Why Is She Salt?

Dan Beecher As Lot and his family are fleeing, and the Lord is raining down sulfur and fire on these other cities, Lot's wife turns around. She turns into a pillar of salt, and there's no expl- I was so ready for the explanation. Dan, help me out. I do not... Why is she salt?

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody.

Dan Beecher Hi, friends, and welcome to the Data Over Dogma podcast. Where we bring you

Dan McClellan the latest in biblical scholarship. And do

Dan Beecher our best to combat the spread of misinformation. With me is Dr. Dan McClellan, Bible scholar and TikTok star, and I'm non-scholar and TikTok nobody, Dan Beecher. Hi, Dan. How are you?

Dan McClellan I'm doing well. How are you doing today, Dan?

Dan Beecher I'm doing great. Uh, coming up on today's show, I'm gonna do a little chapter and verse. We're gonna stick in, uh, uh, Genesis.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Skipping over some stuff. I th- here's what I thought. I thought I was gonna talk about Abraham. Hmm. But you know what? Abraham is a long and sort of stretched out thing, and there's this thing right in the middle of it that, uh, that caught my eye, so we're gonna go with that.

Dan McClellan Okay. And, uh,

Dan Beecher and then you are going to do a, uh, a what does that mean?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Is that right?

Dan McClellan Yes. Gonna talk about the word provenance, which some people pronounce provenience, but, uh, I prefer to pronounce it, uh, provenance. We're gonna talk about what that means and some things

Dan Beecher that have been

Dan McClellan in the news recently that- Hmm ... relate to why provenance is such a big deal for scholars, and particularly for

Dan Beecher archeologists. Can I call it provenance? Uh,

Dan McClellan yeah, if you're nasty. I guess you can, you can do that.

Dan Beecher And nasty I am. All right. Um, well, let's dive in.

Dan McClellan I wanted to talk about...

Dan Beecher L- as I said, I was looking at, um, Genesis. I was looking at Abraham, 'cause I thought, you know, Abraham's a big deal. Mm-hmm. Uh, kind of, kind of the biggest deal, the godfather of the whole, of the, you know, the religions of the book- Yeah ... if you will.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Uh,

Dan Beecher but right there in the middle, there's this story about his nephew, uh, and I thought we would check in with that.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Uh,

Dan Beecher because the Abraham, the Abram/Abraham story, uh, is rudely and kind of inexplicably interrupted by this cute little chapter right in the middle- Mm-hmm ... uh, about Lot. Now, uh, back in Genesis 13, we reveal Lot. Lot is traveling with, uh, with Abram at that time. Is that how you would say it, Abram? Uh, Abram. Abram. Mm-hmm. Uh, and then, uh, they find that, uh, there's not enough grazing ground for both of their flocks. So Abram takes, uh, the high road to a gated community called The Oaks, very fancy, and, uh, Lot takes the low road to Sodom. Mm-hmm. Uh, and anyone who's heard of Sodom knows what's coming. Mm-hmm. Uh, so we get to, fast-forward to Genesis 18, where, uh, Abram, who is now Abraham, uh, but that's a story for another day, uh, is talking to some fellas. Mm-hmm. We don't really know much about these fellas.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Uh,

Dan Beecher and the Lord jumps in and decides to reveal that Sodom is going to be destroyed, uh, 'cause it's wicked. Mm-hmm. Um, and these guys start negotiating. There's a very interesting negotiation that happens with, with the Lord, where they're like, "Hey, if there, what if there are 50 good people in Sodom? Would you, would you save it then?" And the Lord's like, "All right, if there's 50." "If there's 50, it's okay. I'll- I'll- I'll let them live."

Dan McClellan And they're like, "Okay." I'm thinking of Pawn Stars, uh, here. "Best I can do is 50."

Dan Beecher But it's not, because they get him... They're like, "45. What if there's- ... what if there's only five less than that? 45, come on." And the Lord's like, "Okay, 45." They keep going. Yeah. It is the weirdest thing. They just, they just, uh, talk him down, 45, 40, 30, blah, blah, blah. They get down to 10. "If there are 10 good people in Sodom..." And here's the interesting part. Correct me if I'm wrong here, Dan. Mm-hmm. The Lord doesn't seem to know how many good people there are in Sodom. He has to go and check it out for himself.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and, and this is something we find in Genesis a bunch. Like, uh, when w- the Tower of Babel, uh, in Genesis 11, the story tar- starts with them going, "Hey, let's go see what's going on down there." And so, uh, and this is one of those first-person plural verbs, or probably a reference to the divine council, but they're like, "I heard a weird noise. Let's go check it out." They, they don't really know exactly what's going on. Just like A- uh, Adam hiding in the garden, and God's walking around like, "I thought he was..." Yeah. "Where are you?" He doesn't really know- Hello? ... where the, what's going on. It does seem...

