On the Eve of Destruction

The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah symbolize wickedness throughout the Bible. But I would bet if you asked most people what sin the Sodomites were guilty of, they would say “homosexuality”. After all, the tale of Sodom in Gen 19 is the origin for the term “sodomy”. However the Bible rarely spells out the great sin that made Sodom and Gomorrah so deserving of their destruction.

Prophets from Moses to Ezekiel used Sodom and Gomorrah as a cautionary tale for the fate that awaits their contemporaries if they continue their sinful ways. The prophets weren’t always very specific as to what kinds of sin though. Ezekiel (16:49-50) is one of the few to identify the sins of arrogance and lack of charity. The gospels (Matt 10:9-15; Lk 10:8-12) suggest lack of hospitality was the primary sin.

Chapter 19 of Genesis breaks down into three parts: (1) the reception of the two messengers by Lot and the people of Sodom (vv. 1-11), (2) the rescue of Lot’s family and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (vv. 12-29), and (3) Lot and his daughters (vv. 30-38).

A Tale of Two Cities

Only the first unit provides an example of why the citizens of Sodom were considered the epitome of wickedness. Two messengers (usually translated as “angels”) arrive and are greeted with hospitality by Lot. After sunset the locals surround the house and demand Lot release the strangers so they can be gang-raped. Lot offers the mob his virgin daughters as a substitute and is rejected. Before Lot’s house is stormed, the messengers strike the crowd blind and thus ends the unit.

A modern reader must wonder if the Bible truly considered Lot the only righteous man in Sodom. Knowing that the law of hospitality requires a host to put his guests before his own self-interest explains things somewhat but the thought that a father could treat his daughters as pieces of property offends our conscience.

The narrative sounds suspiciously similar to that found in Judges 19 (especially vv. 16-26). A certain Levite from the hill country of Ephraim had an argument with his concubine, who then ran away to her father in Bethlehem. After sweet-talking his wife into returning with him, the Levite and concubine are on their way home when they stop at Gibeah and plan to spend the night in the town square.

An old man returning from his work in the fields chats them up and, like the Levite, he is originally from Ephraim. He won’t hear of the visitors spending the night in the town square and invites them to his home. The men of the city surround the house, asking for the Levite in order to gang-rape him. The old man offers both his virgin daughter and the Levite’s concubine and the townsfolk reject the offer.

So far, this is almost exactly like Lot’s story. But there are no angels here. The Levite grabs his concubine and tosses her outside where the men of Gibeah proceed to rape and abuse her all night long. She collapses at the threshold to the old man’s house.

In the morning, the Levite leaves the house and almost trips on his concubine lying on the threshold. He puts her on his donkey and sets out for home. Upon his arrival he chops up her body into twelve pieces and sends them out via servants to the twelve tribes of Israel as a call to battle. (Saul later does the same with a yoke of oxen in 1 Sam 11:7.)

Scripture scholars believe the Gibeah story was patterned on the Sodom narrative. References to Bethlehem (home of David) and Gibeah (home of Saul) and logical inconsistencies in the narrative strongly suggest the incident was created or exaggerated as anti-Saul polemic.

Comparing the tales of Sodom and Gibeah, the great sin in both cases is an unbelievable violation of the law of hospitality. The purpose of hospitality as practiced in the ANE is to take a potential threat posed by a stranger and at least temporarily neutralize that threat. In neither case did a citizen of the town offer hospitality, but it fell to a resident alien (Lot and the old man from Ephraim) even if it wasn’t his place to do so. Outraged that a resident alien is harboring other aliens, the town’s citizens demand the newcomer in order to assert their dominance.

The sexual orientation of its citizens was no more the great sin of Sodom than it was the great sin of Gibeah. No one would argue that what the mob did to the Levite’s concubine was consensual. It was rape. Rape is about power and control over another person, not sex.

Rescue and Destruction

The story moves along quite briskly now. The messengers inform Lot that the city will be destroyed and tell him to leave with his family. Lot’s virgin daughters were apparently betrothed, meaning they were married but had not yet come to live with their husbands. Lot goes to the houses of his sons-in-law but is unable to convince them of the danger.

As daybreak approaches, the messengers tell Lot to leave with his wife and daughters but Lot dawdles. The messengers grab Lot and his family by the hand and lead them outside the city. They are told, “Head for the hills!” but Lot doesn’t think he’ll make it in time. He asks the messengers if he can take refuge in a small town nearby and is informed the town will be spared.

Once Lot and his family arrive at the little town of Zoar (= “little” in Hebrew), fire and brimstone rain down on Sodom and Gomorrah and the rest of the plain of Jordan. Unfortunately, Lot’s wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt. Both the Zoar diversion and the fate of Mrs. Lot appear to be etiological tales, one explaining how the town of Zoar got its name the other providing a folkloric origin story to the weird salt formations that appear in the area around the Dead Sea.

The Last Man on Earth

Lot was afraid to stay in Zoar (maybe the locals considered him a jinx?) so he and his daughters finally head for the hills and settle in a cave. His daughters despair of finding a man, so they take turns getting their father drunk so he can impregnate them. Their sons will become the ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites.

