Sodom and Gomorrah

Okay, here is my first "homosexuality and the Bible" post.  It is a Bible study of sorts.  Please, let me know what you think.

I have spent many years thinking about the Bible and homosexuality.  In my studies, I have researched Sodom and Gomorrah several times.  My attitude about what led to the destruction of the two cities has changed and evolved over time.  My earliest Bible study concludes that the cities were destroyed for intended gang rape.  When one looks at Genesis 19 by itself, as if it is a separate story in and of itself, one makes a mistake.  Genesis 19 is the end of a story which starts in Genesis 18.  (I find that my Bible studies have been really long in the past because I would go through and type out what each verse says.  This time round, I think I will allow you, the reader, to pull out your own Bible or chose an online Bible and read the verses.)  So in Genesis 18, YHWH (out of respect for those who find it offensive to spell God’s name out, I will follow the convention of leaving out the vowels) comes to earth to see if the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is really as bad as what he hears.  The decision had already been made to destroy the cities.  Be that as it may, when one looks at the literary structure of Genesis 18 and Genesis 19 as a single unit, one begins to see the beauty behind the J source’s writing.  (Scholars believe [and I agree] that there are multiple authors for the Pentateuch [the first five books of the Bible].  They break them down into different sources, designated by different letters.)  Here the J source is comparing and contrasting two extremes of hospitality and one minimum.  In the first half of the tale Abraham was honorable and goes out of his way to show respect to the strangers that come by.  He does not realize at first that he is welcoming YHWH and angels.  He prepares an elaborate feast and acts as if it has taken nothing to prepare.  He is rewarded for his exceptional hospitality, with the promise of offspring at a very late age.  Then in chapter 19, we have the exact opposite happening.  First, we have Lot who pretends like he's going out of his way to really doesn't do that much for the strangers.  He provides them with a place to sleep, but his meal is not elaborate. It is just passable.  He is rewarded with salvation, but not the promise of progeny.  (However, he also fathers nations in a bizarre twist where he has sons/grandsons with two of his daughters, perhaps indicating that not offering extreme hospitality can lead to tainted offspring.)  And then we have the image of the men (and boys?) from the city of Sodom surrounding the house demanding that the strangers come out so that they can gang rape them.  That shows a complete lack of hospitality in the extreme.  They are rewarded with annihilation.  So, just looking at the J source alone, Sodom was destroyed for extreme inhospitality.  Gomorrah and the other “cities of the plain” must have been guilty by association.  The text really doesn't explain why Gomorrah was destroyed except that YHWH had already said that it was going to happen because of general wickedness.

Take the time to read Judges chapter 19 as well.  In it you have a very similar story except the Levite’s concubine is thrown out to the streets and the men of the city raped her to death.  One can only conclude that Genesis 19 is a condemnation of homosexuality if one concludes that Judges 19 is a condemnation of heterosexuality.  Neither is true.  The authors are trying to make different points.

Now, we can look at some of the fine details.  According to E. A. Speiser in Genesis of the Anchor Bible commentary series, the distance the angels traveled to get to Sodom after feasting with Abraham would have taken a human about 2 days, yet only took them half an afternoon (Speiser, pg 138).   (Not terribly important for my subject, but very interesting none the less!)  There is the question of how the “cities of the plain” were actually destroyed.  There is a great deal of seismic activity around the Dead Sea.  There is also a lot of tar, bitumen, natural gas, oil, etc.  It is possible that an earthquake sparked off a fire that engulfed several cities (Speiser, pg 142).  I have also read, but can’t put my finger on the research right now, that volcanic activity could be to blame.  Because the Biblical description includes fire raining down from Heaven, I’m even willing to entertain the idea that a comet exploded (yet another theory that I heard of but can’t find the research on) igniting gasses in the area.  (The difficulty that some scholars have with this theory is that there is no impact crater near the Dead Sea.)  And, there are other, more bizarre explanations out there.  On the other hand, there are several attempts by Biblical authors to explain the destruction of these cities.  “Isaiah stresses lack of justice” (1:10-17 and in a roundabout way 3:1-9), “Jeremiah cites moral and ethical laxity” (23:14), and Ezekiel speaks of Sodom’s disregard of the needy” (16:49-50) (Speiser, pg 142).

-From an old Bible Study that I did when my citation skills were lax, but I liked the information: 

It has been argued that the reason for the destruction is inhospitality.  Since back in those days there were very few inns and only major metropolitan areas had them, strangers were to be taken in and welcomed into your home as Lot and the Levite did. The New Oxford Annotated Bible states: “…the main issue here is hospitality to secretly divine visitors. Here, however, the sanctity of hospitality is threatened by the men of the city who wish to rape (know) the guests. Though disapproval of male homosexual rape is assumed here, the primary point of the text is how this threat by the townspeople violates the value of hospitality. Hospitality is valued so strongly in this context that this text positively portrays Lot’s offer of his virgin daughters in place of his guests.”  This argument seems to be supported by Jesus’ statement in Luke 10:1-16.  He is talking about hospitality of cities welcoming the 72, and says in verses 10-12, “But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you.  Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God is near.’  I tell you it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.”  There is another thing to keep in mind.  Tribal customs 3000 to 4000 years ago was quite different than what we know today.  Some tribal leaders would rape new men coming into the tribes to make them submissive and keep their power.  In “Good News for Modern Gays,” Rev Sylvia Pennington puts it this way, “It is historically known that it was not an uncommon thing for conquering nations or leaders to force the conquered male into same-sex anal intercourse with the conquering hero in the male role.  To a highly patriarchal people, there was no greater insult or degradation than for a man to have to submit, as a woman, to another man’s sexual advances.  It was a disgrace for a Jew, serving the one true God, to so humiliate and invalidate another person’s life as to steal his manhood (worth) from him.”  While this ties into her discussion on Leviticus, I offer it here as possible support for the inhospitality argument.

So, I guess my conclusion has not evolved much since my last Bible study.  The cities of the plain were destroyed for extreme inhospitality.  The prophets say as much.  Context matters.  If people take verses out of context, they can create scary scenarios.  Don’t fear the Bible.  Pray for the Bible to open up to you as you read it.  Then, read it.  The author refers to inhospitality/gang rape.  Not monogamous couples or even consenting adults. Ergo, the story of the destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah, and the cities of the plain is not a condemnation of gay people or homosexuality.  LGBTQi people need not be afraid of this story, at least not as far as their sexual orientation or gender identity goes.