Dan Beecher Yeah, so okay. The Lord, the Lord doesn't know. The Lord doesn't really have a set idea what he's working on here. And so yeah, they negotiate him down to 10 people, and then we launch into, uh-

Dan McClellan And I think, uh, sorry to interrupt real, real quick.

Dan Beecher No, dive in.

Dan McClellan But I think it's also interesting to note, not only is, uh, Adonai, God, the Lord here not, uh, omniscient, but the last verse of chapter 18 says, uh, "And the Lord went his way." Uh- Yeah ... it's a reference to the fact that in this time period, God was very much conceptualized as an anthropomorphic, corporeal being, limited in a specific time and space, and also not, like, clearly superhuman. Uh, we have- Yeah ... stories where divine beings are confused for regular old humans, and that seems to be what's going on here. So, uh, God is, is very much a human-sized and shaped and looking entity who is just chatting with Abraham, and they're kind of, you know, out on the veranda, taking a look over at that city over there, and haggling over how much to save the city. Um- Right ... and so it's, it's a different concept of God than what we are used to.

Dan Beecher And God seems to be, like, walking around and stuff. Like-

Dan McClellan Yep ... on,

Dan Beecher on his feet. He's not, he's not floating on a chariot in the clouds or anything.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher All right. Uh, so speaking of divine beings walking around, chapter 19 opens with two of the guys who apparently were, were two of the guys that, that Abraham was talking to-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... have now journeyed into Sodom. Mm-hmm. But the first three words of chapter 19 are, "The two angels- " Yeah "... came to Sodom in the evening." Now, what, what's going on with the angels? Do we know-

Dan McClellan So in the beg- the beginning of cha- What's that?

Dan Beecher Do we know what, what, what, what an angel is in this case? What, what's going on?

Dan McClellan So very much like God, angels, uh, the Hebrew word is just malakh, which means a messenger literally. And- Mm ... it is used to refer to human message- messengers in a number of instances. So the, the word angel as we know it is an interpretation that we're imposing on the text. 'Cause if you're reading this in the Hebrew, it just says two messengers. And-

Dan Beecher Oh, weird ...

Dan McClellan and, you know, we have in, in the Books of Samuel, you have, "And David sent messengers," and it's the exact same word in Hebrew. And so the idea of a divine messenger is an interpretive lens that we're putting on the text. But there's enough, there are enough stories within the Hebrew Bible where it's very clearly a divine messenger and not a human messenger, that we've, we're kind of comfortable with this notion that angel is an appropriate way to refer to these entities. But the very, uh, second verse of verse 18, so it starts off, "The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre as he sat at the entrance of his tent." Verse two starts off, "He looks up and he saw three men." And so here, and in a number of other places, both God and these angels are referred to as an ish, as a man. Um- Huh ... and there's a wonderful book on this, uh, by Esther Hamori called When Gods Were Men, and it's a, it's an academic discussion of what she labels the ish theophany, or a, a story about God appearing to someone, and this, the narrator explicitly referring to God as an ish, as a man.

Dan Beecher Well, you know, some people think of him as a man, some people don't. To each their own- ... is what I'd like to s-

Dan McClellan Oh, that was, that was very cheap.

Dan Beecher Ba dum tss.

Dan McClellan There you go.

Dan Beecher Hey, man, low-hanging fruit is still fruit. Uh, all right. Uh, so here we go. The, these two angels, messengers, whatever,

Dan McClellan it, it... What's interesting me about,

Dan Beecher I'm gonna stick with the angel thing because I'm curious about this. What's interesting to me is that nothing else in this story says to me that these angels are divine. Mm-hmm. They're clear- They clearly have knowledge from God. Mm-hmm. They have the knowledge that the, that the town's gonna be destroyed, and maybe they have the ability to sort of check in with God, and they're, you know... Maybe it is just that they are the ones who

Dan McClellan are in, who, like,

Dan Beecher later on are kind of in charge of when the destruction happens and kind of negotiating on, uh, with Lot about when the destruction happens. Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan So maybe they have some... Okay.

Dan Beecher Okay. I'm talking myself into them having some divine power.

Dan McClellan Well, if, if you've seen the movie Dogma, you will know that, um, raining down fire and brimstone from heaven is one of the most physically taxing activities in the world, apart from soccer.

Dan Beecher So... Yeah. I haven't seen that movie since the '90s, so- ...

