - it is a joke. Put up or shut up.This message has been edited by contracycle, 03-15-2005 04:54 AM

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except in that the city disturbs and harasses the visitors.

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Yes, and even more curiously, no reason was given. And, why should a city have any obligation NOT to harass visitors?

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you know, exept for all the stuff people have posted in this thread.

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... which does not stand up to scrutiny. This looks more and more like an urban legend to my eyes - everyone "knows" it but cannot explain how they came by that knowledge. That SHOULD set off a bunch of alarm bells.

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please take a history class before you open your mouth

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Ha ha ha. Now thats arrogant indeed - I have taken many.

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divine right of kings. similar idea, but under a feudal state. in this case, the difference is that this philosophy is explicitly religious in nature, and the only person "raised high" is done so by blood and not income. and there are VASTLY more poor than rich.

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There are similarities, but Divine Right is a specific doctrine and cannot be conflated with the general case of the lord god making people rich or poor. That is, the manifest destiny doctrine can coexist with, or exist independantly of, divine right of kings. You might know that if you took the odd history lesson.Ands its not by blood necessarily - Wulfnoth Cild was a sussex thegn of no reputation; his son Godwine become a powerful landholder through loyal service to the king; his son Harold become king of England briefly. Where's the blood? What determined Harolds candidacy was wealth and power.

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like i said, take a history class. or two.

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Why would I, when I'm whipping you with one hand tied behind my back?

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yes, and i'm SURE they were expressed in ancient israeli myths.

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Duh, of course they were:# 2 Samuel 12:4
"Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him."Proverbs 10:4
Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.Proverbs 22:
2 Rich and poor have this in common:
The LORD is the Maker of them all.7 The rich rule over the poor,
and the borrower is servant to the lender.Jeremiah 5:4
I thought, "These are only the poor;
they are foolish,
for they do not know the way of the LORD ,
the requirements of their God.
5 So I will go to the leaders
and speak to them;
surely they know the way of the LORD ,
the requirements of their God."Now admittedly, most of the bibles references to the poor are sympathetic, but Calvinism is easily able to support its social darwinism from biblical references.

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i gave you the reference. go look it up.

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And its not acceptable - I am not going to go running around just becuase you can't be bothered to do the necessary research. I already know what the conclusion will be, after all. YOU are presenting the arguemnt - YOU have to support your argument. Anything else is intellectually dishonest.The fact of the matter is you CANNOT support your claim. You have been caught out propagating an urban legend you adopted uncritically.

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genesis generalizes individual sins.

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I never claimed it did not. Hospitality, however, is not among them, and cannot be.

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yes, and i'm well aware it's anachronistic.

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So withdraw the claim then.

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when an entire society is opressed, as strangers in a land not their own, that changes the nature of how hospitality is viewed, does it not? it's quite plausible that sodom is a code for babylon. (and i suspect the same for egypt, actually. but that's a different thread)

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No - why would it? Such a change would require quite a lot of "social engineering" and I do not see that. Furthermore, as a rule oppressed societies don't have much room to construct an ideology. And thirdly, your argument now requires many many assumptions not in evidence - that the whole story is anachronistic, thats its a different city, that its a different political context. Thats too much special pleading, especially when your claim is that it is OBVIOUS that this is one of a (non-existant) mass of hospitality myths.

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however, i don't think the condemnation is something you're reading into it. but like i said, genesis does that. alot. and it does it whole groups. all of mankind twice, the ammonites, edomites, all of the arabic speaking people, etc. in fact, "they were mean to angels" is the most coherent attack. mostly, it just calls whole groups of people illegitimate bastards.

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And, I have already explained why this does not constitute a rebuttal: my claim is not "generalisation never happens", it is that "hospitality is not generalisable in bronze age societies". You are attakcing a straw man again - please stop doing so and stick to the issue.

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don't be ridiculous. i gave you a place to go look up the stories. that's like me telling a creationist to go to a natural history museum.

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And as I have already told you - I HAVE looked, and there AREN'T ANY. You are trying to lecture the curator of the museam as to what the museum contains.

