The Biblical Story of Lot –
An Analysis and Comparison with the Quranic Narrative
Originally Published: January 10, 2014
“The
most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own
understanding of their history.”
-
George Orwell
The story of Lot (Lut in
Arabic) is one of the most well-known and controversial stories in the
Bible. Yet, despite its controversial nature, it is still regarded as a
historically accurate portrayal of actual events by most Jews and
Christians. However, many people have questioned the historicity of the
story and for good reason, since a careful reading of the story will reveal
inconsistencies and contradictions, as well as evidence of deliberate
exaggerations by the author(s) of the story for the purposes of political
propaganda. In this article, we will look at the evidence for the view
that the Biblical story of Lot can at best be described as an artfully
constructed narrative with internal contradictions and inconsistencies which
was written for the express purpose of spreading political propaganda against
the enemies of Israel.[1] After having
finished this analysis, we will then compare the Biblical story with that of
the Islamic one, as found in the Holy Quran. It is hoped that the
evidence will show the reader that the Quranic story is much more credible than
the Biblical version, since it lacks the contradictions of the latter.
The Biblical Narrative
The main story of Lot in the Bible is found in Genesis 19:
1-38. After having told Abraham (Ibrahim in Arabic) of His intention to
destroy Sodom for its depravity, God sent two angels to warn Lot and his family
of the impending punishment and to get them out of the doomed city, as they
were the only righteous household to be found there.
The angels took the form of handsome young men, which led the
wicked people of Sodom to demand that Lot release them into their
custody. Pleading with the crowd, Lot instead offered his daughters and
told them to “do to them as you please.”[2]
When the crowd rejected Lot’s offer and continued to demand that the young men
be handed over to them, they were struck with blindness by the angels.
As the hour of Sodom’s destruction drew nearer, the angels ordered
Lot and his family to leave the city. Failing to heed the angels’ warning
not to look back at the city while they were escaping, Lot’s wife was turned
into a pillar of salt. Hence, only Lot and his daughters survived the
ordeal and fled to the nearby town of Zoar.
However, Lot and his daughters did not settle in Zoar and before
long, they left the town and settled in a nearby cave. This is where the
more controversial part of the story is to be found. Wrongly convinced
that they were the only people left in the entire world, Lot’s daughters
concocted a plan to get their father drunk on wine on successive nights in
order to have sexual intercourse with him, so as to “preserve
offspring through [their] father.”[3]
And so it happened, that on two successive nights, the girls took turns to lay
with their father in order to “repopulate” the world. The result of these
incestuous acts would be two sons. The elder daughter bore a son named
Moab, whereas the younger daughter also bore a son and named him
Ben-Ammi. These two sons would be the ancestors of the Moabites and
Ammonites, respectively.[4]
An Analysis of the Biblical Story
As stated above, despite its controversial nature, the story is
widely accepted as historical fact by most Jews and Christians.[5] However, after an objective analysis of the
story, it becomes difficult to hold to that proposition. In this section
of the article, we will see the evidence for why this story must be rejected as
a pious forgery.
First and foremost, we must question why a supposedly “righteous”
man such as Lot could be so easily taken advantage of by his daughters.
Contrary to apologetic claims, it is clear from the context that Lot was at
least aware of what was happening after his eldest daughter had slept with
him. The New International Version claims that Lot was unaware when the
elder daughter lay down with him or when she got up:
“…he did not know when she lay down or when
she rose.”[6]
However,
according to the famous Jewish commentator Rashi, the original Hebrew text
indicates that Lot was aware once the eldest daughter got up after having
intercourse with him:
“Heb. וּבְקוּמָהּ, mentioned in conjunction with the elder, is
dotted (i.e., there is a dot over the second “vav”), to
denote that when she arose, he did know, but nevertheless he was not careful
not to drink on the second night (Nazir 23a). (Said Rabbi Levi: Whoever is
inflamed by the lust for illicit relations, will ultimately be made to eat his
own flesh (i.e., to commit incest). - [from Gen. Rabbah 51:9] [This does not
appear in all editions of Rashi.]”[7]
This
should lead us to ask some important questions. Since, according to the
linguistic analysis of the Hebrew text, Lot realized that his eldest daughter
had intercourse with him, he should have realized what was going on and been
able to stop the younger daughter from also having intercourse with him.
Yet, he did not. He got drunk again and slept with the younger daughter as
well. Hence, he was just as culpable as his daughters. Yet, this is
despite the fact that Lot was supposedly the only righteous man in Sodom, a
city infamous for its sexual depravity!
