"So it's much more likely that these pregnancies were the result of repeated incestuous activity." The chances of pregnancy resulting from a single random sexual act by a fertile couple is on the order of one in 50. One might conclude that the chances of both daughters becoming pregnant on successive nights would be one in 2,500. Further, the chances of both producing a boy would be about one in 10,000. However, women who live in the same household often find that their menstrual cycles are synchronized. So, the chances would be much more than 1 in ten thousand, but would still be a very unusual happening.
In Genesis 19:8, Lot offered his two daughters to be gang-raped by the men of Sodom. That could be an indication of Lot's sexually degenerative practices.
Interpretation of Genesis 19 and Deuteronomy 23 by liberal theologians:
religioustolerance.org
Liberal theologians generally accept the Documentary Hypothesis -- that Genesis was written by three anonymous authors or groups of authors referred to as J, E, and P. They wrote book of Genesis between 922 and 622 BCE. Many believe that Lot, his daughters, Moses and other heroes in the Hebrew Scriptures were mythical beings whose life stories are a mixture of legends imported from nearby Pagan cultures, happenings in the life of fictional Hebrew heroes, creative fiction, and isolated events from the lives of real people.
The stories in Genesis 19 are not of actual events. However, elements of these stories may have happened. For example:
bullet Part of the Sodom story might have come from an incident in which townspeople wanted to humiliate strangers by engaging in "an act of sexual degradation and male rape...These are acts of violence that are committed by parties seeking to show their hatred for those they are degrading. It is not an act of love or of caring" 3
bullet The destruction of Sodom might have been based on ancient memories of a town burning when nearby deposits of bitumen caught fire.
bullet There are deposits in the form of pillars of salt along the shore of the Dead Sea. The story of Lot's wife might have been created in order to explain a particularly life-like deposit. 4
Author Ilan Kutz wrote:
"The Israelite monotheistic biblical writers were concerned with the threat from the idol-worshipping neighbors, the Moabites and Ammonites, who were the Israelites' closest kin by intermarriage and language. I suggest that these writers incorporated the myth of Lot into the Biblical text to discredit the idol worshippers. Through this carefully crafted plot, the biblical narrators confirmed the ethnic proximity of these nations to the people of Israel but at the same time cast an ancient blot of shame on their origins." 5
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Who raped whom according to one liberal commentator?
Kutz suggests that the account of the conception of Lot's grandchildren/children might have been reversed and that Lot may have frequently perpetrated acts of incest with his daughters.
He points out that:
bullet The daughters could not have believed that there were no men in the world. They had just come from Tzo'ar where there would have been plenty of men. Abraham, their great-uncle was situated about a day's walk away.
bullet If Lot had often committed incest with his daughters then they would have known just how we would behave after drinking wine and be able to predict the consequences.
bullet The chances of two conceptions by two women on successive nights is very slim. Kutx writes: "So it's much more likely that these pregnancies were the result of repeated incestuous activity." The chances of pregnancy resulting from a single random sexual act by a fertile couple is on the order of one in 50. One might conclude that the chances of both daughters becoming pregnant on successive nights would be one in 2,500. Further, the chances of both producing a boy would be about one in 10,000. However, women who live in the same household often find that their menstrual cycles are synchronized. So, the chances would be much more than 1 in ten thousand, but would still be a very unusual happening.
bullet In Genesis 19:8, Lot offered his two daughters to be gang-raped by the men of Sodom. That could be an indication of Lot's sexually degenerative practices.
bullet Lot's wife turning to salt could be interpreted as "...a metaphor for a mother who is frozen in her salty tears. Her older daughters have just perished in the disaster, while her younger ones are left exposed to the ongoing abuse of their drunkard of a father."
He concludes that Lot himself was the incest perpetrator; his daughters were victims.
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References used:
The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.
1. Based on the King James Version of the Bible.
2. Charles Laymon, Ed., "The Interpreter's one-volume commentary on the Bible," Abingdon Press, (1991), Page 114.
3. Reb Gershon Caudill, "A Heterosexual Jewish Rebbe's View on the (Supposedly) Homosexual Texts in the Hebrew Bible," at: affirmation.org
4. Op Cit., Laymon, Page 17.
5. Ilan Kutz, "Revisiting the lot of the first incestuous family: the biblical origins of shifting the blame on to female family members," British Medical Journal, 2005-DEC-24; 331, Pages 1507 to 1508. Online at: bmj.bmjjournals.com |