Lot and his Daughters (Pieter Jozef Verhaghen, before 1811). The tableau of Lot seduced by his two nubile daughters has inspired artists for centuries, if for nothing else than it gave them an excuse to paint nudes. This is one of the tamer selections.

The purpose of the tale is apparently to provide a disreputable origin story for rival nations to the Israelites. As it currently stands, though, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Even if Zoar wasn’t an option, Lot certainly could have found a better dwelling than a cave. Maybe Abraham would have helped him out. And why would Lot’s daughters have given up on the idea of finding new husbands?

But if the Zoar origin story was interpolated into the Sodom destruction narrative, it makes more sense. Recall the messengers had told Lot to take his family and flee to the hills. Maybe they did so in the original version of the tale and sought shelter in a cave. That would explain why, seeing the wholesale destruction of the entire plain before them, Lot’s daughters thought their father might be the last man on earth. The story of a patriarch getting drunk and naked after a major disaster resonates with that of Noah after the flood.

The necessity to get Lot drunk on consecutive nights implies that Lot would not have otherwise consented to his daughters’ plan. Therefore, the sex was not consensual for Lot. In other words, his daughters raped him. Perhaps his daughters were getting revenge on their father for offering to hand them over to be raped by the mob outside his door in Sodom.

Lot would have done well to follow the Jewish version of the Golden Rule: “Whatever is hateful and distasteful to you, do not do to your fellow man.”

Stop Me If You've Heard This Before

The Bible is repetitious at times, replaying themes, scenes, and sometimes entire sentences. For example, chapter 17 of Genesis repeats themes found elsewhere in Genesis, both in previous chapters and in chapters yet to come:

• Promises of land and numerous descendants are also made in chapters 13 and 15.
• A covenant between God and Abraham is also established in Gen 15.
• Isaac’s birth is also announced in Gen 18.
• References to laughter also appear in Gen 18 and 20.
• The renaming of Abram and Sarai is similar to renaming Jacob to Israel (Gen 32:29 and 35:10).
• El Shaddai is another name for God to go along with El Elyon (14:18-20) and El Roi (16:13).

The only originality is the establishment of circumcision as a sign of the covenant.

P Source and Exilic Themes

Gen 17 is clearly from the P source and combines the annunciation of Isaac’s birth with the establishment of circumcision as a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham’s descendants.

Scholars date the compilation of the P source to the time of the Babylonian exile, after the fall of Jerusalem. This is a time when the former inhabitants of Judah have lost their land and their temple. They face the possibility that they will also lose their identity as a people. A reminder that the land was given to Abraham and his descendants as part of an everlasting covenant would be assurance they would once again return to their home. That God had also promised Abraham his descendants would be made into a great nation would comfort those who feared that God had abandoned them.

In Gen 15, the covenant was established in a ceremony similar to one known in the last days of Judah, before the fall of Jerusalem. In Gen 17, circumcision was established as the sign of the covenant between God and Abraham’s descendants. Circumcision wasn’t unique to Israel; it was a common practice in the ANE (for example, Egyptians were circumcised). Only during the Babylonian captivity when the exiles came in contact with those who did not practice circumcision did it separate Israel from the other nations. The goal of the Priestly author in this chapter is to ground circumcision in the covenant made with Abraham, turning it into a sign that one belonged to YHWH.

Not an actual photograph of Abraham laughing when he hears that he will father a son at age 100. 

Who’s Laughing Now?

In both Gen 17 and 18, Abraham is told that Sarah will give birth to a son within a year’s time. Sarah is surprised to hear that she will give birth in Gen 18. Since Abraham was told the exact same thing in Gen 17, the only way she could be surprised is if Abraham never shared with her the revelation he was given. This is a good clue that these annunciations come from separate sources. Gen 18 is usually attributed to the J source.

The announcement that an elderly Sarah will bear a child in a year’s time causes a humorous reaction in both sources. In Gen 17:17, it is Abraham who fell on his face and laughed. In Gen 18:12, it is Sarah who laughed to herself. After the birth of Isaac in Gen 21, Sarah says that everyone will now laugh with her.

The Hebrew Bible loves puns and wordplay. Unfortunately, that is mostly lost in translation. In English translations, the name of Abraham’s son appears as Isaac, but the Hebrew is Yitzchak. The name derives from the verb tzachak meaning “to laugh”. The name Yitzchak, therefore, means “he laughs”.

English readers could get a better sense of the wordplay if we translate it as “chuckles”:

Then Abraham fell on his face and chuckled, and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” … God said, “No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Chuckles. (Gen 17:17-19*) 

Abraham gave the name Chuckles to his son whom Sarah bore him … Now Sarah said, “God has brought chuckles for me; everyone who hears will chuckle with me.” (Gen 21:3-6*)

But we also see a pun on Isaac’s name. Yitzchak sounds very much like metzchak (= playing). It could be “playing” as in the activities of children or “playing” as in the sexual foreplay of adults. We see both examples of that.

In Gen 21:9 Sarah is angry when she sees the older Ishmael playing with her son Isaac. In Gen 26:8, King Abimelech of the Philistines knows that Isaac lied to him when he looks out his window and sees Isaac playing with Rebekah.

