I previously wrote a note in which I described what seems to be common idea among Christian conservative circles. The idea I criticized deals specifically with a form of superstition, founded in fear, that centers on thoughts that society could be endangering itself, or rather that God may seek to punish the US, by allowing homosexuals to marry or, heaven it would seem forbids, to have children under their care.
To a large degree this superstition is founded on the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Christian conservative view is such that these cities doomed themselves because of individuals who committed homosexual acts.
However, like many stories in the Bible, there are alternate interpretations. One such perspective can be gained by taking a different, but probably a more correct, approach to the Sodom and Gomorrah tale. By looking at the story in this light, it becomes evident that, by not showing humanity and understanding, Christian conservatives are likely guilty of a greater sin, at least according to traditional Semitic views. By seeking to reduce taxes on the wealthy in order to deny or reduce federal assistance to the poor, the elderly, the sick and disabled, and by seeking to treat homosexuals as second-class citizens, so-called Christian conservative views within these circles are by far a greater insult.
Michael Coogan, a Lecturer on Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Harvard Divinity School, Director of Publications for the Harvard Semitic Museum, and Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Stonehill College, authored an interesting book on sex in the Bible -- God & Sex: What the Bible Really Says. I highly recommend the book, and if you find the passage below interesting, you can find it at Amazon at the following address:
"Sodom and Sodomy
Another supposed example of male homoeroticism in biblical narrative, often cited by modern opponents of homosexuality, is the story of Sodom, a proverbially wicked city. The precise location of Sodom and its sister city, Gomorrah, is unknown, but the biblical writers locate it in the region just east of the Dead Sea.
That region is the lowest on the landmass of the earth, more than 1,200 feet below sea level. Its geological situation and its elevation combine to make it desolate and barren. Temperatures in the summer can reach as high as 120 degrees, and whiffs of sulfer fill the air. How had this region become so forbidding? For the biblical writers, it must have been a divine punishment, for natural disasters, as well as disease and ultimately even death, were understood as inflicted by God. The story of Sodom's destruction is another example of etiology, a narrative explanation of the origin of a custom, social reality, or, as here, a geographical feature.
Sodom was where Abraham's nephew Lot had moved, when it was still "well watered, like Yahweh's garden, like the land of Egypt," while Abraham himself had stayed west of the Jordan River in the land of Canaan. But, the narrator informs us, "the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against Yahweh." So great were their unspecified sins that, we are told a few chapters later, there was an "outcry"--a persistent complaint to Yahweh--and he decided to investigate. After his meal with Abraham during which he promised the birth of a son to Sarah, Yahweh informed Abraham that he was going to destroy the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah "because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin is grave." In an almost comical bargaining session, Abraham extracts from Yahweh the promise not to kill any innocent persons living in Sodom. Then Yahweh's messengers (his "angels") proceed to Sodom to carry out their mission.
What was so grave a sin that would cause Yahweh to transform this fertile region into a barren landscape? As it continues, the narrative apparently gives a clue. The divine messengers are taken in by Abraham's nephew Lot, who shows them hospitality. After a banquet,
"before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all of them. They called to Lot, 'Where are the men who came to you tonight? Send them out to us, so that we may know them.'"
This is not just a wish to become better acquainted with the strangers in town, but, using a familiar euphamism, to "know" them. Was sodomy the sin of Sodom? So it would seem. But wait--Lot then offers the townsfolk his daughters.
"Look--I have two daughters who have not known a man. I will send them out to you. Do to them whatever is good in your eyes, but do not do anything to these men, for they came under the shelter of my roof."
As far as Lot was aware, then, the men of Sodom were not homosexuals, to use modern terminology: they would have been just as happy with Lot's virgin daughters as with his male guests [allow me to interject: according to tradition, it is not evident that angels had a sex at all, notwithstanding some silly controversy on the topic despite their mythological nature].
In the end, the divine messengers saved the day, blinding the citizens of Sodom, and the next day the city was destroyed, along with Gomorrah and its neighbors. Lot and his family, however, were saved, in fulfillment of the divine promise not to kill any good people in the city. (Lot's unnamed wife did not survive for long--she was turned into a pillar of salt for having disobeyed the angels' arbitrary command not to look back.) The implication, then, is that Lot had demonstrated his righteousness by his proper treatment of his visitors; offering his daughters to the mob was morally acceptable in such circumstances.
But what precisely was the sin of Sodom that provoked Yahweh to destroy it? The earliest interpretations of the Bible, chronologically and culturally closest to the times of the biblical writers, are found in the Bible itself. One such interpretation is found in a first-century BCE Jewish work known as the Wisdom of Solomon. Referring to the inhabitants of Sodom, its anonymous author says they "refused to receive strangers who came to them... and made their guests their slaves." For this ancient writer, one sin of the citizens of Sodom was an appalling violation of a fundamental social principle of antiquity, hospitality: they wanted to rape strangers in town. Now rape, as feminists have convincingly argued, is a crime of violence rather than one of sex: that is, rape is a violent form of dominance that uses sex, not an inappropriately violent expression of libido. So, the attempt to rape Lot's visitors is an example of Sodom's immorality, because they wanted to violate hospitality with violence against strangers in town.
We find a reprise of the story of Sodom in the horrible narrative of the rape of the Levite's concubine, which has aptly been called a "text of terror." Set in the time of the judges, at the end of the second millennium BCE, "when there was no king in Israel," the story begins with the marriage between an unnamed Levite who lived in the hills of Ephraim in central Israel and his secondary wife, also unnamed, who was from Bethlehem in Judah, a few miles south of Jerusalem. But she left her husband and returned to her father's house. After four months, her husband went to get her back, accompanied by a servant and a couple of donkeys. When he got to Bethlehem, his father-in-law greeted him warmly--perhaps there was hope for this marriage after all. For several days they partied together, and even though the Levite was ready to go back home, his father-in-law kept insisting that they stay another night. Finally, on the fifth day, after more partying, the Levite, his wife, and his servant started out toward his home, some twenty-five miles to the north. But it was late in the day, and as they approached Jerusalem, the servant suggested that they spend the night there. The Levite refused, because Jerusalem was "a foreign city"--it would remain Canaanite until David captured it--and said that they should go a couple of miles farther north, to the Israelite city of Gibeah.
