cw sexual assault
So the town of Sodom hears that there are two angels at Lot's house, so they go over and say "hey, we want to rape your guests". Then Lot goes "no, rape my daughters instead", to which they respond "no, we want to rape the guests". Then God goes "you know what? I'm barbecuing the city and the one next door, Lot, you and your family leave, but don't look back". Then Lot's wife does look back, so she gets turned into a seasoning.
like... the fuck?
The Bible also features the first ever MMORPG sidequest
David took his men with him and went out and killed two hundred Philistines and brought back their foreskins. They counted out the full number to the king so that David might become the king’s son-in-law. Then Saul gave him his daughter Michal in marriage.
there's some critical scholarship that talks about Sodom/Gommorah's story as less about weird sexual deviancy, but rather their "sin" was their horrible treatment of the poor and the exaltation of the rich. the idea being is that the story changed over time, because politically connected people didn't like that old version and decided to punch it up with a lot of sexual depravity.
i'm not saying i buy it, but there seems to be a whole genre of a religious parables that started out as a cautionary tale warning those in power which became something more palatable to the powerful through institutional translation/interpretation by political forces. so, i don't exactly disbelieve it either.
Sodom and Gamorrah is the best cope the ancient near east could muster when a town gets incinerated by a meteor. "oh yeah, those people got smote because they were awful weirdos doing freak shit".
God also killed a man transporting the ark because he was trying to prevent it from falling off his wagon by readjusting it. What the fuck?
The actual purpose of the ark of the covenant is to fall off a wagon and break. That's it.
There’s also Job, who was extremely loyal to god. He lived a simple life and loved his family and prayed everyday. Then one day God and the devil met and the devil was like “lol I bet you a hundred bucks that this guy will denounce you if he faces hardship” and god was like “bet” and so he killed his entire family and burned his crops
The story of Job isn't literal. Its intended as a parable to address the question "Why should we worship a God when bad things continue to happen?" The story of Job is intended to decouple the material conditions of one's life from one's spiritual beliefs.
If you're richer than Job, you should still worship God because worship is not supposed to be a consequence of your good fortune, it is supposed to be an independent spiritual duty. If you're poorer than Job, you should still worship God, because worship is not something you do to win material rewards or mitigate folly, its something you do because you genuinely love and admire your deity.
And Job's story is such a riches-to-rags-to-riches tale that its supposed to trounce any conceivable real-life occurrence. You will never have had it better than Job to or worse than Job by the end. Therefore, your material condition is not an excuse for your lack of piety.
God also instructed the Israelites to commit war crimes in Jericho by killing everybody living there lol
There's an SMBC joke about how the Bible is an argument for polytheism, as a critical reading strongly suggests a pantheon of bickering deities issuing contradictory messages across thousands of years.
You don't even have to go to Jacob. Just consider the story of Abraham and Isaac, in which God demands human sacrifice and then says "Lolz, jk! Go kill that lamb instead."
Attempting to draw a straight line moral standard from the Bible is marginally less rational than trying to get a historical account of events from a crowd of drunk toddlers.
Lot went out with his desexing stick, and waved it about most unsexily
lmao
Well in Bible times it was considered a really big deal to rape your guests. This likely came from the fact that wronging people from a different tribe would likely lead to a war. Lot as the host had a moral duty to protect his guests at any cost
As a side note if a town's reaction to people from outside the town is gang rape the town probably should be destroyed
Well in Bible times it was considered a really big deal to rape your guests
:the-more-you-know:
As a side note if a town’s reaction to people from outside the town is gang rape the town probably should be destroyed
Ironically this is where you probably lose a lot of Conservative "Christians"
yeah but they were in the wrong here and I'm sticking by that principle
No, I'm with you all the way on this. Just saying there's a whole lot more places that need burning down to the ground.
:nuke:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3
Sodom might have been a Tenguska-sized asteroid that vaporised a Syrian city in 1650BCE. That article about it has some really interesting breakdowns of the damage it caused.
pottery sherds with outer surfaces melted into glass, some bubbled as if ‘boiled’; melted and ‘bubbled’ mudbrick fragments; partially-melted roofing clay (with wattle impressions); and melted building plaster
Based on the distribution of human bones on the upper and lower tall, we propose that the force of a high-temperature, debris-laden, high-velocity blast wave from an airburst/impact (i) incinerated and flayed their exposed flesh, (ii) decapitated and dismembered some individuals, (iii) shattered many bones into mostly cm-sized fragments, (iv) scattered their bones across several meters, (v) buried the bones in the destruction layer, and (vi) charred or disintegrated any bones that were still exposed.