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yes, and we've advanced the most commonly known one, and explained its blatant similarities. and i've shown where you can go look the rest up.

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At this point it is the ONLY known one, ever - and you have mistaken its interpretation, and continue to do so despite being corrected. All I have asked you to do is justify why you think there are so many, when none can be found.

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no, i haven't gone and read journals on it. nor have i been to site and investigate myself. but those simple facts indicate that that is not what happened there. and i don't really care to try to rectify a very fictionalized set of ancient mythology with a real place. it might not even be the SAME place, as there's nothing to really indicate that it is.

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Indeed. And UNLESS you CAN say that the city found WAS Sodom, specifically, the presence of weapons in the found sity is not conclusive.Its clear to me know that we are referring to different investigations; that is not surprising. What is surprising is that you seem to cite a "real" Sodom when it suits our argument, and deny Sodom existed at all when it suits your argument. And its not even particularly relevent, except inasmuch as you affected incredulity regarding the recording of natural disaters.

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ok, show me some scholarly work on it. i'm very willing to read some actual scholarly opinion on the matter, even if it differs with my views. i'm even known to change those views sometimes as a result. so uh, put it up.

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Ha hah ha - here you persistently refuse to show your own work, demonstrate the invisible evidence you claim exists, and yet you are arrogant enough to demand evidnece from me? My doesn't that remind you of someone demanding that evolutinists myst definitely disprove god, and that theists have no necessity to prove god at all?YOU are advancing the claim - YOU must support it. I do not have to take your claim seriously, and neither does anyone else, until such time as you can show that it is even plausible at all, let alone true. Inasmuch as this argument appears to be advanced to "prove" that the sin committed by Sodom was not homosexuality it is manifestly failing, because no other precedents for this kind of alleged myth can be found. You cannot make your case as it stands - as this poor argument must necessarily strengthen the other position. This argument is bogus.

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no no no. one follows from the other:
shit happened -> they must have deserved -> because they did [this] wrong. so what did they do wrong?

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Now you are playing linguistic games. "shit happens" is mostly iused to dismiss concern about an event. But nevermind.Why do you expect me to be able to tell you what the alleged sin was if it was not mentioned specifically in the bible? Once again, I do not need to do so to debunk the silly notion that the alleged sin was hospitality, because you simply cannot support that claim. This is an urban legend, as far as I can tell.

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the words "the fellow came here as an alien, but already acts as a ruler!" stick out in my mind. it seems that it might not be talking about them not meeting standards as whole or individually or whatever, but them not recognizing and allowing hebrew customs. a kind cultural tolerance bit. granted, heavily related to hospitality. but maybe different enough that you'll let it get by.

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That seems even weaker to me. They seem to be saying that Lot, as an incomer, has not right to go telling the locals how to behave. "They come over here and take our jobs and run the place" yada yada.But, then again, there is no expectation whatsoever in the region that cultural tolerance is a virtue. So, the suggestion that Sodom's sin was "cultural insenstitity" cannot fly without some sort of support to show that is a reasonable conclusion. There isn't any.The sin of Sodom simply cannot be said to be hospitality with any honesty. The text itself cannot be read that way; there is no supporting data; its anachronistic to the region and culture. It Cannot Be.so uh, put it up.

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no, you're being argumentative. there's a difference.

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Becuase not only can you not support your claims, you are defaulting to bluster to conceal that fact. I am entirely right to call you on your dishonesty.

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what you said equated to "god chooses who becomes rich and who becomes poor." that is, by definition, the basis of divine right of kings. divine = god, king = rich and powerful.

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No it is not. The divine right of kings claims that the universe is ordered into layers, significantly featuring god as the singular ruler at the top. Thus, human society, in order to be godly, also has to have an divinely approved single ruler - whether that be pope or king.The divine right of kings is thus obviously incompatible with democracy. God making the rich rich and the poor poor is NOT incompatible with democracy, and was therefore preserved, in the form of social darwinism.