Dan McClellan I'll, I'll have... We,

Dan Beecher you and I were talking about it and- Yeah ... I w- it, I can't track it down. It's nowhere.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Beecher Anyway, uh-

Dan McClellan But yeah, here they're just like, "Hey, God's gonna destroy this city." So there's not, um, it's not like they're playing a role. They're actively engaged in this. They're just kind of, uh, you know, waltzing in to say, "Hey, you should probably get out of here."

Dan Beecher Right. Right. Okay. So these, these two guys come into town. Uh, immediately they encounter Lot, who jumps up and says, "Hey, come and stay at my house." And they're like, "No, no, we're gonna sleep in the square." Uh, and he's like, "No, no, no. I insist. I insist. Come. You're, you're, you'll sleep in our house. You'll wake up early in the morning and you'll get out," which is what I always wanna tell my guests. "You'll get up very early and leave." Yes. "You're very welcome until tomorrow." Uh, anyway, uh, so he, uh, he brings them into the house.

Dan McClellan And I'll, I'll, I'll interrupt you real quick to just suggest- Yeah ... that this is kind of the rhetorical point of the story, is that unlike the people of Sodom, and previously when it referenced Lot, uh, pitching his tent towards Sodom or alongside Sodom, it talked about Sodom being wicked. Mm. And so, uh, and, and part of this may play on kind of a, uh, uh, a contrast between agrarian-living folks and city dwellers. There's a part of it- Mm ... that may be suggesting city dwellers are problematic and, you know, uh, that farm living is for me kind of perspective- ... where we prefer folks who live off the land, who live in tents, rather than folks who live in cities. And, and that may be part of the message is that Sodom is bad because it's this, uh, city that's filled with all these city dwellers and, uh, you know, they have, uh, apartments in these high-rises, and you don't get a yard or anything, and they just don't like cities. And so part of what is going on here is they're representing Lot as being very hospitable, and this is something that was, uh, a, an ideal in this time period, is hospitality to strangers. And so they're like, "Nah, we're just gonna sleep on the ground." And he comes out and says, "No, no. Come into my house. Take whatever you need. I will "Provide for you, and then I will not stand in your way. I will let you go do whatever it is you need to do afterwards." So Lot is being shown as kind of the ideal, um, offerer of hospitality, which stands in, as we will see, marked contrast to the rest of the people of Sodom.

Dan Beecher Yeah, indeed. Uh, it, it ... And that actually, spoiler alert, will ha- pl- comes into play much later in the Bi- Mm-hmm. Is it in Ezekiel where they talk about what the sin of-

Dan McClellan Yes,

Dan Beecher in Ezekiel ... of

Dan McClellan Sodom is?

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm. Uh, and spoiler alert, it ain't the, uh, the rapin', uh- No ... at least not there. Um, because it is, it's, it's the hospitality, right? They say that the sin of, or, or something along those lines

Dan McClellan Yeah, the sin

Dan Beecher of Sodom is, uh, it's

Dan McClellan an overabundance of bread and a failure to care for the orphan and the widow and the needy. Hmm. Basically, this, uh, city was not taking care of its own. It was contributing to social inequality. Uh, and then at the very end, it talks about abominations, which is- Hmm ... uh, can be a pretty vague term which can be used to refer to, uh, wearing two different kinds of fabrics at the same time,

Dan Beecher so- Eating shellfish ...

Dan McClellan eating shellfish. Uh- That sort of thing ... it's, it's not exactly clear what is being referred to with this reference to abominations.

Dan Beecher Well, I, I mean, there's something coming up that's, uh, that's pretty abominable, so-

Dan McClellan It's pretty bad, yeah ... uh,

Dan Beecher so yes. The, in they go to Lot's house, and suddenly, out of the blue, kind of the whole town gathers outside of Lot's house Mm-hmm ... and starts yelling about, "Hey, you know those two guys that you have in your house? Send them out to us." And, you know, i- in different, uh, translations it says different things. Uh, for instance, in the, uh, NSRV, NRSV- Mm-hmm ... what is it? It's- NRSV ... NRSV, uh, w- that I have in front of me, it says, uh, "Bring them out to us so that we may know them." Mm-hmm. Uh, y- other translations are more explicit. Yeah. But the idea is they want to rape these men.

Dan McClellan Yeah, this is, uh, an attempt to violate these men, and I think it's, it's significant that the narration tells us that it is every man, old and young, in the city, down to the last man. And I think this is interesting for two reasons.

Dan Beecher The first is that this is kind of, uh, a callback to Abraham's negotiations with God, where I think

Dan McClellan it goes down to if there are five people- ... in the city. And, and so the story is telling us here, Lot's the only one. Every other man in the city, whether young or old, is wicked. Now, the other interesting thing is that when God talks about righteous people in the city, it seems to only care about the men. And in this time period, when you talk about full personhood, men were really the only ones who exercised a full personhood, full agency. Uh, and in some of my social media in the past I've, I've talked about how some biblical authors, uh, think of women as kind of NPCs. Hmm. They are there to play a role, but they don't have full autonomy. They don't have full agency. They don't have full personhood.

