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Sodom and Gomorrah
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According to the Old Testament Biblical book of Genesis, Sodom (Arabic: ???? Sadum,, Greek S?d?µa) and Gomorrah (Arabic: ????? ?Amurah, , Greek G?µ???a) were two cities in the Bible which were destroyed by God.
For the sins of their inhabitants Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim were destroyed by "brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven" .
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According to the Old Testament Biblical book of Genesis, Sodom (Arabic: ???? Sadum,, Greek S?d?µa) and Gomorrah (Arabic: ????? ?Amurah, , Greek G?µ???a) were two cities in the Bible which were destroyed by God.
For the sins of their inhabitants Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim were destroyed by "brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven" . In Christianity and Islam, their names have become synonymous with impenitent sin, and their fall with a proverbial manifestation of God's wrath (Qur'an ).
Sodom and Gomorrah have been used as metaphors for vice and sexual deviation. The story has therefore given rise to words in several languages, including the English word "sodomy", a term used today predominantly in law (derived from traditional Christian usage) to describe non-vaginal intercourse, as well as bestiality.
The Biblical text
Sodom was one of a group of five towns, the Pentapolis : Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Bela -- also called Zoar . The Pentapolis region is also collectively referred to as "the Cities of the Plain" since they were all sited on the plain of the River Jordan, in an area that constituted the southern limit of the lands of the Canaanites . Lot, a nephew of Abram (Abraham) chose to live in Sodom, because of the proximity of good grazing for his flocks .
In , God informs Abraham that he plans to destroy the city of Sodom because of its wickedness. Abraham pleads with God not to destroy Sodom, and God agrees that he would not destroy the city if there were 50 righteous people in it, then 45, then 30, then 20, or even ten righteous people. The Lord's two angels found only four righteous people living in Sodom, including Abraham's nephew Lot and his wife and two youngest daughters. Consequently, God destroyed the city.
In the Tanach version, Genesis19:4-5, the final episode in the story of Sodom is described as the angels visit Lot to warn him to flee:
Lot refused to give the visiting angels to the inhabitants of Sodom. He offered them his two daughters instead, but the people refused. The men were struck with blindness, allowing Lot and his family, who were then instructed to leave the city, to escape. As they made their escape the angels commanded that Lot and his family not look back under any circumstance. However as Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed with fire and brimstone by God, Lot's wife looked back longingly at the city, and she was instantly transformed into a pillar of salt.
In God compares Jerusalem to Sodom, saying "Sodom never did what you and your daughters have done." He explains that the sin of Sodom was that "She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me."
Jewish views
Classical Jewish texts do not stress the homosexual aspect of the attitude of the inhabitants of Sodom as much as their cruelty and lack of hospitality to the "stranger." (See on the importance of hospitality.) The people of Sodom were seen as guilty of many other significant sins. Rabbinic writings affirm that the Sodomites also committed economic crimes, blasphemy and bloodshed. One of the worst was to give money or even gold ingots to beggars, after inscribing their names on them, and then subsequently refusing to sell them food. The unfortunate stranger would end up starving and after his death, the people who gave him the money would reclaim it.
A rabbinic tradition, described in the Mishnah, postulates that the sin of Sodom was related to property: Sodomites believed that "what is mine is mine, and what is yours is yours" (Abot), which is interpreted as a lack of compassion. Another rabbinic tradition is that these two wealthy cities treated visitors in a sadistic fashion. One major crime done to strangers was almost identical to that of Procrustes in Greek mythology. This would be the story of the "bed" that guests to Sodom were forced to sleep in: if they were too short they were stretched to fit it, and if they were too tall, they were cut up.
In another incident, Eliezer, Abraham's servant, went to visit Lot in Sodom and got in a dispute with a Sodomite over a beggar, and was hit in the forehead with a stone, making him bleed. The Sodomite demanded Eliezer pay him for the service of bloodletting, and a Sodomite judge sided with the Sodomite. Eliezer then struck the judge in the forehead with a stone and asked the judge to pay the Sodomite.
The Talmud and the book of Jasher also recount two incidents of a young girl (one involved Lot's daughter Paltith) who gave some bread to a poor man who had entered the city. When the townspeople discovered their acts of kindness, they burned Paltith and smeared the other girl's body with honey and hung her from the city wall until she was eaten by bees. (Sanhedrin 109a) It is this gruesome event, and her scream in particular, the Talmud concludes, that are alluded to in the verse that heralds the city’s destruction: "So said, 'Because the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah has become great, and because their sin has been very grave, I will descend and see...'" .
The view of Josephus
Flavius Josephus, a Romano-Jewish historian, wrote something along the lines of:
and Josephus recounts that when angels came to Sodom to find good men they were instead greeted by rapists:
He says how beautiful it was before everything was burned up, and how rich the towns were in the area. Josephus described what had happened:
Christian view
There are two prevailing views of the sin of Sodom in Christian thought. One is that the destruction of Sodom was due to inhospitality, as illustrated by the gifts of God to Abraham for his gracious action, contrasted with consequences of the behaviour of the city's inhabitants. First we see hospitality and the way we should act, then inhospitality in that the people of Sodom seek to mistreat the newcomers. The second view is that the cities were destroyed because of the widespread practices of sodomy.