This dramatic irony has not been lost on scholars. As the late Professor Alan F. Segal observed:
“So Lot and his now reduced family settle in a
cave, where the daughters commit incest by sleeping with their father. Strange that after saving us from one sexual
misfortune, the characters wind up in another one so quickly.”[8]
Another question one must ask is why weren’t Lot daughters punished or rebuked
by God for doing something as depraved as getting their father drunk and taking
turns having sex with him, even if it was out of concern for the extinction of
the human race? Why were they even led to think that “there
is not a man on earth…”?[9] After all,
God could have easily sent the same angels that had led Lot and his daughters
out of Sodom to intervene and tell them that they were not the only ones left
and that there were plenty of men left in the world! Yet, for some unfathomable reason, God did
not intervene and prevent this horrible sexual immorality, which happened to
occur shortly after the destruction of Sodom for its sexual immoralities!
We also have to wonder what Lot’s reaction was when he found out
that he had impregnated his own daughters! How would that have affected
his relationship with his “sons” (or “grandsons”)? The Biblical text
unfortunately does not offer any insight and the answers to these questions are
not easy to come by. It is up to Jews and Christians who believe in the
literal reading of this story to answer these
questions.
Moving on, let us consider some internal contradictions and inconsistencies in
the story. As we have already seen, Lot’s daughters believed that there
was no man left on earth other than their father. But how could this have
been true when just a few verses earlier, we were told that Lot and his
daughters had fled to the nearby town of Zoar, before the destruction of Sodom
and Gomorrah began?
“By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had
risen over the land. Then the Lord
rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens.”[10]
Are we
supposed to believe that there was not one man in Zoar? Also, did Lot’s
daughters conveniently forget about Abraham, their great-uncle, and the many
men that were part of Abraham’s settlement?[11] Does it not
seem that Lot’s daughters were conveniently ignoring reality? As such,
perhaps it was not ignorance that drove them to commit incest but something far
more sinister. If that is true, they should have been punished severely
for committing the sin of incest, yet the text offers no answers.[12]
Another question to ask, and which the text does not answer, is where did the
family get wine from? It seems far-fetched to say that in the chaos and
confusion of their exodus from Sodom, they would have remembered to pack enough
wine. Where did they get it from then? If they got it from Zoar,
then it only proves that Lot and his daughters had spent some time there before
retreating into the cave. His daughters would definitely have come across
many men as a result, and hence could not have believed that Lot was the only
man left on earth. But since the Bible states that they were oblivious to
this fact, they clearly could not have gotten the wine from Zoar. So, if
they didn’t get the wine from Sodom or Zoar, then where did it come from?
Rashi offered an interesting and disturbing suggestion:
“Wine was made available to them in the cave,
to make it possible for two nations to emerge from them.”[13]
This
would suggest that God deliberately gave them wine, knowing that Lot’s
daughters would sleep with their father and thus give rise to the Moabites and
the Ammonites, two nations which would conveniently become Israel’s greatest
enemies in the future. In other words, God encouraged the incestuous
relationship between Lot and his daughters!
This brings us to a possible motive for this story. Is it a mere
coincidence that the Bible provides such an embarrassing story for the origins
of Israel’s great enemies, the Moabites and Ammonites? Is this story not
only a pious forgery but an ancient propaganda tract, designed to demonize and
malign the people with whom the Israelites were often at war with? Indeed,
this is exactly how many Biblical scholars interpret the story. The 19th-century
scholar Amos Kidder Fiske observed:
“There was no doubt of the kinship between the
tribes of Israel and the Moabites and Ammonites of that region, or Moab and
Ammon, as they were called. But a keen hostility was felt toward them on
account of old conflicts when the Israelites were struggling for the possession
of the land of Canaan, and the marauding attacks to which they continued to be
subject, especially from the Ammonites on their borders.
On account of this state of feeling the makers of the ethnic myths would not
allow that Moab and Ammon were direct descendants of their great ancestor
Abraham, and not only set them off on a collateral line, but have them an
incestuous origin, and covered the name of Lot and his daughters with
obloquy. […] The phrase ‘unto this day’ also plainly indicates an
imaginative dealing by the writer with a remote past.”[14]
Similarly,
the contemporary scholar Kenneth C. Davis has stated that:
“For
the Israelites, this story, adapted from an old Canaanite folklore, mockingly
explains the origin of two neighboring tribes. It also establishes that
these tribes were not descended from Abraham and had no divine claim to the
Promised Land.”[15]
Additionally, Alan Segal
explains that:
“This
polemical myth is a way to justify the conquest of Moab and Ammon. The story admits a relationship between the
Israelites, the Moabites, and the Ammonites, by making their ancestors
‘cousins,’ but also suggests that they are not worthy of being within the
Abrahamic covenant. What is particularly
telling is that we cannot find evidence of Moabite and Edomite habitation
during the patriarchal period. These
stories are not from that period at all.