The Death of Innocents

There is also a parallelism between the visit of Abraham’s three guests in Gen 18:1-15 and Lot’s two guests in Gen 19:1-3, 12-13. After being served refreshments, Abraham’s three guests give him the good news that he and Sarah will have a child together while Lot’s two visitors bring him the bad news that his city of Sodom is about to be destroyed.

One of Abraham’s visitors – revealed to be YHWH – also informs Abraham of the fate of Sodom. The passage that follows (Gen 18:17-33) is usually summarized as “Abraham intervenes on behalf of Sodom” or “Abraham bargains for Sodom”. But that’s not quite right. Abraham doesn’t try to talk YHWH out of destroying Sodom, nor does he try to haggle down the number of people to be exterminated.

Instead, what Abraham does is clarify what YHWY’s justice means. YHWH confirms that if there are only ten just people in Sodom he will not destroy the city for the sake of those ten. YHWH’s justice demands that he not wipe out the good with the wicked.

YHWH’s justice here seems out of place with the rest of the OT. Certainly there were some innocent Egyptians who didn’t deserve to have their firstborn killed. And it is hard to believe that all Canaanites were wicked and thus deserving of extermination by Joshua’s armies. For much of the OT, YHWH seems unconcerned about collateral damage.

Many biblical commentators think this passage shows theological development more suited to the exilic period. Ezek 14:12-20 (dating to the Babylonian captivity) is very similar to this passage. If YHWH decides to destroy a land due to its wickedness and Noah, Daniel, and Job lived there, the destruction would still be carried out, but the three righteous men would be saved. Perhaps the experience of living through a catastrophe brought about some reflection on the question of whether it is truly just for the good to suffer alongside the bad.

In closing, I’m reminded of a Facebook conversation one of my friends had with his right-wing brother-in-law this past week. In the brother-in-law’s opinion, the United States would be entirely justified in leveling Tehran to end terrorism. My friend pointed out Tehran’s population is close to nine million and there must surely be innocents among them. The brother-in-law’s response was, “The first rule of war is innocents die.”

When my friend showed me this, my comment was that while it is an unfortunate fact that in war innocents do die, it should not be a goal. The same applies to God. “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen 18:25)

Abram Shot First

Every true Star Wars fan knows Han shot first. In the original 1977 Star Wars film, Han Solo is confronted by the alien bounty hunter Greedo in the Mos Eisley cantina. Before Greedo can bring him to Jabba the Hutt, Han sneakily guns down Greedo. The scene cemented Han’s image as a bad boy.

Director George Lucas was unsatisfied with the scene because Han is a hero, not a cold-blooded killer. Lucas wanted to show Han only shot in self-defense, so in the 1997 Special Edition release, he tinkered with the scene to show Greedo firing first (and missing from four feet away). This angered fans who felt it both weakened Solo’s character and turned Greedo into the galaxy’s most incompetent bounty hunter. The DVD version, therefore, shows them firing almost simultaneously.

And now with the launching of the Disney+ streaming service, we get yet another version of the scene. In this one, Greedo says something that sounds like “maclunkey” before he and Solo exchange fire. Apparently, this is supposed to be a threat in Greedo’s language along the lines of “I’ll get you.”

Greedo confronts Han Solo in the Mos Eisley cantina on Tatooine (scene from Star Wars, 1977)

What does this Star Wars minutia have to do with the Bible? Chapter 14 of Genesis is the biblical version of the Han/Greedo scene that has been undergone many alterations.

The Maclunkey Version

Genesis 14 reads like nothing that comes before it (or after it) in Genesis. Describing a battle, it starts off with a mind-numbing list of kings and cities. It is reminiscent of the sort of narratives you find in the Second Book of Kings (for example, 2 Kings 24:1-2). When the passage finally gets around to Abram in v. 13, he is called “Abram the Hebrew”, unique in Genesis. In gathering 300 men to fight off a much larger army, Abram acts more like one of the Judges (Gideon, for example) than he does a patriarch.

Gen 14 has frequently been referred to as a “puzzle” or “enigma”. Biblical scholars have been unable to attribute the chapter to any of the usual sources like J or P. Older scholarship thought that maybe it could be an independent account that found its way into the Bible. If we knew who the various kings of Shinar, Ellasar, and Elam were, we could determine the approximate date when such a battle could have taken place. Unfortunately, historians have been unable to identify the characters of Amraphel, Arioch, and Chedorlaomer. The names given for the kings of Sodom (Bera = “in wickedness”) and Gomorrah (Birsha = “in evil”) seem a little too on-the-nose to be historical (sort of like naming a bounty hunter “Greedo”).

The story breaks down into two distinct pieces. First, there is the battle account in vv. 1-12. The kings of four regions in the East wage war against the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, and the other cities of the Jordan Plain. The battle ends badly as the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fall into asphalt pits along the Dead Sea and the enemy takes all their goods, as well as Abram’s nephew Lot and other hostages.

The second part of the narrative (vv. 13-24) recounts how Abram and his Amorite allies lead a rescue mission, defeat the foreign kings, and return the goods and people to the king of Sodom. But, before reaching the conclusion of the rescue story, King Melchizedek of Salem pops up out of nowhere (vv. 18-20), bearing bread and wine and offering a blessing. In return, Abram gives him 10% of the recovered plunder. Returning everything else to the king of Sodom, Abram refuses to take as much as a shoe-string.