Dan Beecher And so here- Hell, 95% of the time they don't have names.

Dan McClellan Exactly, yeah. And they, th- there are stories where they are, play critical roles in, uh, particularly in genealogy and things like that. But for many authors, they're not just a concern, and I think this is one of those instances where it's telling us, "Hey, remember how God said that they were gonna look for five people? Well, here's every single man in the city, down to the last man," kind of making the point that when we w- mention people, you know, we really, we were talking about just the men. And there's not a single one in the city, apart from Lot, who is righteous.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Really, which is strange becau- well, we won't get into the, the sons-in-law. Uh- ... th- were they in the crowd? I don't know. Yeah. You tell me. Anyway, uh, to, as if the Lord wanted to illustrate your point about women not mattering much, uh, the next thing that happens is one of the most horrific thing. I, I have no place in my brain to put this-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... which is Lot's answer to the crowd, which is to beg them not to rape the, the guests in his house. "But here's what I'll do. It, just because I don't want you to have nothing, I'm gonna send out my two daughters to you, and, uh, you can do with them as you will."

Dan McClellan Yeah. And this is, and this is a way to, again, kind of hold up Lot as the ideal, um, patron, the ideal, uh, offerer of hospitality, because it, it is hyperbolic. It is rhetorical, but it's saying Lot cares so much about the safety of anyone he brings in under his roof that he's willing to sacrifice his two daughters, uh, in order to protect them. And, and this is not just, in addition to being a, uh, a denigration, a, a, um, subjugation of their personhood, their autonomy, their agency. It's also, uh, again, showing Lot as willing to give up something, because having two daughters is, um, means you have some money headed your way, 'cause you're gonna s- basically sell them off. When they get married, there's a bride price that's gonna come to you. Uh, and this is w- w- if they have been violated, if, uh, they're no longer, uh, from the perspective of these authors, if they're no longer, uh, potential wives, if they're not wife material- Then Lot is also sacrificing that future income. So in a few different ways, it's presenting Lot as willing to sacrifice his own resources, his own goods, uh, members of his own family in order to protect these house guests. And now, this story has a parallel. This is not the only place in the Bible where we hear almost the exact same story. Judges 19 tells almost the exact same story, and this is with, uh, a, a gentleman, an Israelite who was traveling with his concubine. Uh, and very similar situation. He's in, uh, a town. It's supposed to be a, a town that, uh, is full of Israelites. He chooses not to stop at the closer town, but to go on to this other town where there are Israelites 'cause he trusts his own people. He's within, you know, he's among his people. And, uh, he stops in and someone offers to, to let him stay in his house, and it's the very same thing. This is a very hospitable, uh, house owner. And the same thing happens. Men surround the house and they say, "Send this dude out. We're gonna violate him." And it's por- it's important to note here, as with, uh, sexual assault today, it's not about sex. It's about power. It's a way to, uh, exercise control over others. It's a way to make yourself feel more powerful. And here, it's a way to shame and denigrate and humiliate another male Israelite. And so some people think this is a, uh, a judgment on, a criticism on same-sex orientation or same-sex intercourse, and it's really not. These men are playing a role where they are trying to humiliate someone from the outside who is staying the night, uh, trying to exercise power over them. And a very similar- Okay ... thing happens, uh, where the man says, "No, I'm not gonna send out my house guest. I'm gonna protect him." And the house guest says, "Well, I'm just gonna shove my concubine out the door." And the concubine, and, you know, and we'll see what happens in the Genesis story, but in the Judges story, the concubine gets shoved outside and is violated- Wow ... all night long, and then ends up dying from her injuries on the very doorstep. And in that story, the man comes out the next day and, and it is a horrific story when you read it. The narrative is like he stepped outside and he was like, "Come on, get up. We gotta go," and then realized she was dead and, uh, in the story actually dismembers her, cuts her up into 12 pieces- That's right ... sends one to each of the 12 tribes of Israel, basically to say, "Look what they did to my, my concubine. The, you know, I was supposed to be in Israelite territory, but the, the houses of Israel are just in disarray." So it's a shocking story. Um, it is parallel in many ways to what's going on in, uh, Genesis 19. But I just wanted to make that point, that this is, this is not saying these guys really just wanted to have sexual intercourse with other men. That's not the point of the story in any way, shape, or form. It is the locals were trying to abuse and humiliate and shame someone from the outside.