Rather, these stories function in a polemical way during the monarchy,
not during the patriarchal period, and they also developed secondary significance
during the Persian and Hellenistic periods…”[16]
Finally, echoing this idea,
Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman state regarding the patriarchal
stories in general (including the story of Lot and his daughters) that:
“…that
they offer a colorful human map of the ancient Near East from the unmistakable
viewpoint of the kingdom of Israel and the kingdom of Judah in the eight and
seventh centuries BCE. These stories
offer a highly sophisticated commentary on political affairs in this region in
the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods.
Not only can many of the ethnic terms and place-names be dated to this
time, but their characterizations mesh perfectly with what we know of the
relationships of neighboring peoples and kingdoms with Judah and Israel.”[17]
Finklestein and Silberman
also identify the story of Lot as originating from the “J” or “Yahwist” source.[18] In other words, there is little doubt that
the story of the origin of the Moabites and Ammonites is a myth invented for
the purpose of demonizing two nations that were often at war with the Israelite
monarchy. It is not a historically
accurate origin story.
In closing, we have now seen that the Genesis account of Lot suffers from
serious flaws, bringing into question the historicity of the story. Not
only is the story riddled with contradictions and controversy, Jews and
Christians must also admit that the main purpose for the story was simply to
serve as a propaganda tool against two of Israel’s greatest enemies.
God-fearing Jews and Christians should also ask a very important question:
Why would
God have encouraged incest between Lot and his daughters by deliberately
providing them with wine to help Lot’s daughters bring their severely
misinformed plot to fruition?
Having dealt with the
Biblical story of Lot, let us now discuss the Quranic version.
The Quranic Narrative
It behooves us to analyze the Quranic account of Lot and the
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, since both it and the Bible mention the
story. It must be stated outright that the Quran does not attribute to
the Prophet Lut (peace be upon him) or his daughters the abhorrent sins of
drunkenness and incest. In contrast to the Bible, the Quran provides a much
more positive, albeit brief, account of the blessed prophet, and with none of
the inconsistencies that litter the Biblical version. In fact, Lut (peace
be upon him) is mentioned along with other prophets as an honored servant of
God:
“And Isma'il and Elisha, and Jonas, and Lut:
and to all We gave favour above the nations.”[19]
“And to Lut, too, We gave Judgment and
Knowledge, and We saved him from the town which practiced abominations: truly
they were a people given to Evil, a rebellious people.”[20]
On the other hand, despite the obvious differences between the Biblical and
Quranic versions of the story, there are of course some similarities as well.
For example, both narratives state that Prophet Lut (peace be upon him) lived
among a sinful and depraved people. The Quran also states that Lut (peace
be upon him) had preached to his people to repent to God and to reform their
evil ways.[21] Both also
state that God sent angels to lead Lut’s family out of the town before the
destruction came upon the sinners. They also both state that Lut’s wife
did not heed the warning to not look back at the city. In fact, the Quran
declares Lut’s wife to be a sinner who is doomed to Hell:
“Allah sets forth, for an example to the
Unbelievers, the wife of Noah and the wife of Lut: they were (respectively)
under two of our righteous servants, but they were false to their (husbands),
and they profited nothing before Allah on their account, but were told:
"Enter ye the Fire along with (others) that enter!”[22]
But that is pretty much
where the similarities end. The Quran does not mention what happened to
Lut and his family after the destruction of Sodom. His story is mentioned
not as a single historical narrative but instead as separate passages
interspersed throughout the Quran and serves as an example of God’s swift
justice as well as His favors upon His righteous servants. But what is
left out is just as telling as what is mentioned. As already mentioned, the
Quran does not attribute any flagrant sexual deviancy to Lut (peace be upon
him) or his daughters. Upon comparison to the Biblical story, which is
full of inconsistencies, we find the Quranic story to be consistent throughout.
Conclusion
In this article, we have analyzed the Biblical and Quranic stories of Lot, respectively.
After a summary of the Biblical narrative, we proceeded to discuss the glaring
contradictions and inconsistencies in the story. With undeniable evidence
of serious flaws in the story, we came to the inevitable conclusion that the
story was artfully (or not) crafted for the purpose of serving as a propaganda tool
against the enemies of Israel (the Moabites and Ammonites), by attributing to
these nations a most embarrassing and shameful origin. We then compared
the Biblical story with the Quranic one, ultimately concluding that the latter
story is far more consistent and lacks any of the controversial and downright
false aspects of the former. Jews and
Christians are urged to consider the evidence from an objective point of
view.
And Allah knows best!