The Original Release

A closer reading highlights various oddities besides the mysterious appearance of Melchizedek. Although the foreign kings made war against the five kings of the Plain, only the goods from Sodom and Gomorrah were carried away and Abram only returns the goods (and hostages) to the king of Sodom. Who, by the way, was last mentioned as having fallen into an asphalt pit. Although the king of Sodom allows Abram to keep the recovered plunder, Abram almost ostentatiously declines the offer.

We seem to have here a narrative that has been rewritten multiple times. Based on clues found on a close reading [1], the original story probably went something like this: 

The kings of Admah, Zeboiim, and Bela made war with the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. The kings of Sodom and Gomorrah went out and joined battle with them in the Valley of Siddim. Now the Valley of Siddim was full of bitumen pits; and as the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, they fell into them. So the enemy took all the property of Sodom and Gomorrah and went their way. They took Lot and all his property and went their way.
 When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he mustered the slaves born in his house and went in pursuit as far as Dan. And he divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and routed them. And he brought back all the property, and also his relative Lot and his property he brought back.

In this reconstructed telling of the original story, Abram the warrior chieftan rescues Lot and enriches himself in the process. In Gen 13, we are left thinking that Lot got the better part of his separation from Abram, only now to find Abram in possession of Sodom’s property through right of conquest.

The Special Editions

Apparently the thought that Abram profited from notoriously sinful people like the Sodomites bothered the early story-tellers. In version 2.0 of the story, the king of Sodom is reclaimed from the asphalt pits to meet Abram at the Valley of Shaveh. The king tells Abram to hand over his people but keep the property; Abram refuses the offer. Much as a politician needs to return a campaign contribution made by an unsavory donor, Abram needs to demonstrate that he cannot be bought; his allegiance is to YHWH alone.

In yet a third re-writing, kings from nations in the East are added as the antagonists and the original enemy, the small-fry kings of neighboring cities, became allies of the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. Before meeting the combined armies of five cities, the foreign kings first must defeat both mythological and historical inhabitants of regions to the east and south of Canaan. These are the same nations defeated by Moses and the Israelites on their way to the promised land (Deut 2:8-25). With a much more powerful army to defeat, Abram is given Amorite allies, and the hero warrior is recast as the leader of a military coalition. Defeating world-class armies means that Abram’s role is elevated to be on par with these other sovereigns.

The final layer is the introduction of the verses (18-20) referring to Melchizedek. The character of Melchizedek (= “my king is righteousness”) has intrigued many theologians. For Christians, as both king and priest he is frequently seen as a forerunner of Christ (Heb 7), his gifts of bread and wine a precursor to the Eucharist.

Melchizedek from the city of Salem is supposed to represent the post-exilic priesthood of Jerusalem and the importance of paying tithes. The priestly origin of the insertion is evidenced by Abram’s blessing coming through the priestly mediation of Melchizedek instead of directly from YHWH as in the rest of Genesis. If a goal of version 2.0 was to demonstrate that Abram owes his allegiance only to YHWH, the goal of version 4.0 was to show through his tithing that even Abram acknowledges the authority of the priesthood.

To me, peeling away the various layers of rewriting explains inconsistencies and contradictions in the final version of the Gen 14 narrative. You see how each re-edited version tried to redirect the meaning of the previous layer. It allows you to see and understand the original and intermediate levels in a way that is not possible if you only study the canonical narrative as it appears in the Bible. It enriches my understanding of the passage.

[1] Christoph Berner, “Abraham amidst Kings, Coalitions and Military Campaigns” in The Reception of Biblical War Legislation in Narrative Contexts (BZAW 460, Berlin/Boston, 2015), pp. 23-60.

Split Decision

Originally I wasn’t planning on discussing chapter 13 of Genesis because it didn’t seem that significant. To briefly recount the passage, disagreements arise between herdsmen for Abram and those for his nephew Lot. Abram proposes that they separate from one another and offers Lot first choice. Lot chooses the well-watered Jordan valley and they part amicably.

My initial impression was that the episode merely serves to explain how Abram’s nephew found himself in the city of Sodom; this point is key to Abram’s rescue of Lot in the following chapter. The passage has been sermonized as contrasting the generosity of Abram vs. the selfishness of Lot or as an example in conflict resolution. But a closer reading of the text indicates that this is a critical moment in Abram’s life.

A Little About Lot

We first encounter Lot in the genealogy of Terah in Gen 11:27-32 where Lot is mentioned as the son of Haran, who then dies. When Terah leaves Ur, he takes his son Abram and his orphaned grandson Lot with him and they settle in Haran. Abram later leaves Haran for Canaan and brings his nephew Lot along (12:4-5). We don’t hear of Lot again until he is mentioned going up from Egypt with Abram to the Negeb (desert region in southern Canaan) in 13:1.

The implication from all this is that Abram has adopted Lot as his heir. After all, we were told early on in 11:30 that Abram’s wife, Sarai, is barren. YHWH also told Abram in 12:2 that he would become a blessing and that the land of Canaan would be given to his descendants (12:7). Not having any children of his own, Abram must have assumed that his descendants would be through Lot, unless by some chance Sarai was to conceive or Abram took another wife.