Dan Beecher And just to be clear, there's no equivocation here, right? There's no way around the facts of this. Like, we're- Right ... this isn't an, an interpretation problem where, like, you could interpret it a different way. Like- No ... they're, the crowd is here to rape these two guys. He, uh, Lot then offers to s- like, is going to send his daughters out to the crowd to be raped. Yeah. Okay. Fortunately, uh, unlike, uh, the concubine in the other story, uh, the angels stop him, uh, the, or s- from sending the daughters out. Close... They pull him back in, close the door, and then somehow blind all of the crowd so that- Mm-hmm ... they can't come in, and, uh, and save the day. Uh, and then they tell, s- so, uh, so that, that little, uh, escapade is over.

Dan McClellan Right. Um, uh,

Dan Beecher so then, uh, it's time for the cities to be destroyed. The city- Yeah ... the, multiple cities actually get destroyed in this, though Sodom is sort of the, the center of this thing. Um, and, uh, s- the, the men say to Lot, "Hey, do you have anybody else in town that you want to save? 'Cause we're going, uh, right now." And, uh, and Lot goes to his daughters' boyfriends. They're not really married yet, right? These are these, they're called sons-in-law, but- Right ... it seems like they're not married yet. So,

Dan McClellan so marriage anciently was a lot different. Once they got engaged, they were basically treated as, or they were referred to as if they were already married. So that engagement was, like, step one in a two-step process. Okay. And so, uh, it can refer to them as sons-in-law because there's already a contract there. Okay. It has not yet been consummated. Uh, and

Dan Beecher so that's-

Dan McClellan So fiancés. Yeah. And, um, and that's why Lot can offer these two women who are virgins- Mm-hmm ... in the story, because they have not yet consummated the marriage.

Dan Beecher Interesting. All right. So he goes to the sons-in-law. He says, "Hey, we gotta get outta here. The Lord's gonna destroy the entire city." And they go, "Eh. Nah." Yeah. They think he's joking. They think it's a, they, they, they don't come, uh, which that's an interesting thing, uh, to do- Well- ... to your- Yeah

Dan McClellan ... potential father-in-law. You've also gotta get to, uh, a lot of this is an ideology for some, uh, some ethnic groups that are gonna be, uh, gonna get quite the zinger at the end of the story. Absolutely. And part of the point there was that there are no other men available, and so they're, they're kind of a MacGuffin in the story. Right. They're just there to be able to, uh, for the narrators to say, "And then these two idiots were like you." Surely you jest. So, uh, eh,

Dan Beecher and one of my favorite little tiny moments in, in this story is that, uh, you know, so Lot can't get, uh, his sons-in-law. So it's just him, his daughters, and his wife. Uh, morning happens. The, the angels say, "All right, let's go." And Lot s- dilly-dallies apparently- Mm-hmm ... a little bit, and the angels grab everybody by the arms and just say, "Let's get outta here."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So they all get out of there, and, uh, uh, here- here's what the angels say to them when they are outside of the city. They say, quote, "Flee for your life. Do not look back or stop anywhere in the plain. Flee to the hills, or else you will be consumed." Uh, and then Lot, again, with the negotiation, Lot's like, "Ah, the hills? I don't know about the hills. Can I go to a city? There's another nice little city over here." Mm-hmm. "If you just not destroy that, and I'll go to that." And the angels are like, "Fine, go to that city." Uh, and they start destroying Sodom and Gomorrah and sort of most of all of the plain. Mm-hmm. Uh, uh, and y- I was excited. I was excited when I was reading this to get to a part that I've always heard about and never understood, and that is that as Lot and his family are fleeing and the Lord is raining down sulfur and fire on these other cities, it's napalm all the way, uh, Lot's wife turns around and turns to a pillar of salt. Mm-hmm. Now, I had heard that story since I was a little kid.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And I was excited to read it now as an adult because I thought, "Okay, I'm finally gonna understand why Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt." Like, the, the crime of turning around does not seem to be a large crime.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah.

Dan Beecher Like, when they're, when it's being explained to them, it just sounds like you don't wanna dilly-dally. You wanna run.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You wanna, you wanna get going. Uh, it doesn't sound like... And by the way, if you do turn around, catastrophe-

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah ... on you. It's not saying, "Don't turn around, or else." It, it seems like it's just good advice.

Dan Beecher Right, yeah.

Dan McClellan "Hey, man, get going." Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's like, "Don't look down when you're on a high thing-

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah ... or whatever."

Dan Beecher But it turns out no. She turns into a pillar of salt, and there's no expl- I was so ready for the explanation- ... of what is happening here. Dan, help me out. I do not... Why is she salt?