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but either way, either of those philosophies cannot be equated with your proposed social darwinist view of the bronze age, which is still blatantly anachronistic.

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And I'm afraid you remain ignorantly mistaken and perversely resistant to being corrected. I have now demolished this argument on two fronts - you are flat out wrong to assert this.

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tell me, really, do you honestly think you're WINNING this debate just because you talk a big game? your points have ALL been disproven. granted, not thoroughly, a counterexample or two should suffice to make you think twice.

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Of course I am. You've been forced into a multiple-page defence of the fact that you cannot show the proof you claim exists. Your attempts to conflate modern and ancient social forms have been destroyed. Your temper tantrums and attempts to shift the burden of proof away from the claimant reveal the depth of your desperation. You don't have an argument, and you know it. What you have is an urban myth.

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but, no, you keep rambling on, even when your errors have been pointed out to you. you're being completely ridiculous here, and everyone sees it but you.

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And yet, you still can't provide any envidence of these "thousands" of myths that allegedly exist. All you are providing, still, is excuses. And I'm quite sure that everyone can see that.

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tell me, do you read what you post? cause that one looks really bad. you're quoting way out of context, and i mean WAY out of context. sure you're not a wacky creationist?

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Ha ha ha. I am not quoting out of context - I can demonstrate a position exists by citing its critics, as I pointed out.

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i gave you the reference.

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You gave me a "reference" to a wqork that does not contain what you say it contains. I'm asking you for your evidence - show me some. I am not your personal secretary and do not do your library lookups for you.

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sorry, i'm actually taking some classes myself right now, and i'm quite busy lately. although, i might find the opportunity to do some research soon, if i piggyback it onto the other research i have to do.

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So, like a hit and run poster, when hoist on yourt own petard you make a cheap excuse for your failure to back up your claim and withdraw. Yes, clearly, you MUST be winning this argument.

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yes, actually, it can. and i've explained the conditions under which it can be, and it matches my best timeframe for the authorship of genesis. not proven, but plausible and probable.

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No you have not, because you have failed to provide any supporting evidence whatsoever. Hospitality is not valid as a collective virtue.

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textual evidence indicates that it could not have been written by moses, and had to have been written later. which would put it out of the bronze age entirely. my date is about 600 bce, which would be the iron age. want some more proof that you don't know what you're talking about?

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Oh, yes please. Becuiase of course there is no mechanism to conclusively claim that this story does not have an oral exiostance prior to its being recorded. That in fact is probable. Further, as you acknowledge, this is only just inside the iron age boundary, and so most of the social conventions of iron age societies have yet to appear. And third, seeing as we are not talking about the primary social engines of change in the region at all, it is utterly unsurprising that these peoples are still operating as a bronze age polity even if in contact with some iron age ones.This much SHOULD be abundantly clear becuase you recently acknowledged the period of nomadism. Nomadism can occur in an iron age technology, but is still necessarily a herioc culture. And it is that heroic cutlure specifically that I cite, not bronze age technology. Next!

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i'm not saying that genesis represents the entire hebrew culture at the time -- quite the opposite. it's trying to stir dissent from the babylonian oppressors. and a good way to do that is to say "they're breaking the rules of hospitality" even such standards did not actually exist.

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Now you are directly contradicting yourself. If it were true that the authors were trying to construct a criticism, then they would necessarily have to have been explicit as to their criticism. Because otherwise, there would be no basis for expecting the audience to "get" the message they are trying to communicate - it would be an exercise in futility. And furthermore, the idea that this passage is a form of social criticism doirectloy contradicts your previous claim that this was one of a large number of hospitality myths - now you say its no a generic myth but a specific political criticism! Twist and turn.

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even if it's not the case specifically, it's very obvious to any educated person reading the book that genesis is something we'd call propaganda today.

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Its certainly normative and propagandist, but to assume it is ONLY proapgandist is unfair and IMO wrong; too much of it looks like an attempt to record a national history and identity, and of course quite large chunks of the general context of the bible have been archeologically verified. I don't think propaganda alone is an adequate explanation for the existance of the bible.