This has two important implications. First, Abram’s welfare was key to fulfilling the promise. As long as he was alive, he could still father a child (through Sarai or someone else). Second, Lot was his backup plan. If something were to happen to Abram or he could not father a child of his own, as his heir Lot would inherit the land of Canaan and fulfil the promise of being a great nation.

From this perspective, Sarai’s welfare was secondary. Knowing this helps us understand Abram’s motivations in Egypt in passing off Sarai as his sister in 12:10-20. In order to fulfill the promise, Abram needed to preserve his own life at all costs. If that meant selling off Sarai to Pharaoh, then so be it. Little did Abram realize at the time that Sarai was absolutely necessary to the promise. His mistaken actions actually put the promise at risk and YHWH had to bail him out by causing a plague in Egypt that led to Pharaoh expelling Abram and his people.

Choice of Lot

Gen 13 literally returns Abram to where he was before his excursion into Egypt. In 12:8 he pitched his tent in the hill country between Bethel and Ai and then travelled by stages – presumably following the flocks as they grazed – down to the Negeb. When famine hit the region, Abram continue moving on to Egypt. In 13:1-3 this migration is reversed. Abram went up from Egypt to the Negeb and then travelled by stages back to “the place between Bethel and Ai where his tent had formerly stood.”

Lot makes his choice (artist unknown)

By this point, the flocks and herds owned by Abram and Lot were too numerous for the land to support and quarrels developed. Instead of remaining together and over-grazing the land, Abram proposes they go their separate ways and thereby utilize the resources of the entire land. As the elder, Abram could have selected the best portion for himself, but instead he allows Lot to choose and Abram will take what remains. Lot chooses the well-watered plain of Jordan and sets out eastward, leaving Abram to settle in the land of Canaan.

As mentioned above, I never saw this passage as all that significant. But biblical scholar Larry Helyer has studied the passage in detail and sees implications in Lot’s choice for his status as Abram’s heir.

Helyer [1] points out that Bethel sits atop the ridge of hills that runs through central Canaan. It also sat between the northern pasturage centered around Shechem and the southern pasturage centered around Hebron and Beesheba. The stories in the Jacob cycle are located on the northern pasturage and those in the Abraham cycle are mostly associated with places set in the southern pasturage.

According to Helyer, Abram is presenting Lot with a choice of northern or southern pasturage. You can visualize the two of them standing on the ridge overlooking the land with Abram saying, “If you prefer the left, I’ll go to the right; if you prefer the right, I’ll go to the left.” If they are facing west, the “left” is the southern pasturage and the “right” is the northern pasturage.

Abram provides a binary choice that would keep the land “in the family”, but Lot thinks outside the box. Lot looks behind them and sees how well-watered is the whole “kikkar of the Jordan”. Usually translated as “plain of the Jordan,” kikkar means something round and flat. It could be referring to a circular oasis, a flat plain, or an area bounded by a loop of the Jordan. Whatever the “Jordan Disk” was, it must have been a sight to behold. The narrator compares it favorably to both YHWH’s garden in Eden and Egypt.

Legal Separation

Lot leaves Abram and heads east, finally pitching his tents near Sodom, one of the cities of the Jordan Disk. The narrator does some foreshadowing here of events in Gen 19, informing us that YHWH has yet to destroy Sodom and the other cities of the Disk because of their great wickedness. The reader would be left to wonder what will befall Lot when his new home is destroyed, but Abram would be unsettled for a completely different reason.

From Abram’s perspective, Lot’s choice meant his heir would be leaving the promised land of Canaan. The Jordan River marks the eastern boundary of Canaan. By choosing to live among the cities of the Disk, on the eastern bank of the Jordan (the Transjordan), Lot has removed himself outside the boundaries of Canaan; he will no longer have a share in the promised land. He won't be inheriting the family business.

YHWH tries to cheer up Abram by confirming (13:14-17) that all the land he can see will indeed be given to his descendants. But the problem still remains that Abram has no descendants of his own. That particular plotline is still unresolved and will continue to work its way through the rest of Abraham’s story.

[1] “Abraham’s Eight Crises,” Bible Review, Vol. 11, No. 5 (October 1995), pp. 20-27, 44.

...Requires Explosive Evidence

In part one of this article I examined a claim that the biblical city of Sodom had been destroyed by an exploding meteor. Part one mostly reviewed the surprisingly negative response from biblical literalists. In part two, I would like to survey the physical evidence presented to support the explosive claim.

Explosive Evidence

The claim was put forward in a paper presented at the 2018 annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR). The paper’s authors were a team composed of excavators at the Tall el-Hammam site along with researchers from the Comet Research Group. The physical evidence presented in the paper was collected from the dig at Tall el-Hammam, claimed to be the site of biblical Sodom.

Tall el-Hammam. A "tall" or "tell" is is an artificial hill created by many generations of people living and rebuilding on the same spot.(Credit: Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East)

The paper presented at ASOR begins by noting that many archaeological sites in the Jordan plain north of the Dead Sea were abandoned in the Middle Bronze period (2000-1500 BCE) and remained unoccupied for centuries. The authors propose an exploding meteor as the explanation for the sudden end of the Middle Bronze Age civilization in that region.