Christian scholars and clerics often have disagreements about the meaning of specific texts, with the writings on Sodom and Gomorrah being no different. The latter view, while being the most common in modern times, is actually the least historical. The word, "sodomy" which first appeared in the 17th century KJV was then used simply to mean wickedness. Modern scholars in favor of the "homosexuality" theory point to two major parts of the Bible;
Some scholars have interpreted "to know" as a Biblical term for sexual behaviour in this context, though others disagree, noting that while the word appears nearly 1,000 times in the Hebrew Scriptures, approximately 1% of those references have sexual connotation, though it may be worthwhile to acknowledge that one of those instances occurs only three verses later in the same narrative. Those continuing to advocate the "homosexuality" theory argue that refers to a militant solicitation for homosexual sex. This position appears to be supported by Lot's response to the demand of the crowd, which was to offer his daughters to the crowd in place of the guests:
Second, some argue that homosexuality is the "strange flesh" mentioned in the following New Testament passage,
The other view is derived from the classical Jewish perspective, already mentioned, and other portions of the Bible. This view sees the sin of Sodom as being about general malice, xenophobia and inhospitality, and that if "to know" is intended to be a euphemism for sex, it is clearly a case of gang rape.
Thus, "going after strange flesh" may refer to sex with strangers, sex outside of wedlock, or possibly something akin to bestiality.
This idea is paralleled in the Gospels when Jesus compares an inhospitable reception to Sodom:
This view of the Biblical story reflects that of other ancient civilisations, such as Greece and Rome, where hospitality was of singular importance and strangers were under the protection of the gods. Also in these civilisations, men were held in a much higher regard than women, in Greece women being often seen as little more than property . Therefore, to demand not only a guest, but a male guest, be violated against his will, would be seen as more of a crime than to allow women to be used to save the guest.
Islamic view
In Islamic tradition, the nephew of Ibrahim (Abraham) is known as Lut and was a prophet. According to the Qur'an, Lot was sent as a prophet to warn his people (that is, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah) to turn from their evil acts. The story appears in the sura Hud, the 11th chapter of the Qur'an; the major focus of Hud is stories of prophets sent to warn their countries to worship only God, and God punishing the nations afterward.
The Qu'ran does not go into great detail about Lot's people, assuming that readers are familiar with the background story. Lot offers them his daughters, but they respond with disinterest and say that Lot "knows what we want." The full account as translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali:
The 7th sura, Al-A'raf, confirms that like the Biblical account, the Islamic Sodom and Gomorrah is referring to homosexuality and homosexual rape. The major difference between the Islamic view of Lot and the Biblical version of Lot is that the Bible includes the story of Lot's incestuous relationship with his daughters, which are implicitly denied in Islam. Since Lot is referred to as a prophet of God, and Islamic prophets are considered to never break God's law, Lot would not have had such an incestuous relationship.
Historicity
The historical existence of Sodom and Gomorrah is still in dispute by archaeologists. The Bible indicates they were located near the Dead Sea ( ).
Strabo states that locals living near Moasada (as opposed to Masada) say that "there were once thirteen inhabited cities in that region of which Sodom was the metropolis". Strabo identifies a limestone and salt hill at the southwestern tip of the Dead Sea, and Kharbet Usdum ruins nearby as the site of biblical Sodom..
Archibald Sayce translated an Akkadian poem describing cities that were destroyed in a rain of fire, written from the view of a person who escaped the destruction; the names of the cities are not given.. However, Sayce later mentions that the story more closely resembles the doom of Sennacherib's host.
The name “Sodom” is probably related to the Arabic sadama meaning 'fasten,' 'fortify,' 'strengthen' and Gomorrah is based on the root gh m r which means 'be deep,' 'copious (water)'.
In 1976 Giovanni Pettinato claimed that a cuneiform tablet that had been found in the newly discovered library at Ebla contained the names of all five of the Cities of the Plain (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Bela), listed in the same order as in Genesis. The names si-da-mu [TM.76.G.524] and ě-ma-ar [TM.75.G.1570 and TM.75.G.2233] were identified as representing Sodom and Gomorrah, which gained some acceptance at the time. However, Alfonso Archi states that, judging from the surrounding city names in the cuneiform list, si-da-mu lies in northern Syria and not near the Dead Sea, and ě-ma-ar is a variant of ě-mar, known to represent Emar, an ancient city located near Ebla. William Shea points out in 1983 that on the 'Eblaite Geographical Atlas' [TM.75.G.2231], ad-mu-ut and sa-dam are good readings by Pettinato and correspond to Admah and Sodom, and they are contained in a list of cities that traces a route along the shores of, or quite possibly within the Dead Sea, whose position may have since shifted along its fault. Today, the scientific consensus is reported as being that "Ebla has no bearing on ... Sodom and Gomorra"
The cities may have been destroyed as the result of a natural cataclysm. Geologists have confirmed that no volcanic activity occurred within the last 4000 years, but it is possible that the towns were destroyed by an earthquake in the region, especially if the towns lie along a major fault, the Jordan Rift Valley, the northernmost extension of the Great Rift Valley of the Red Sea and East Africa.
Possible candidates for Sodom or Gomorrah are the sites discovered or visited by Walter E. Rast and R. Thomas Schaub in 1973, including Bab edh-Dhra, which was originally excavated in 1965 by archaeologist Paul Lapp, only to have his work continued by Rast and Schaub following his death by accidental drowning in the waters off of Cyprus in 1970. Other possibilities also include Numeira, es-Safi, Feifeh and Khanazir, which were also visited by Schaub and Rast. All sites were located near the Dead Sea, with evidence of burning and traces of sulfur
on many of the stones and a sudden stop of inhabitation towards the end of the Early Bronze Age. Archaeological remains excavated from Bab edh-Dhra are currently displayed in Karak Archaeological Museum (Karak Castle) and Amman Citadel Museum.
Modern Sodom
The site of the present Dead Sea Works, a large operation for the extraction of Dead Sea minerals, is called "Sdom" according to its traditional Arab name, Khirbet as-sudum (see above Historicity). Nearby is unique Mount Sodom (?? ????), or Jabal alsudum in Arabic, consisting mainly of salt. In the Plain of Sdom (????? ????) to the south there are a few springs and two small agricultural villages.
See also
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