I can't seem to find it but I remember reading about one more or less intact skeleton that was under a mudbrick doorway and had raised their arm in a defensive posture. The idea of living through that, even for a few seconds, is big nope. It fused the carbon in the ground almost to the point of creating diamonds.
Now imagine being the schmuck in a merchant caravan just outside the city. One moment it's there, the next the entire city has been erased by the sky.
I recall more critical modern readings of these stories relate this as more a criticism of wealthy cities failing to be welcoming to travellers and outsiders.
Inhospitality is not just a denial of food and shelter, it expresses the inhumanness in the heart of the one denying it.
Yeah as I understand it, back then guest rights were a huge deal and being inhospitable to a stranger was a really big deal
Sacred Hospitality was fucking important back in the day, and a lot of these weird religious parables are ultimately just long-form ways of saying "if someone shows up to your house, give them food, water, and shelter for the night." If you live in a society where going to town to sell wool and buy some supplies is a days-long journey, then you'd better hammer it into everyone's skulls that you should help one another out with that process lest your Bronze Age civilization implode.
There's this Greek myth I like a lot about Zeus going down to hang out and check on things, but he wants the unvarnished truth, so he disguises himself as a beggar. The first few people he approaches refuse him, so he continues on until he comes to a little homestead where an elderly couple live. Despite his meager trappings, they invite him into their home and, though they apologize for not having much to share, they pour him wine from their jar and feed him what they have. The evening goes on and on, all of them having a good time, as it seems this beggar is quite the conversationalist. As the shadows grow longer and as the humble couple pour round after round of wine, it slowly becomes apparent that the jar is still half full, even though it must have been emptied twice-over by this point.
I can't remember if the wife realizes something is afoot or if Zeus just reveals himself once he's satisfied, but one way or another he takes his true form and while the couple reel, thanks them for being the first on his travels to offer him hospitality. Zeus then offers them a boon of their choosing. These are simple, poor folk, but though they could ask for riches or bountiful land, they explain that they really have all that they need and are content. Zeus demands that there must be something they lack, so the couple say that there is one thing they are concerned about: should one of them die before the other, it would surely be very painful for the one still alive. They then ask Zeus that both of them should die on the same day, so that they never have to be apart. Zeus agrees.
Some years later, the one of them falls and dies in the morning near their house. Upon witnessing it, the other runs to their body and upon realizing what's happened, dies on the same spot. From where the two lay, a tree begins to grow. As the tree grows, it reveals that it is a tree with two trunks that twist together around and around each other, and in this way the couple remain together after death.
while drunk
yeah that part is definitely deserves being in the main post
Lot's daughters thought everyone had died, including their betrothed. Their mom was dead, so they thought they'd have to reproduce the human race with their dad. Lot refused, so they got him drunk.
Thank you for the straight forward answer. I can absolutely see this within the framework of biblical ‘folksy wisdom’. (Or something that in context of the Bible makes you nod along and say ‘yup, mhmm, ok…’)
a lot of Biblical stuff is supposed to be weird and disconcerting, people just teach it wrong.
If you did that in a D&D campaign most DM's would make you change your alignment to Chaotic Evil.
Some Genesis scholars have the book explain regional tribal/ imperial relationships. The Sodom and Gemorrah story explained the taboo against marrying Ammonites and Moabites (since their nations were descended from incest) along with explaining ancient ruins along the Dead Sea coast.
Ammonites and Moabites were rivals over prime grazing land in 🏳️⚧️ 🇯🇴
You're missing the lead in. God is visiting Abraham and says he'll destroy Sodom and Gommorah because the poor have been crying out against it. Abraham goes "oh crap, my nephew(maybe cousin? I forgor) lives there. Maybe spare them?" God says if he finds 100 good people they're spared. Abraham bargains him down slowly to 10. The angels are looking for just 10 good people, but they're all so wicked they see someone who doesn't have family nearby to protect them and immediately want to gangrape them. Lot offers his daughters because quests are very important in this time, daughters are not. She gets turned to salt because you don't disobey God. SHe couldn't give up her old life in a sense, and had to see the sinful world she was leaving behind.