Dan McClellan So, uh, again, a lot of this story is just accounting for why we find things the way we find them now. And the, the region of Sodom and Gomorrah is supposed to be around the Dead Sea, which is a very low-lying, uh, sea. I th- I wanna say it's couple hundred meters below sea level. Right. And there are salt deposits all over the place. And so there are just natural pillars and deposits of salt all around the Dead Sea. And so this is a way to account for why that is. And so it's not, it's not telling a story because there's something significant to the, the thrust of the story about this detail. It's telling the story in order for people to go, "Oh, that's why there's all these pillars of salt down by- Right ... the Dead Sea. Oh, well," um, it- Th- they all looked. Yeah. They, um, everybody looked.

Dan Beecher These are... So every, so every pillar is of somebody who turned around and looked.

Dan McClellan Right. And so, uh, one of the things I see a lot on social media is people who are talking about, uh, you know, proving the Bible true. There's a specific pillar, a very old one, that is referred to as Lot's wife, kind of colloquially. And so people will say, "Look, that's Lot's wife right there."

Dan Beecher There she is.

Dan McClellan "We even know where it is." And, and these people don't realize that this is on the top of a mountain, and that pillar is, like, over 50 feet high. Uh, so it's definitely not, uh, Lot's wife. Uh, and so there are aspects of this story that the original rhetorical intent, the rhetorical goal, is lost on people who are trying to understand it as verbatim history, as- Right ... an account of history as it actually happened. This is, you know, y- in some way you've gotta consider this like the story of the alligator who grabbed onto the elephant's nose and pulled and pulled and pulled until it stretched out. What's the point of that story? Oh, well, it is an etiology, a folk etiology for why elephants have long noses. Right. And very similarly, Lot turning around and turning into a pillar of salt is an etiology for why there are pillars of salt, uh, around the Dead Sea. Okay.

Dan Beecher Okay. Well, we're out of the, the bad cities, and, uh, uh, i- you know, briefly, uh, Lot, Lot and his family are in a little town called Zoar. Mm-hmm. Uh, then they leave Zoar and run up into the mountains, and his two daughters decide to do the most inexplicable thing I've ever heard of in my life.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher They say to him, "Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come into us after the manner of all the world." Mm-hmm. Now, I've read up a little bit on the geography of where we're talking about. They would not have to travel far-

Dan McClellan No

Dan Beecher ... to find husbands.

Dan McClellan Right. Like,

Dan Beecher there are men about. But they decide there aren't going to be any men for them. The only guy in the world. It feels, it feels like, uh, they think they're the only ones who survived of anybody- Mm-hmm ... who survived the, the, the, the firebombing of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Because-

Dan Beecher Even though they just came out of a town

Dan McClellan Yeah, it says they came out of Zoar, which, which is, uh, kind of a, a, a word that means little. So this little- Hmm ... place. Um, and it doesn't say anything about anyone l- uh, living there as, as far as I recall. But yeah, they, they flee into the mountains, and they must have thought of this as some kind of apocalyptic event, and surely no one is going to be left. And so it is down to us to, uh, carry on the human race.

Dan Beecher To repopulate the earth.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And unfortunately, the only dude is dad.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And dad is, uh... So they, so they come up with a plan, 'cause apparently Lot wouldn't be up for this if they presented it to him. So on subsequent nights- Mm-hmm ... they get their father drunk, and they lie with him.

Dan McClellan Right. So- And,

Dan Beecher and both of them get pregnant.

Dan McClellan Yep. And, uh, and so here we've got another etiology, another way to say, "This is why the world is the way it is." And the story here is that one of them gives birth to, uh, the eponymous ancestor of the Moabites, and the other gives birth to the eponymous ancestor of the Ammonites, people who would be in conflict with the nation of Israel, uh, in the, uh, first half of the first millennium BCE. And it's basically a way to say, "These two people that we're not really fans of, they're both the result of incest." So- Right ... it's, it's not just a way to tell this story and say, "Look at the pillar of salt, and, and this is why this city was destroyed, and oh yeah, our neighbors are also the children of incest."

Dan Beecher So quite- It's kinda nuts.

Dan McClellan Yeah. 'Cause like, c-

Dan Beecher because we've just, we've just told our, told this whole story about this good man, Lot, about, you know, he is, he is Abraham's kin. He is- Mm-hmm. Like, you c- w- he is the only good man in the entire plain of, of Jordan or whatever it is. Mm-hmm. And yet we're gonna just besmirch the crap out of all of that. And his entire lineage for the rest of time is, uh, is, is, uh, tainted-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... by incest.