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why? it's JUST A STORY.

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Thats what they said about Troy.

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tell me, did they know how to work iron in the bronze age? {edit, to clarify:} not saying that tubalcain did in fact work iron, or even actually existed, just that knowledge of iron work existed at the time of the authorship or redaction of the text, indicating the text to be post-bronze age. like i said, the book is FULL of anachronisms.{/edit}

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That is in fact NOT an anachronism. Of course they knew how to work iron in the bronze age - the terms bronze, iron, and stone ages refer to *the dominant material*, not the only existing material. Iron mines go back to the stone age in certain specific cases, but real iron working as a widespread, common technology requires a great deal of subsequent development. Thus, referring to Tubal-cain working iron does not rule out the origin of the story in the bronze age at all.Its also worth mentiong that in terms of utility, iron is inferior to bronze. But iron is much cheaper to mass-produce than bronze; thats why it is only developed as a dominant material in societies with a certain degree of social complexity and density.

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you said that scholars said something. i just asked to see it. or, hell, i'll be fair. give me the title of the book, and i'll go look it up along with stith thompson. or would that still be arrogant?

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OK. Start with Bronze Age Economics by Timothy Earle, and Cattle Lords and Clansmen by Nerys Patterson. Neither of these are mythological works, obviously, but I can;t prove a negative. What these should do is provide some grounding in the political economy of bronze age societies, and the role of hospitality in those socities. I can make some recommendations for the mesopotamian middle east as well, but not off the cuff.

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plausibility has been adequately demonstrated in this thread. rrhain posted a similar myth. on the other hand, why should i take YOUR claims seriously? you claimed genesis to be a bronze age book, helen of troy the origin of the hellenes, and claimed there were no myths that punished inhospitality on the city level after one had been posted.

​

so far, you're batting 0. if i bet one baseball, i wouldn't place my money on you here.

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this is like arguing with a three year old - fingers in their ears and repetition is all they now. 1) Plausibility has not been demonstrated; 2) your reading of the greek myth is anachronistic; 3) there are no myths of cities punished for inhospitality, the very statement remains meaningless.

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i'm really fine with it being about homosexuality. i don't have a very high opinion of the book anyways, as you might have noticed. however, a whole city being homosexual? that seems even less likely than the hopsitality thing, for all the same reasons, doesn't it?

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Agreed - its totally implausible that a whole city would be homosexual. But as against that, some Mesopotamian cults were very sexually liberal, didn't seem to have too much of a problem with homosexuality, and exhibited religious prostitution. A patriarchal society like that of the hebrews may probably be threatened by a city that did not compel all men to copy the masculine archetype that justifies patriarchy. Thus, a "city of homosexuals" could be seen in much the way one might describe San Francisco, or parts of it, as a gay capital or city or similar.**
To destroy, to build up, to tear out and to settle are yours, Inanna
To turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man are yours, Inanna
**

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tell me, did bronze age cultures in the near east, especially the one that wrote the iron age book of genesis, consider homosexuality a corporation?

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Not at all. But in a society that exhibits a patron city god, as was common, all moral positions are legitimised by the city cult. So there is a track record, in the criticism of Babylon, for biblical authors holding the entire city culture accountable for those things which the city does endorse as "public" policy.But that said, IMO the story is so fragmented that it cannot be taken as a plasuible account of anything in particular. Thats why I'm pefectly happy with the idea that what the story is REALLY about is a natural disater - all the rest is just subsequent rationalisation, including allegations of sinfulness.

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now, is it the intimacy aspect, or the hospitality aspect, do you think?

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Neither is apparent. At no point does Lot protest that what the mob is doing is against the laws of hospitality, or anything else. What he does is try to negotiate and bribe. There is no support or mention of hospitality anywhere in the text.

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ike i said, it makes total sense as a babylon metaphor. it's trying to say that something a city in greater power is doing to foreigners in their land is incorrect.