Four main pieces of physical evidence were put forward:

1. Concussive evidence: Only stone foundations remain; the mudbrick superstructures are mostly missing. Very few intact pieces of pottery were found.
2. Directional evidence: Where tumbled mudbrick walls were found, they were northeast of the stone foundations. Pottery fragments were scattered in a northeasterly direction.
3. Chemical evidence: A salt and sulphate content of 6% in the ash layer marking the city’s destruction in the Middle Bronze Age. The chemical composition of the salts is virtually identical to that of Dead Sea water.
4. Thermal evidence: A small portion of pottery sherds are partially melted (“vitrified”) on the surface, indicating an exposure to temperatures between 8000° C and 12,000° C for less than a few milliseconds. A “melt rock” composed of melted and fused quartz and sandstone was found at another site 8.5 km away.

On my first read, I found this all very interesting but not completely convincing. I consider myself an educated reader but certainly no expert on Middle Bronze excavations. I did some Internet searches to see what experts had to say. The vast majority of articles were breathless announcements of the findings like those mentioned in my previous article. The only negative opinions were outright rejections (“this is pseudoscience”) with no assessment of the physical evidence.

Examining the Evidence

Barring analysis from an expert, I can only share my own thoughts.

Inhabited mudbrick structures need constant upkeep and will quickly deteriorate once they are abandoned. After all, the bricks are just dried mud. Only mudbricks that have been buried since their last use and thus protected from the elements will be uncovered on an archaeological dig. Archaeologists rely on stone foundations to tell them where mudbrick walls once existed. Therefore, an absence of mudbrick structures at Hammam is not at all unusual.

Similarly, unbroken pottery is more the exception than the rule at a dig. Only in an undisturbed burial context should you reasonably expect to find intact pots.

With respect to the directionality of the found remains for mudbrick and pottery fragments, maybe that had something to do with the prevailing wind direction for the area in ancient times. A steady wind off the Dead Sea could have blown debris material towards the northeast. Blown debris covering fallen mud bricks in the northeastern sections of the site would have preserved them from eroding away.

Wind blowing off the Dead Sea may have also had something to do with the concentration of salt and sulphates. These were found in the ash layer marking the end of the site’s Middle Bronze occupation. The site was unoccupied for six or seven centuries until the Iron Age. Core samples indicate that during the Middle Bronze the water level of the Dead Sea had fallen and the south basin was entirely dried up until around 1500 BCE. Over that time, salts blown off a desiccated Dead Sea could have accumulated in high concentrations just offshore.

Vitrified potsherd. Only the top 1mm of the 5mm-thick sherd was melted to glass. The next 2mm of clay was darkened and the bottom 2mm are the natural color. (Photo from paper discussed in this article.)

The vitrified potsherds seem like the strongest pieces of evidence for something unusual. Middle Bronze pots were fired at low temperatures of around 800° C.  They may not have had the technology to fire a pot hot enough to glaze it. But maybe they did. Had there been a flash thermal event of 8000° to 12,000° C, it seems to me that much more than just a few pieces of vitrified pottery would have been found. Sand anywhere in the vicinity should also have been turned the glass. Lightning is known to vitrify sand, soil, and rocks into fulgurite, so imagine what a thermal event such as what was proposed would have done.

The “melt rock” was a surface-level find, so who knows where and when it came from.

The paper goes on to identifier several typical markers of an airburst event. I’m not convinced that an aerial burst would generate those kinds of markers, but the point is moot because the authors go on to  admit that preliminary analysis reveals some of these markers at the Hammam site, “but not at compelling levels.” If it’s not compelling to them, it’s certainly ain’t compelling to me.

Evidence Demands a Verdict

One thing not mentioned by the article involves the conditions at other sites in the area. The Bible states that Sodom was only one of the “cities of the plain”. In addition to Sodom, there’s the well-known sister site of Gomorrah and the less-known cities of Admah and Zeboiim. Being the largest ruin in the area, Tall el-Hammam is supposedly the main city of Sodom and the neighboring Tall Kafrayn is assumed to be Gomorrah. Tall Nimrin is proposed as Admah and other sites for Zeboiim.

If a meteoritic airburst took out Sodom, it would have affected the neighboring cities as well. I reviewed the papers from the teams excavating Tall Kafrayn and Tall Nimrin and nothing out of the ordinary was mentioned there. Maybe I missed it. Or maybe the teams exploring those sites failed to spot salt haze and vitrified potsherds.

Where does this leave us? The physical evidence proposed for a meteoritic airburst hardly seems conclusive. There are simpler alternate explanations that come to my mind. I would think that an expert in the field would be able to suggest more likely explanations than what I was able to come up with. We would also need to see evidence from other sites in the Jordan plain, not just Tall el-Hammam.

I am sympathetic to the airburst theory. A major catastrophe like that would be remembered for centuries and handed down in legends. It would be cool if it were true. But based on the physical evidence presented, I have to conclude that it is not. Or at best, not proven.

Tall el-Hammam may have been the biblical city once known as Sodom, but that doesn’t mean it was destroyed by an exploding meteor.

Explosive Claims...