When they arrived in Gibeah, the trio started to camp out in the town square; their fellow Israelites showed no hospitality. But there was another Ephraimite in Gibeah, an old man who, returning from work in the field, saw them in the square and invited them into his house. Then, while they were relaxing over dinner,
"the men of the city, worthless men, surrounded the house, banging on the door. They said to the old man whose house it was, 'Send out the man who came to your house so that we may know him.' But the man whose house it was went out to them and said to them, 'No, my brothers! Do not act wickedly toward this man who came to my house, and do not do this folly! Here are my virgin daughter and his wife: I will send them out. You may rape them, and do what is good in your eyes--but to the man who came to my house, do not do this deed of folly.'"
As at Sodom, there are strangers in town. As at Sodom, they are taken in by a resident alien. As at Sodom, the men of the city surround the house where the guests are staying and demand that the Levite be sent out "so that we may know him." As at Sodom, the host appeals to the principle of hospitality. As at Sodom, the host offers two women as substitutes--in this case, his virgin daughter and the Levite's wife. Now, however, no angels come to the rescue.
"The men were unwilling to listen to him, so the Levite grabbed his wife and sent her out to them. They knew her, and they abused her all night, until morning. And as dawn began to break, they let her go. So, in the early morning, the woman went and fell at the entrance of the house of the man where her lord was, until it was fully light."
Notably, this is not a Canaanite city, like Sodom, but Gibeah, an Israelite town, whose inhabitants are as bad as those of Sodom, the literary parallel implies. And, as at Sodom, homoeroticism is not the essential element of the story. In fact, like the citizens of Sodom, those of Gibeah are rapists, willing to rape women as well as men, with brutal disregard for the principle of hospitality.
That principle was a central component of Israelites' covenantal obligation to each other--to love the neighbor, the fellow Israelite. The men of Gibeah had violated that core principle, which explains the Levite's reaction:
"In the morning her lord got up and opened the doors of the house, preparing to continue his journey. There was his secondary wife, fallen at the entrance to the house, her hands on the threshold. He said to her: 'Get up! We are going!' But there was no response. So he put her on his donkey and proceeded to go to his own place. When he got to his house, he took a knife, grabbed his wife, and cut her, limb from limb, into twelve pieces, and sent her to all the territory of Israel."
There followed a war of retribution by the tribes of Israel against Gibeah, and ultimately against the entire tribe of Benjamin to whose territory Gibeah belonged, because some of its members had committed "folly in Israel."
We must pause to consider the fate of this poor woman. Why did she leave her husband? The text says that "she was promiscuous"; ancient and modern translators have softened this to "she became angry with him." Is there a backstory? As often in the Bible, we are not told. Perhaps the charge of infidelity is a male narrator's anticipatory justification for what her husband did. In any case, this is patriarchalism at its worst: a helpless woman sent out to be gang-raped in order to uphold the principle of hospitality toward a male guest. And while it is risky to read our sensibilities into a text from another culture, here perhaps we are justified in thinking that the story was as horrible for its ancient readers as it is for us, both because of the result, the punishment of the perpetrators, and because of the poignant picture of the victim, who somehow managed to get back ot the house where her husband found her lying, "her hands on the threshold."
The interpretation of the sin of Sodom as inhospitality is also implied in the words attributed to Jesus. In the context of giving instructions to his inner circle, the Twelve, about their itinerant ministry, he concludes:
"When you come to a city and they welcome you, eat what is set before you, and cure the sick there, and say to them, 'God's kingdom has come near to you.' But when you come to a city and they do not welcome you, go out to its squares and say, 'Even the dust of your city that sticks to us, we wipe from our feet in protest against you. But know that God's kingdom has come near.' I say to you that it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day than for that city."
As in Genesis and in Judges, the issue is inhospitality, which will be punished more severely than Sodom was for the same offense.
So, the attempted rape of Lot's visitors is an example of what displeased Yahweh about Sodom. But mistreating strangers was not the only sin of Sodom. According to the early sixth-century BCE prophet Ezekiel, addressing Jerusalem: "This was the sin of Sodom, your sister: pride! She and her daughter[-cities] had abundance of bread and undisturbed tranquility; yet she did not support the poor and the needy. They haughtily committed abomination before me; and so I removed them when I saw it." Justice was most owed to those on the margins of society--the poor, widows and orphans, and strangers. Sodom had failed, in other words, to provide for these least powerful persons. This was the reason for the "outcry," a word that elsewhere in the Bible refers to pleas for divine help for those treated unjustly. And this was the reason for the divine punishment--the destruction both of Sodom in the past, and, according to Ezekiel, of Jerusalem in the near future.
Throughout the Bible, Sodom is a frequently used byword for Israel. The prophets repeatedly compare their Israelite audiences to the inhabitants of Sodom, as did the author of Judges 19 implicitly. Thus Isaiah, addressing his audience in Jerusalem in the late eighth century BCE, proclaims:
"Hear Yahweh's word, you leaders of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our god, you people of Gomorrah!... Refrain from evil, learn to do good: Seek justice, aid the oppressed, give justice to the orphan, plead the widow's case."
Informed by these ancient interpretations, we can now define the "grave sin" of Sodom: it was social injustice ...
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