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Maybe. But look, there is no culture of human rights or anything at all along those lines in the region. The code of Hammurabi was posted at the city gate precisely so that travellers, en route to the square, would be given due notice of the laws they were now under. Theres no real basis for claiming that the Israelites were pursuing a programme of social justice - indeed their own behaviour was precisely the opposite, to make war and massacres against and of other local rivals, and to rule their own territory by their own law. But I will allow that given the bibles discussion of the virtue of the poor, its possible this is a post facto rationalisation of whatever sin it "must" have been that caused the city to be wiped out.

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back to the question then: what is it?

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And as I have already told you, I do not know and do not like to speculate in the absence of evidence. And I have also pointed out that the authors may never even have had a specific sin in mind, if the story is primarily an account of a natural disaster. I do NOT have to propose an alternative to a weak proposition in order to attack it.This message has been edited by contracycle, 03-17-2005 06:04 AM

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yes. and that is the difference i was explaining.

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Then why did you claim the opposite?

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i'm flat out wrong to assert that social darwinism didn't exist in the bronze age?

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Yes, obviously so. You've just acknowledged that above by recognising the difference bnetween this and divine right.

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do you hear yourself? and which two front? the textual evidence you provided that clearly refutes your point? or the difference in philosophies of rich and poor, which also refutes your point?

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LOL, are you now reduced to the role of a biblical literalist, claiming if the bible doesn't mention it it couldn't possibly happen? Ha ha. Sigh. I've already shown you the echoes of this ideology in the bible...Actually you know at this point actually repeating the asrgument again is not going to help. You are clearly committed to this nonsense from some position, but mere logic is not going to detach you from it, it seems.

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proof has been given. you're arguing it's existance.

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No proof has been given at all. Where are the thousands of stories you claim exist? You cannot show them becuase they do not exist.

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stith thompson, "motif index of folk-literature..."

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Yes, thats right, repetition is going to make ALL the difference. Show us some specific examples of whole cities being levelled for inhospoitality. Can't, can you?

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so i can demonstrate that i'm right by quoting you? no, i don't think so. you DIDN'T demonstrate that social darwinism existed in the text. in jeremiah's case, he's using a rhetorical question.

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God, fish in a barrel should at least swim about a bit to make it challenging. Pay close attention now: if its a RHETORICAL qestion, then he knows his audience are already familiar with the situation he addresses, right? Right.

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and you're obviously not very interested in actually finding anything out, either. you just want to sit there secure in your knowlegde and think you're right.

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Thats nonsense - I have already told you that I have done my own search for hospitality myths and so forth, and all I found was people making this argument. Thats what makes me think it is an urban myth. And I am confident of my position because I have already used many myth archives on the net, and there should have been hits.This whole argument, as I pointed out at the beginning, is anachronistic in its context. Thats what attracted my attention. The fact that there is no suppoorting evidence for your position at all should set off some alarm bells, should it not?

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Now who's making claims that can't be supported? sure, it might have been an oral tradition long before it was written. in fact, it was probably written down long before its inclusion in genesis. but the fact of the matter is that genesis was LAST modified a lot more recently. we KNOW that because bits indicate a date post 900bc, probably closer to 600. if the stories existed beforehand, they were modified after this date.

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Ha ha - so what the hell does the LAST modification data have to do with the origin of the content. Last modified is last modified, not created. Thats totally irrelevant. Presuambly th8is is used as the earliest safe date that can be attributed to a text, but that does not rule out an earlier existance.

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this shows that you basically have zero knowledge of ancient literature studies. you have to date the book by it's last known modification. that's a basic, basic principle of the field.

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And? Have I ever claimed such expertise? No I have not. But then again - its not a textual criticism I'm advancing, I'm pointing out that it contradicts other elements of the regional culture. Perhaps you should broaden your expertise?

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BY SIX HUNDRED YEARS.

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Only tangentially relevant - Mesoamerica was a bronze age society till the 1500's. The Celts ha d aHeroic cutlure with highly developed ironwork. Study something, please.