Dan McClellan And in part, it kind of absolves him of the responsibility a little bit by saying this was the daughters' intentional decision, and they tricked him by getting him drunk, so he is not- Right ... responsible for this. So in a way, it tries to tie off Lot's righteousness- Right ... and say this wasn't his issue, but still the Moabites and the Ammonites are, are, you know, gross people. And- And this is part of one of the main rhetorical thrusts of the Book of Genesis, is to create a single lineage for all the peoples on Earth so that we can account for where everybody came from, and it all goes back to a single individual. It initially Adam and Eve, and we're gonna get, uh, then Noah and the flood, and then we're gonna get all these peoples. And, and the peoples we like, which are not really many people, uh, except for Israel and, um, and the people descended from Israel. But the people we don't like, everybody else, oh, we got some zingers in store for them. This is where they came from. Um, and including, um, you know, Hagar, whose, uh, son, uh, this is, uh, Genesis 16. Hagar gives birth to Ishmael. Ishmael is gonna be the eponymous ancestor of the Ishmaelites. But, but this is a, an enslaved woman who only, uh, was able to, uh, have a child by Abraham because Sarah, uh, was barren. And so- Right ... these are ways to kind of rhetorically taint all these other folks around them that, uh, they had different degrees of hatred for.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Not, I, I mean, it, it's an interesting device to use, and I get why they did it. They, let's not talk about the fact that they score a bit of an own goal on themselves when Sarah and Abraham turn out to be half-brother, half s- half-sister. But we'll get to that another time. That's a story for another time. Yeah. Uh, as for that, this, that's the end of this, the Lot story. Mm-hmm. That's all we get. Uh, and, uh, and so the, uh, you know, ends with a middle finger to the Moabites and the- ... uh, and the Ammonites. The end. And then we're back to, uh, to the, to the, uh, Abraham story- Yeah ... which we will get to- Yeah ... at some point. Yep. Uh, but for now, let's take a break.

Dan McClellan All right. Welcome to this installation of What Does That Mean? The segment where we try to talk about some terms, some concepts, some frameworks from the worlds of, uh, biblical studies, uh, study of religion, archeology. And today, I wanted to talk about a word, uh, that I pronounce provenance, but that some people will pronounce provenience or something like that, particularly if they're of a European bent. But this is a word that fundamentally refers to the origins of something or when something began to be the way it is. And this is used a lot in archeology to talk about where we found things. And so in, you will hear archeologists distinguish provenanced artifacts from unprovenanced artifacts, and this is a big deal. An unprovenanced artifact is something that does not have a secure provenance. We don't know precisely where it was first discovered, 'cause at some point, everything that we find archeologically was left somewhere, and then some point later, someone dug it up out of the ground, tripped over it, discovered it somehow. And that point of discovery is the provenance. Now, with unprovenanced artifacts, uh, a lot of them will turn up on the market. Somebody will be offered something for sale, and they don't know exactly where it came from. And the big problem with this is without a good provenance- You don't know if it's a forgery or not. You don't know where it came from. You don't know when it came from. And so there's a limit to the utility, the usefulness of such artifacts for scholars. To-

Dan Beecher Part of what we're talking about is kind of like, like the legal concept of chain of custody. Mm-hmm. Where, uh, where, like, if we know whose hands a piece of s- evidence has been in, and we can tr- we, you know, we can definitively track where it's come from and, and how, who's handled it and stuff- Mm-hmm ... then, uh, legally then, then it has much more, uh, force-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... than if it just shows up somewhere.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, and similarly, in scholarship, something has much more force and more utility for the scholarly discussion, uh, if we can say, "We were digging in this place. We kept careful notes. At this, uh, depth, we found this. It was found right next to this other thing. It was found with these other things inside it," or, "It was found inside these other things." And that all helps us to provide context so that when we're trying to reconstruct the history of this artifact, if we can say, "This bowl had a bunch of, uh, charred, uh, seeds in it," and we can carbon, uh, 14 test those seeds, and we can say they came from this time period, and this bowl came from a, a level, um, a stratum, uh, that also had these other artifacts in it that we can also date to a given time period, then we can say, "This bowl almost certainly came from this time period," or at least it was deposited in this time period. It may have been made earlier, but when it had these burnt seeds put inside it, when it fell into disuse, when it was covered in dirt, this is when that happened. And that helps us because other scholars are gonna look at it and say, "What does this mean? What was this used for? What does this tell us about, uh, the world in this time period?" If we can say, "This came from this decade, maybe even this year," uh, then it is a lot more useful to us as scholars. But if somebody shows up, if you see on eBay, I don't even know if eBay's still a thing, but if you see on eBay somebody selling a bowl, and they said, "Oh, this came from 5000 BC," you know, we have no idea if that's the case. And we can try to compare things. What kinds of designs are on it? How is it made? Uh, what, uh, you know, what shape is it in? We can try to fit it into things, but we may only be able to get within maybe 500 years. We may even not even be able to get into the right millennium. And so provenance is so important, and these days, there's an entire industry around creating fake artifacts.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You don't say.

