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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Fuel for smelting furnaces
  • Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:16:37 EST


Yigal Levin:

You wrote: “His messengers were capable of blinding the Sodomites (and
would-be sodomizers?) and when Lot's wife looked back she turned into a
pillar
of salt.”

(a) Speaking of what the words in the Hebrew text say (as you mentioned in
your prior post on this thread), there is nothing about sodomizing in the
text. How could a-l-l the people of Sodom turn into sodomizers, since we
are expressly told that all the people of Sodom surrounded Lot’s house? Why
would Lot have remained in Sodom, and married off his two oldest daughters
to men of Sodom, if all the people of Sodom were sodomizers? There is
n-o-t-h-i-n-g in the Hebrew text to support that reading of chapter 19 of
Genesis. Rather, Bera, the former princeling ruler of Sodom, who had
righteously
opposed a military force that included a leader with a kingly Hittite name, “
Tidal”, in chapter 14 of Genesis, is now conspicuously absent in chapter 19
of Genesis. A-l-l the people of Sodom, rather than nonsensically changing
their sexual orientation, have now decided that resistance to the Hittites
is futile. They fear that Lot’s uncle Abraham (with Abraham being a known
anti-Hittite figure based on his actions in chapter 14 of Genesis) has sent
two anti-Hittite agitators to Lot’s house in Sodom. A-l-l the people of
Sodom are rationally terrified that the powerful Hittites might accuse the
people of Sodom of knowingly harboring anti-Hittite agitators sent by the
most
prominent anti-Hittite figure in Canaan: Lot’s uncle Abraham.

Why do you always dismiss these profound, historical stories, which are
very closely based on the well-documented secular history of the Bronze Age,
with a wave of a hand and the following “explanation”: “they are a literary
device, which is not necessarily based on any reality.” True, a story about
a whole town of people who became sodomizers would not be “based on any
reality”. But the Hebrew text of the Patriarchal narratives says no such
thing. If we pay close attention to what the Hebrew text of the Patriarchal
narratives actually says, we see that chapter 19 of Genesis is in fact very
closely “based on…reality”, namely, the Bronze Age historical reality that
many
places in and north of Canaan were, from time to time, historically
pressured by the mighty Hittites to become Hittite vassals.

(b) As to Lot’s wife, she had borne Lot four daughters who lived at least
into their teenage years, she had not borne Lot a son, and yet, based on the
age of her youngest daughter (who we soon find out is old enough now to get
pregnant), there is an implication that Lot’s wife has ceased trying to
bear her son-less husband a son, on the grounds that trying to bear more
children at her fairly advanced age would be dangerous to her health. We
begin to
realize that it had been Lot’s wife -- not Abraham or Lot or Sarah -- who
had insisted that Lot’s family separate from Abraham’s family in chapter 13
of Genesis. Sarah’s super-controversial situation in Egypt, where Sarah at
a fairly old age could have gotten pregnant, is never criticized by either
Abraham or Sarah, but was absolute anathema to Lot’s wife’s way of thinking.
Lot’s wife and Sarah are presented as being opposites. Sarah will
righteously consider doing anything to bear her husband a son, even if she
risks
her own life by giving birth at an advanced age. Lot’s wife, by stark
contrast, unrighteously refuses to jeopardize her own life expectancy by
trying to
get pregnant at a fairly advanced age, though she has borne only daughters
to her sonless husband Lot. Lot’s wife’s situation is thus identical in all
respects to the situation of the main wife #1 of the first monotheistic
leader in secular history. Note that they also share the i-d-e-n-t-i-c-a-l,
truly bizarre, fate: each is righteously made into a type of royal/salt
[MLK/MLX -- being clever Hebrew wordplay] statue, never being seen alive
again,
and then her young teenage daughters righteously insist on trying to bear
their still sonless father the son/grandson he so desperately wanted. Why
would the early Hebrews care about that historical fact, which might seem to
affect only Egypt? Who do you think was the only human being on planet Earth
at the time who was capable of defending the Hebrews’ beloved Canaan from a
possible onslaught by the seemingly unbeatable Hittite King Suppiluliuma I?
(That’s Biblical “Tidal”, which is an appropriately nasty Hebrew nickname,
reflecting the fact that Suppiluliuma came to the Hittite throne by the
dastardly expedient of murdering his own older brother named “Tidal”
/Tudhaliya.)

Why do you always dismiss these profound, historically-based stories with a
wave of a hand and the following “explanation”: “they are a literary
device, which is not necessarily based on any reality.” If you would pay
close
attention to what the Hebrew text of the Patriarchal narratives actually
says, and focus on the themes that keep being emphasized over and over and
over
again in the text, you would see that these are not miracles that are “not…
based on any reality.” The early Hebrews’ historical fear and hatred of
the mighty Hittites, which is the historical underpinning of both of the
above two stories in the Patriarchal narratives and is important to the
historical birth of Judaism, is stated clearly at the end of chapter 27 of
Genesis,
in Rebekah’s heartfelt outburst: “I loathe my life because of the Hittite
women! If my son Jacob marries a Hittite woman, from among the local girls,
my life will not be worth living!”

If you do not appreciate the historical, heartfelt antipathy of the first
Hebrews to the Hittites, an antipathy which the Hebrew words of the text
clearly convey, then you will not understand the historical nature of the
Patriarchal narratives, which is not a collection of colorful, non-historical
miracles.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois




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