I don’t think anyone can accuse me of not keeping up with current events, but even a veteran news reader like me missed the reports that came out about a year ago from a team of researchers from Trinity Southwest University, an unaccredited theological school and Bible college in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Since 2005 they have been digging at the Tall el-Hammam site a few miles north of the Dead Sea in Jordan.

The Trinity Southwest team began digging there because they thought it might be the biblical city of Sodom. And then they began looking for evidence that it had been destroyed in some sort of fiery cataclysm to confirm their hypothesis. Because, short of finding a “Sodom City Limits” sign, how else can you conclusively prove you actually found the biblical city of Sodom?

Kaboom Town

The archaeologists from TSU say they found what they were looking for: widespread destruction over a 200 square-mile area north of the Dead Sea that left the region uninhabitable for six centuries. The researchers theorized the destruction was caused by shock waves of heat and pressure from a meteoritic airburst. Not only did the airburst kill everyone in the immediate vicinity, but a tsunami of superheated brine from the Dead Sea poisoned what had previously been a fertile area.

Artwork for a scene from a Christian movie called "God's Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah" by a group called Eastern Lightning (https://en.easternlightning.org/videos/destruction-of-sodom-and-gomorrah.html)

While extraordinary, these are not outlandish claims. Meteoritic airbursts do happen. The Tunguska event of 1908 is perhaps the most well-known. That event had an explosive force of 10-15 megatons and flattened trees over an 825 square-mile area in a forest in Siberia. More recently is the Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded with a force of 400-500 kilotons over the southern Ural region of Russian in February 2013. 1200 people were injured, mostly from glass shattered by the pressure wave. It would have been much worse if the meteor had entered the atmosphere at a steeper angle; the main force of the blast would then have been directed towards the ground.

Dashcam footage of the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion.

The TSU researchers date the destruction of their site to ca. 1700 BCE, the Middle Bronze II period. They claim this is the time of Abraham. Many biblical scholars doubt there was a historical Abraham, but those who believe there are historical memories in the patriarchal narratives (Gen 12-50) would date them to the early 2^nd millennium. A meteoritic explosion causing the destruction of several Middle Bronze communities and the wasting of the surrounding lands could have been memorialized as a story of God bringing down his wrath on a wicked populace much as television preachers are quick to blame the sins of the victims of especially destructive hurricanes or earthquakes.

As you can imagine, the combination of the words “Sodom” and “meteor” is catnip to the media and the period of late Nov/early Dec 2018 saw titles in online articles such as:

“New Science Suggests Biblical City of Sodom was Smote by an Exploding Meteor”

“Biblical Sin City of Sodom Destroyed by Giant Meteor says Archaeologist”

“Scientists Find Evidence of Meteorite Responsible for Destroying Sodom and Gomorrah”

Fundamental Disagreement

You would think that such a confirmation of the Bible would make fundamentalists very happy. You would be wrong.

Some biblical literalists take a nihilistic approach. The Bible says God utterly destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Since they were utterly destroyed, there would be no ruins left to dig up. Alrighty.

Other literalists object to the time. According to them, the figures provided in the Bible date the overthrow of Sodom to 2067 BCE. If Tall el-Hammam was Sodom as the researchers from TSU claim, then its destruction ca. 1700 BCE doesn’t leave enough time for a 430-year sojourn in Egypt by the Hebrews before the exodus in 1446 BCE.

Dr. Steven Collins, the co-director of the dig at Tall el-Hammam, has been vociferous in his promotion and defense of the Hammam site as ancient Sodom. As an evangelical, he believes in the inspiration and authority of the Bible, but he does not take the patriarchal lifespans literally. For example, when the Bible says Abraham died at the age of 175, he says that number may reflect an actual age of 55 years plus three “honorific” supplements of 40 years. Otherwise, if 175 is taken literally as Abraham’s age, he would still be alive when his grandson Jacob was a teenager.

A final objection from literalists is to the place. They insist Sodom was south of the Dead Sea, not north of it. They reference Gen 14:3 placing Sodom in the “Valley of Siddim, which is the Salt Sea”. Dr. Collins argues that Gen 14 is describing the location of a battle, not the location of Sodom. He also points out that the “Southern Sodom Theorists” ignore Gen 13:10-12 which places Sodom in the “plain of Jordan” and that can only be north of the Dead Sea since the Jordan terminates in the Dead Sea.

The Better Argument

Examining both the Northern Sodom and Southern Sodom arguments, I would say that Dr. Collins makes the better case for a Northern Sodom. A destruction date of ca. 1700 BCE poses no difficulties for anyone who doesn’t take biblical chronology literally. The core reason for arguing for a Southern Sodom site like Bab edh-Dra appears to be that it gives you a destruction date of 2350 BCE (Early Bronze) which is a closer fit (but still not exact) to the Bible-generated date of 2067 BCE.

Dr. Collins does not believe in evolutionary theory or that the OT was composed from multiple sources. He can’t make the argument that the Bible is not always consistent. Any references to Sodom being south of the Dead Sea have to be argued away.

As someone who accepts a critical understanding of the Bible’s development, I can accept that the location of Sodom – assuming it actually existed – could have been misremembered, showing up north of the Dead Sea in some traditions and south of the Dead Sea in other traditions. It’s not a big deal to me either way.