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no, it just indicates that whoever wrote it down lived during the iron age, and an anachronism made it into the text.

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How do you know? Thats a completely invalid assumption - you DON'T know and whats more you should know you don't know. The middle east is amongst the earleist of metal-using regions; bronze refineries there produced the worlds first industrial landscape. It is very very possible indeed that it had early iron working. You are talking aout of your arse.

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changing your tune, i see. you said bronze age. shall i quote you?

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Yes, please do - you could do with the exercise in keepeing concepts in mind. I pointed out that this was a heroic culture, as is common for bronze age socities, and therefore hospitality cannot be a colective virtue. Appealing to nomadism only reinforces the case for the heroic culture further.

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also, you've been shown a group of people collectively punished for inhospitality in a heroic myth. next?

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No I have not - I have seen two individuals rewarded. As you well know. Why don't you support your argument with other examples? Oh yes - there aren't any. Oh dear.

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uh. no. it's called exploring alternatives. i'm trying some different ways of reading the story. nothing satisfies you, does it? whether or not it's a specific criticism, it still fits the general pattern of a hospitality myth. it just might be specifically criticizing a particular culture's treatement of foriegners. these two are not incompatible.

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Well, fine - if you want to explore alternatives, I'm happy to assist. But that does not appear to me to be what you are doing - you are asserting a case that is not in evidence. And as to whether anything at all fits a GENERAL pattern of a hospitality myth depends on there actually BEING a general pattern - which you have not shown and cannot show. And while it might be plausible to us to see a criticism of a cities treatement of foreigners, it is totally without precedent in the region - Pharoah, after all, is memorialised primarily for smiting foreigners and bringing them home in chains, and the city of Persepolis has huge carvings showing processions of defeated peoples. This proposition is a non-starter, I'm afraid.

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really now? like what? here's a challenge for you then. king david is one of biggest figures in the book. the first and most influential king of judah and israel united.

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show me his name on something archaeology has turned up. not "ben david" but KING david.

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No - the statement that quite large chunks of the bible have been verified does not imply you can request material evidence for every jot and tittle written in the bible anywhere. Don't be silly.

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yes, and guess what? the iliad is still just a story. it's a work of fiction, even if troy really existed and there really was a trojan war. was there a guy named achilles? how about helen? what about the horse? how many years did it last?

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Yes, and Saving Private Ryan was a work of fiction, but it would be a bit stupid to therefore conclude that there was no WW2, wouldn't it? Remember what the position is that you are attacking: it is that I can easily accomodate the existance of the story as being merely the record of an event, and this objection fails to challenge that position.

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likewise, sodom is just a story, even if there is a real place that bears similarity to it.

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Or perhaps, Sodom was a place, even if there was a story with the same name.

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on it's own, maybe you have a point. taken with the other anachronisms in the text, you do not. because the bronze age hebrew nomads had not domesticated camels, nore were the chaldeans in ur, nore were there kings in israel. the text was written post-bronze-age.

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So what? There are manifest discrepancies in the Iliad too, notable among which is that the Greeks who wrote it clearly did not understand how chariots were used by the people of Ilium. But the chariots are a necessary part of the story, and became great status symbols in the Hellenic world. So in fact this error serves to validate the story, because the story is clearly preserving elements from an oral past that are no longer clearly understood by the authors who wrote it down.

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that's nice and all, but as i've pointed out, we're not talking about the bronze age. we're talking about 600 years into the iron age. got an iron age book? i'll look that one up.

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Oh for gods sake - in fact Cattle Lords & Clansmen is about an iron age culture, because that is what the Celts were. In fact, they were famous for the quality of their ironwork, and probably invented chain mail. They were still a Heroic culture though, obviously enough.None the less this demonstrates that your request for references is wholly dishonest - you have no intention of doing any research, any more than you did before. And you are being very silly indeed about the bronze age, as if the people living then had any idea of this change. Thats nonsense, these terms are primarily archeological and simply cannot be treated as the hard cutoff you would like to employ. Get real.