Dan McClellan Believe it or not, there are people willing to create fake artifacts to make money, and some of them can make a lot of money. Uh, the Dead Sea Scrolls, we know that the Dead Sea Scrolls that were initially purchased, uh, way back in, uh, 1947 and in the years following, we know that those are authentic. And then we had archeologists who went out to Qumran and the surrounding area and dug and discovered a bunch more. We have the provenance for those things. The original ones were found on the market, so they were initially unprovenanced, but we were able to trace them back to the caves from which they came from and were pretty secure in that. But since 2002, there have been a handful of fragments of texts that, uh, were associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls that were sold, uh, at auctions or sold privately by, uh, people who just showed up with these fragments and said, probably said, "Oh yeah, they came from here." And that influenced the scholarship for many years. In fact- Mm ... one of them that I found fascinating was a fragment of Deuteronomy 27, which suggested... So there are, um, we have the, uh, in Deuteronomy, the blessings and the curses, one from Mount Ebal, um, and, uh, the other from another mountain. But the Samaritans, the ancient Samaritans claim that it was Mount Gerizim that was where the, um, one of these two things was, uh, was pronounced from. And this fragment of Deuteronomy 27, where it should have said Ebal, it said Gerizim. Oh, wow. And this was like, "Oh, no," or, "Oh, yeah." It, the Samaritans may have been right, and this excited a lot of people, and me included. I was like, "This is, this is fascinating. This is so cool." Fast-forward almost 20 years, we had a lot of scholars who were starting to do research on these fragments and look closely at them, who decided it seems like these are forgeries, that these aren't real. Uh, and a friend of mine was involved in that, Kip Davis, Dr. Kip Davis, uh, that I worked with, uh, at Trinity Western University, uh, 13 years ago, was, uh, one of the scholars who did a lot of really great work looking at these things, uh, under microscopes, looking at the ink, looking at the, uh, the, uh, it's not, uh, the animal skins that were used, and concluding with a high degree of certainty that these were not produced anciently. These are forgeries.

Dan Beecher Interesting.

Dan McClellan And a lot of money changed hands, uh, regarding those fragments. So, and, and some of these are in the, were in the hands or probably still are in the hands of, like, the Museum of the Bible. But there were also some universities that got involved. Azusa Pacific, for instance, University purchased at least one of these fragments. And so it influenced the scholarship. It caused a lot of money to change hands, and it also brought prestige to a lot of these places that, you know, boasted of having- ... fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it turns out- Right ... they were fake. And so obviously there are a lot of folks who would rather not accept the findings of, uh, Dr. Davis and other scholars who still think they, they are genuine. But they're almost certainly forgeries.

Dan Beecher Well, especially when, like, you're, when, you know, you've got some scholar whose work is dependent on these in- really cool things, you know, and they've put in a lot of effort, and they've put in a lot of time on this thing, to then have to turn around and say, "Oh, you know what? Just disregard- Yeah ... all of my books- All these publications.

Dan McClellan Yeah ... all of my thesis,

Dan Beecher all this other stuff. That, that's a painful, painful moment.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, you know, we don't want anyone to have to go through that, and we don't want universities to be spending hundreds of thousand dollar- of dollars. We don't want folks like the Museum of the Bible spending even more than that, um, trying to maybe even smuggle in some of these things from, from other, uh, countries.

Dan Beecher Yeah, they've been in some trouble, that Museum of the Bible. Yeah. Those, those Greens made some sketchy purchases over the years.

Dan McClellan Yeah, there, there are issues there. But, um, I think, uh, the... I recently heard that rather than trying to purchase antiquities and things that are, um, more or less relics, they're starting to fund independent archeological excavations. And when I say independent, I mean they're paying money so that other people who are not associated with them and are not under their thumb can go dig in places, and I think that's a much better use of money. So, um, so that, I, I think they are starting to learn their lesson, uh, in that regard. But yeah, they have done a lot of stuff incorrectly. Uh- 'Cause they had a

Dan Beecher whole bunch of Dead Sea Scrolls that turned out to not be authentic. They had, th- they've, they've had a lot of their, of their collection turn out to be phonies. Uh, that-

Dan McClellan that's been one of the issues. Uh, one of the issues has been that they've purchased antiquities and brought them into the United States when, uh, that was against the law. Uh- Right ... and some of that has been repatriated. So yeah, there's, there's an issue with that, and, and this is one of the reasons that a lot of scholars are calling for a complete moratorium on publishing any scholarship that is based on or that is presenting unprovenanced artifacts.