Gods, Myths and Heroes - Part 20

 Sodom and Gomorrah

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is another Biblical myth showing the unbelievably bizarre morality of the Bible.  Hint: it's not the men of Sodom and Gomorrah who are evil in this story; it's the "heroes."

First, a bit of background.  Sodom and Gomorrah were two of the "cities of the plain."  The plain is the flat land next to the Dead Sea, which is the lowest spot on Earth at 1400 feet below sea level.  The photo above shows naked men extracting salt from the brine of the Dead Sea.

Geologically, the Dead Sea is in a rift valley where the Arabian Plate and the African Plate are moving apart from each other, causing the land in between to sink (hence the low elevation) and also causing earthquakes, which will come into the story later.

The Dead Sea is extremely salty, which also comes into the story later (hint: Lot's wife).  This video shows the late Kirill Tokarev, one of my favorite unashamed males, floating in the Dead Sea.  The extreme saltiness of the water (over 33% salt) makes the human body extremely buoyant, as seen when Kirill lifts his head to read the newspaper, something that you couldn't do in ordinary water without your body sinking.

The story begins in Genesis 18 with Abraham talking to God.  The video clip above is from the movie Oh, God, in which God appears to John Denver in the form of George Burns.

If you think that's strange, it's nothing compared to Genesis 18.  God has decided to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their wickedness, but Abraham argues with God, persuading God to spare the cities if 50 good people can be found in them, and then, unbelievably, haggling with God like some penny-pinching merchant, lowering the limit to 45 good people, then 40, then 30, then 20, then 10.  God, seeing he is losing this argument, gives up and leaves.

Even if you believe in God, a god who created billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars, how could you think that God is like a small-time merchant who you can haggle with?  But of course, the ignorant people who wrote the Bible had a very different view of God.  Their God was a rather petty tribal god, one among many gods, as evidenced by the First Commandment which says "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," which implies that there ARE other gods.  But I digress.

God sends two angels to Sodom, and Lot invites them into his house.  The angels refuse, saying they want to spend the night in the town square.  Why would the angels say that?  This point seems to have been overlooked by Biblical scholars.

I have to point out that all angels in the Bible are male.  Every single one.  There are no female angels.  So, if angels have sex, it must be gay sex.  Perhaps the angels are looking forward to some gay hanky-panky with the Sodomites before the city is destroyed.  Why else would they want to spend the night in the town square?

However, Lot insists, so the angels go to Lot's house.  There are many artworks depicting the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, but very few depicting the angels arriving in Sodom, and they're always clothed in robes from head to foot, as are the citizens of Sodom.  To me, that doesn't adequately explain the sudden infatuation of the citizens with the angels, so I have substituted some modern images.  Let's imagine that the photo above shows the two angels in the doorway of Lot's house.  Now, that might stimulate some interest.

Then all the men of Sodom, both old and young, converge on Lot's house and demand that he bring out the two men who are the angels.  (Above, another modern photo.)

What do they want?  Duh, they're sodomites (see image above).  They want to have sex with the angels.  It seems improbable that every man in Sodom is gay, aside from Lot, but that's what the Bible says.

Unbelievably, Lot responds by saying no, take my virgin daughters instead and rape them.  First, why would the gay Sodomites want his daughters?  (Note: they don't.)   And second, Lot, who is supposed to be one of the fewer than 10 good people in Sodom, is now revealed to be incredibly evil.  Take my daughters and rape them?  Biblical morality at its finest.

After this evil (and stupid) proposal of Lot's, the Sodomites try to forcibly enter Lot's house to get at the angels, at which they do not succeed.  This is the one bad thing that the Sodomites do, but in my opinion, the crime of attempted breaking and entering is minor compared to the evil deeds of Lot and, later, his daughters.

By the way, it turns out that Lot's daughters are married, even though they're virgins and still live with their parents.  Huh?  The sons-in-law refuse to leave the city with Lot and his daughters.  Well, why should they?  We've already been told that every man in Sodom, old and young, was in the mob that wanted to have sex with the angels.  That would include the sons-in-law, which means they're gay, too.  That might explain why Lot's daughters are still virgins.

If this whole story sounds like whoever wrote it didn't think it through, welcome to the Bible.

Anyway, the angels drag Lot and his wife and daughters out of the city, and God rains fire and brimstone down on Sodom and Gomorrah and destroys them.  Above: The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by John Martin, 1852.

Geological note: fire and brimstone (sulfur) are unlikely, because the area is not volcanically active, but it's possible that the story is a dimly remembered echo of some city near the Dead Sea being destroyed by earthquakes, which are common in the region, as we noted earlier.

Lot and his family are told not to look back, but Lot's wife looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt.  Now, the Dead Sea being so salty, there are salt formations here and there, and this part of the story is obviously a silly childish attempt to explain them.  It should not be given any more credence than Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories such as How the Elephant Got His Trunk.

But the end of the story is bad.  After traveling though the city of Zoar, which was not destroyed, Lot and his daughters end up in the mountains.  The daughters say there are no men on Earth to continue the family line by having sex with them.  These girls are either idiots or liars; they just came from the city of Zoar, which must have had some men in it.  Anyway, on this spurious pretext, on two successive nights they get their father drunk on wine, and they each have incestuous sex with their father.  Above, Lot and His Daughters by Albrecht Altdorfer, 1537.  Each becomes pregnant and their children start two more tribes, the Moabites and the Ammonites.

Need I say that this deed of Lot's daughters is incredibly immoral?  And Lot shouldn't get off the hook either.  Even when drunk, he should draw the line at sex with his own daughters.  But he doesn't.  No, these three are among the most evil people in the Bible.  They certainly deserved to die more than the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, who were merely gay.  But no, Biblical morality says that it's fine to offer your daughters to a mob to be raped, and it's just dandy to have incestuous sex.

Pardon me if I don't agree with these "Judeo-Christian" values.