[1] This does not mean that
the whole story was concocted solely to malign the enemies of Israel. Rather, it means that the author(s) of the
story added mythical elements to it for this purpose.
[2] Genesis 19:8 (New
International Version).
The
story of the incestuous origins of the Moabites and Ammonites is blindly
accepted as historical fact, despite the obvious political nature of the
Genesis story, not to mention the serious inconsistencies in the story, as we
shall now see.
[8] Alan F. Segal, Sinning in the Hebrew Bible: How the Worst
Stories Speak to Its Truth (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), p.
108.
Segal
also noted earlier the clear mythical elements of the Genesis story of
Lot. For instance, when discussing Lot’
escape from Sodom, his brief stay in Zoar and final settlement in the cave,
Segal wrote:
“It is
pretty clear that Lot the character is just running through action after action
known to be part of his story with very little attention to uniformity of plot
or character. This narrative has the classic marks of myth” (Ibid.).
Some
modern translators have obviously tried to deliberately mistranslate the
text. For example, the editors of the
New International Version translate the verse
as follows (emphasis ours):
“One
day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no
man around
here to give us children—as is the custom all over the
earth.”
This
deliberate and dishonest translation can be easily exposed through an analysis
of the Hebrew text. The use of the
phrases “around here” and “the earth” show clearly that the editors are guilty
of academic dishonesty since the original Hebrew uses the words בָּאָ֙רֶץ֙ (bā-’ā-reṣ) and הָאָֽרֶץ (hā-’ā-reṣ), respectively,
which in both cases refers to the earth and not to some locality. Indeed, the correct translation for the word
“bā-’ā-reṣ” is “on earth” or
“on the earth”, as shown by its usage in other verses in Genesis (emphasis
ours):
“God
blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water
in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth” (Genesis 1:22).
“Today
you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I
will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever
finds me will kill me”
(Genesis 4:14).
“I am
going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens,
every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on
earth will perish” (Genesis 6:17).
Would
it be correct to translate the Hebrew word in these verses as “around here” (which
the NIV editors clearly did not) when the context clearly shows that it is
referring to the entire world? There is
no doubt that the translation has been deliberately twisted. Perhaps the editors were uncomfortable with
the clear difficulty of the original Hebrew text and the contradictions it
raises. Hence, they tried to make Lot’s
daughters appear less naïve and culpable for their disgusting sin. Ironically, by choosing to twist the meaning,
the editors actually increase the egregious nature of the sin, for instead of
committing the sin out of a genuine concern for the continuation of the human
race (as erroneous as that was), they were actually more concerned with
preserving their “family line”, a much less “noble” concern.
[11] In fact, Genesis 19:28 states
the Abraham was close enough to the area that Lot and his daughters were in
that he was able to actually see the smoke rising from the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah:
“He
looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he
saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.”
Hence,
Lot and his daughters were easily within traveling distance from Abraham’s
settlement!
[12] According to the
previously cited Christian website, Lot’s
daughters were indeed guilty of lusting after their father, and it explains
this behavior by claiming that they were still influenced by the Sodomite way
of life:
“The
daughters concocted this scheme to save the human race, believing - or so they
said - that the fiery destruction which befell the cities in that area was
world-wide and that God had slain everyone else on earth. This, despite the
fact that they knew the little city of Zoar had been spared -they had gone
there to escape from Sodom! Sodom's insidious influence on their characters is
obvious.”
But
then, why were they not stopped by the angels that had led them out of
Sodom? Why did the angels save Lot’s daughters
when “Sodom’s insidious influence” was alive and well in them? It makes no sense.
[14] Amos Kidder Fiske, The Myths of Israel: The Ancient Book of
Genesis with Analysis and Explanation of Its Composition (New York: The
MacMillan Company, 1897), pp. 126-127.
This
book is available online at Google
Books.
[15] Kenneth C. Miller, Don’t Know Much About the Bible: Everything
You Need to Know About the Good Book But Never Learned (New York: Perennial,
2004), p. 76.
[16] Segal, op. cit., p. 108.
[17] Israel Finkelstein and
Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible
Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and The Origin of Its
Sacred Texts (New York: The Free Press, 2001), pp. 38-39.
The
“Yahwist” source is one of the four separate sources that scholars have
identified within the Pentateuch. The
other three are the Elohist (E) source, the Deuteronomist (D) source, and the
Priestly (P) source. See the following
for more on the Yahwist source: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/651208/Yahwist-source
[19] Surah Al-Anaam, 6:86
(Yusuf Ali Translation).
[20] Surah Al-Anbiya, 21:74.
[21] Surah Al-Araf, 7:80-84.
[22] Surah At-Tahrim, 66:10.