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let's review the facts of the greek myth one more time.

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Seeing as you already know I dispute your interpretation, why don't you give me any other of the thousands of similar myths to exanine to reinforce your point? Oh yes, you have none.

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so if the city in that myth is not punished for inhospitality, and that's an anachronistic reading, what ARE they punished for?

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Greek gods are whimsical, not Just - there need not have been any specific thing. Thats why some alleged lesson would have been lost on a greek audience - all this story says is "it pays to curry favour with the powerful".

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sounds nice. now what's the difference with hospitality?

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Umm, there are no similarities at all.

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there's another problem, though. genesis is a book unlike any other in the bible. all of the other books are strictly monotheistic. genesis is henotheistic.

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Like bronze age mesopotamia, eh? Yes, I know.

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so, if this is a religious cult sex thing, why the condemnation that's so out of place with the rest of the book? it can't be a religious thing.

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Well thats quite possibly a subsequent introduction. But it was traditional to take the cult statues of the gods of defeated cities back to the conquoring city so they could be placed under the auspices of the victorious city's god. And this also means that rival claims to overlordship were always justified by appeals to the city god, and to the gods of soveriegnty. This hostility would be common in a military conflict.

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such as their treatement of outsiders.

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Sigh, back again around the circle. No, specifically NOT of outsiders, because outsiders are fair game to all the city-states. I mean, these are not even necessarily polities with a concept of territorial governance.

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that's just brushing the story off though. let's assume for the moment that it is in fact rationalizing a natural disaster. HOW is it rationalizing it? what does the story say? how did the people who wrote it view that disaster?

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One of the properties of Inanna is that she "covers the sides of mountains with fire". I suspect, reasonably enough, that this is the attribution of a volcanic eruption to Inanna. Similarly, the natural disaster that wiped out Sodom would have been incorporated as "obviously" a divine act, being so large and striking. This is then attributed to god in order to glorify that concept. The very absence of a clear criticism suggests that the authors might not have had any sin in mind, but deduced that there must have been some provocation to god unknown to them.

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you know the story is really interesting. you should read it sometime.

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LOL. So quite obviously, Lot is appealing to his status as a citizen with rights in his own home, NOT to universally binding laws of hospitality. Indeed, you SHOULD try reading it some time, and they materials I have suggested for research. I think you are going to struggle understanding how the Celts could use physical coercion for law enforcement without a government to exercise it.

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there's not an absence of evidence. i'm asking a reading comprehension question. you have the story, you have the context. now, what does it say?

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What it says is, god blew up this city for reasons unkown. Indeed, the very disjuncture between the first chapter discussing Lot in Sodom, and then the switch the dialogue with god about innocent people in the city, and then the the actual events in the city, might suggest that the dialogue bit is a later introduction, and the original version simply had the two bits with Lot in sequence. But thats speculation. What is clear is that the text does not make claims to hospitality, and does not specifically say why Sodom was sinful. On the basis of the bibles other content, giving the Israelites lip would have been enough to qualify.

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but the story is NOT an account of a natural disaster.
it's an account of a SUPERnatural disaster. it may have originally been an attempt to rationalize a real natural disaster, but that's not the way the story is written. it's written as: these people are bad, here's something bad they did, boom god kills them all. now, what bad did they do?

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I don't know, because the bible does not say. I've given you that answer multiple times now, and it is the only possible honest answer. There remains NO basis for your claim, however. As I have said, the original authors may not even have claimed to know - they may only have deduced the fact they MUST have been sinful from the "fact" that god destroyed them.

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yes. and troy was really in a war for 100 years, not ten. there was no trojan horse (as far as we can tell). no achilles, no hector, no proof of hellen either. it's a myth made up about a real place and a real war. kind of like hollywood and all it's assorted myths about real places (and even some real wars).

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Exactly my point - the story can neither be taken as literal truth, nor whole-cloth fiction. But, those who did dismiss Troy as purely fiction were indeed mistaken. IMO we too often forget that ancient peoples were just as smart as we are.