Paul over at
Is That In The Bible has written a highly accessible column on those quintessential twin cities of ill repute,
Sodom and Gomorrah. Here you'll find a good deal of information - as opposed to the kind of disinformation that's widely assumed - distilled in one place. Read this and you'll know an awful lot more than the tonsil rattlers in a thousand pulpits. I'd offer a précis, but frankly I wouldn't do it justice.
Paul also introduced me to a new term, one I'm going to have to road test myself in a future blog entry:
odium theologicum.
Chambers defines the phrase as "the hatred of theologians for each other's errors (or each other)." Boy, now there's a term to conjure with!
This is a classic of Biblical Criticism and one of the reasons that such essays have a low priority in my reading. Why don't we apply some of the critical evaluation commonly used in devaluing the biblical record to the Greek records. The Metamorphoses and the Fasti both contain fragments of the account contained in Genesis. Hence, both Greek accounts are derived from some earlier source. Moreover, the Metamorphoses lacks the earlier events or backstory. That was probably glossed in later on by scribes who recognized this lack of flow in plot. And the original fragment in the Metamorphoses does not stand by itself without this backstory so it is no doubt an early and incomplete fabrication. And the Fasti account contains a reference to Neptune and the Metamorphoses does not. Hence, the Fasti account was written by Neptunists who wanted a place at the table for their favorite god for political reasons. And how can one claim these accounts are "undoubtedly" older than the Genesis account when we have no idea how long either account existed as oral tradition? Ovid only lived about the time of Christ.
ReplyDelete"The historical and geographical reality of these places is disputed" is a throw-away premise. It can be applied to just about anything in that time period and can be included in almost any argument against anything.
While I would agree that homosexuality is not the focus of the Genesis account, it is an index of of the evilness of these cities. Under those circumstances we cannot argue that homosexuality somehow is not a matter of concern. On the other hand, there were probably many other indices of evil that were just as condemning. The incident just happened to involve the events that it did.
Christ was not nearly so concerned about Sodom and Gomorrah and its details as he was about the reception he received in Palestine. He referred to this in the NT.
-- Neo