How Lot’s Wife Became a Pillar of Salt - The BAS Library
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Home > Magazines > BAR > May/June 2009

How Lot’s Wife Became a Pillar of Salt

By Amos Frumkin

Abraham famously argued with God about his decision to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah: “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” the patriarch asks the Master of the Universe. “Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive it for the fifty righteous who are in it?” God agrees for the sake of the innocent fifty. A superb negotiator, Abraham bargains with the Lord until he agrees to save the city even for only ten righteous souls (Genesis 18:23–32). But there were not even ten. “The Lord rained […]

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Footnotes

1.

See Tina Niemi, “The Life of the Dead Sea,” BAR 34:01.

2.

For a description of carbon-14 analysis and its use in Biblical archaeology, see Hershel Shanks, “Radiocarbon Dating,” BAR 31:01.

3.

The Holocene is the most recent geological epoch.

4.

“Have Sodom and Gomorrah Been Found?” BAR 06:05.

Endnotes

1.

For a technical geological account of the material in this article, see Amos Frumkin, “Formation and Dating of a Salt Pillar in Mount Sedom Diapir, Israel,” Bulletin of the Geological Society of America 121 (2009), pp. 286–293.

2.

C. Migowski, A. Agnon, R. Bookman, J.F.W. Negendank and M. Stein, “Recurrence Pattern of Holocene Earthquakes along the Dead Sea Transform Revealed by Varve-counting and Radiocarbon Dating of Lacustrine Sediments,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters 222 (2004), pp. 301–314.

3.

G.M. Harris & A.P. Beardow, “The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; a Geotechnical Perspective,” Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology 28 (1995), pp. 349–362. See also D. Neev & K.O. Emery, The Destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah, and Jericho (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995).

4.

W.E. Rast, “Bab edh-Dhr’a and the Origin of the Sodom Saga,” in L.G. Perdue, L.E. Toombs and G.L. Johnson, eds., Archaeology and Biblical Interpretation (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1987), pp. 185–201.