My main interest is what evidence has been found for an aerial burst in the Dead Sea area. Ascribing the destruction of Sodom to a meteoritic explosion is an extraordinary claim. And, as Carl Sagan frequently said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” But it’s a potentially provable claim, so the evidence will either bear it out or not.

How does the evidence stack up? I’ll examine that in part two of this article.

Review of Darren Aronofsky's "Noah"

Noah, a major motion picture directed by Darren Aronofsky, was released in 2014. I only recently watched the film and, for the most part, I enjoyed it. Starring Russell Crowe as Noah, it isn’t a typical biblical epic of the Cecil B. DeMille variety with cheesy effects, melodramatic acting, and overwrought dialogue. Just like DeMille’s epics, it embellishes the source material, but it is true to the spirit, if not the letter, of the biblical text. It follows in the tradition of Jewish midrash, which sought to fill in gaps in the biblical narrative, sometimes in fanciful ways. (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)

Russell Crowe stars as Noah

For example, one of the more interesting novelties in the movie is that of the Watchers. To provide manpower for ark construction, Noah enlists the aid of fallen angels whose bodies of light have become trapped within rock. Not surprisingly, Noah’s construction project and the mass migrations of thousands of animals have attracted the attention of Noah’s ruthless contemporaries and when the rain starts to fall and the mob tries to take the ark, the Watchers are instrumental in repelling the invaders.

"Noah" is sort of a mashup of "The Lord of the Rings" and "Mad Max"

I’m sure for many in the audience, this seems to be taking great liberties with the Bible, but the myth of the Watchers is well-known to those who have studied the inter-testamental literature – that is, the various non-biblical books written between the time of the OT and the NT – especially, the Book of Enoch. The Watchers were the “sons of God” who both taught humans the arts of mining and metallurgy and also mated with the “daughters of men” to give birth to the “giants” (or Nephilim). 

Fundamentalists, of course, have problems with the movie not being true to the letter of Scripture. One creationist review complains that the movie wasn’t historically accurate because it didn’t show Noah bringing dinosaurs on board the Ark. Seriously. Others have problems with the symbolism used in the movie. Christian theologian Brian Mattson calls it a pagan retelling of the flood story based on teachings from Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) and Gnosticism (a heretic form of Christianity), two incompatible philosophies that he seems to conflate. Peter Chattaway at patheos.com wrote an article clarifying that “No, Noah is not Gnostic” (the actual title of his article). 

Another complaint of evangelical critics is that God did not speak to Noah in a clear and unambiguous fashion as he does in the Bible. “The Creator” (never called “God” in the movie) only revealed his plan to Noah in the form of a dream of a drowned world. But after coming in close contact with the brutal humans who overrun the antediluvian world, Noah decides that the Creator only wants to preserve the innocent animals and accepts that humanity is fated to die with him and his family after they live out their natural lives. Clearly, if the Creator had laid it out for Noah as God does in the Bible, the last part of the movie would have been less suspenseful.

But in real life, we’re not always sure what God’s will is. The Noah portrayed in the movie certainly wanted to follow the will of “the Creator” and thought he understood that will. But when Shem’s previously barren wife becomes pregnant with twin girls aboard ship, Noah decides that carrying out the Creator’s wishes will require him to slay the babies because they will grow up to bear children of their own. When Noah’s love for his family prevents him from doing that, he sees himself as a failure. It falls to his daughter-in-law to explain that the Creator chose him because Noah could see the good and evil in people and know if there was enough good left in humanity to make it worth saving.

Part of the reason evangelicals do not like the movie is that Noah is considered something of a saint in Christian theology. The Bible points out on multiple occasions (Gen 6:22; 7:5, 9, 16) that Noah did all that God commanded him, God established a covenant with him, Noah was considered a “righteous man” and so on. In the NT the flood was seen as a sort of extreme baptism (see 1 Peter 3:20-21), destroying the old world of sin out of which a new world would be born, and Noah was the instrument for salvation.

But Jews don’t see Noah the same way. One of the new insights that I discovered in preparing this review was in an interview by The Times of Israel with “America’s rabbi” Shmuley Boteach. Rabbi Boteach points out why the biblical Noah is not considered a hero in Jewish tradition:

He [Noah] failed in the greatest mission of all. He failed to protect human life. And failed to fight with God when he wanted to take human life. He refuses to wrestle with God. Noah is a fundamentalist. He’s a religious extremist. God says “everyone will die” and Noah says nothing. But this is not what God wants. God wants people with moxie! God wants people with spiritual audacity! He does not want the obedient man of belief. He wants the defiant man of faith.

The rabbi points out, by way of contrast, that when Abraham was told that YHWH planned to destroy Sodom, Abraham didn’t just nod his head and say, “Thy will be done.” Instead, he interceded on behalf of Sodom (Gen 18-22-33), forcing YHWH to agree to spare the city if only 10 righteous people could be found in it. “This made him the first Jew. A Jew does not just accept a divine decree, he does not just bow his head in silent obedience.”

In the final analysis, Noah portrays a religious man who will go to extremes to follow what he believes is the Creator’s will. His obsession will either guarantee the salvation of life on earth or result in the extermination of the human race. The outcome rests on his humanity.