Abraham and the 3 angels (Elohim) who came calling on him at his tent near Hebron

    Genesis 18:1 "And the Lord appeared unto  him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day;--"

    2 "And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself towaed the ground."

    3 "And said, My Lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant:--"

    4 "Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree:---"

(Later, when the men (who were angels) had dined)

   16 "And the men rose up from thence, and looked toward Sodom: and Abraham went with them to bring them on the way."

    22 "And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the Lord."

    Genesis 18:16 "And the men rose up from thence, and looked toward Sodom: and Abraham went with them to bring them on the way."

    17 "And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do;--"

    18 "Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?"

    19 "For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him."

    20 "And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous;

    21 "I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know."

    22 "And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the Lord."

     23 "And Abraham drew near, and said, Will thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?"

    24 "Paradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?"

     25 "That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: shall not the judge of all the earth do right?"

    26 "And the Lord said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.

    27 "And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes."

    28 "Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five?"

    29 "And he spoke unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there.  And he said, I will not do it for forty's sake."

     30 "And he said unto him, O let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak: Peradventure there shall be thirty be found there.  And he said, I will not do it, if I find thirty there."

     31 "And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord: Peradventure there shall twenty found there.  And he said, I will not destroy it for twenty's sake."

     32 "And he said, O let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there: And he said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake."

     33 "And the Lord went his way, as soon as he had left communing with Abraham: and Abraham returned unto his place."

     Later, in the Doomed City of Sodom

        Genesis 19:1 "And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; --"

      2 "And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways.  And they said, Nay, but we will abide in the street all night."

Here we are continuing the story of Lot, sometimes called Abram's nephew but at least once (Genesis 14:14) called his brother.  Both of them have large herds of cattle so Lot is given a choice of where to live.  He chooses the Sodom Area (Genesis 13:12).  By this text he is living in a house not a tent, and is sitting in the gate of the city. I couldn't find a picture of Lot sitting in the gate of the city so instead settled for this one offering the visitors his house.  FIRST QUESTION: Why would a "righteous Lot" be sitting at the GATE (most public place) of a city full of HOMOSEXUALS?

     3 "And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto them, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat."

Ezekiel's Evaluation of Sodom's Real Problem Ezekiel 16:49 "Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy."       50 "And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good." LOT as a ROLE-PLAYER!    Perhaps I am not looking at these Genesis chapter 19 verses from the same perspective as the initial author of these verses, whoever and whenever that may have been (but most likely not "Moses" on top of Mount Sinai 40 days and 40 nights with some rocks or papyrus to write on and a chisel or quill pen to write with) -- nor from the same perspective that another redactor, another editor, put into them later.   But looking at them using the perspective of Ezekiel, which is indeed available to us as found in Ezekiel 16:49, 50 -- Lot, supposedly the model righteous person that God has sent "the Lord" to argue with Abraham about saving, and two angels to actually save, is role-playing the average well-to-do citizen of Sodom!        Yes, he has first shown up at the gate of the city being hospitable.  But once he has talked the two strangers into being his overnight guests, he's treating them as any well-to-do Sodom citizen would do.  And Lot was very well-to-do.  As we know from Genesis 13:5,6.  And in the war between the 4 kings of Mesopotemia and the 5 kings of the Sodom area, Lot and his family are the only hostages worth mentioning.   So here's a very rich and important man entertaining two strangers of unknown importance and interesting news value. And LOT throws them a FEAST!   Now I'm not seeing Sodom as being a very large city -- and I'm assuming that small town rules apply.  Mainly that everyone who lived there soon know what was going on.  They walked by, smelled the food, heard the talk and laughter, heard Lot's daughters singing for the guests, and felt left out.   And did the only predictable thing everyone would do in such a situation.

     4 "But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter:--

     5 "And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in unto thee this night?  bring them out unto us, that we may know them."

Here's where some author, perhaps the original author, perhaps a later editor (I vote for the Essenes, perhaps 20 centuries later) -- start to give the conversation and the story a deviant sexual slant.      But in Ezekiel's Time, it may have instead been a problem of hungry, bored street people, who wanted something to eat and to be included in the entertainment.   As Ezekiel put it-- "--neither did she (Sodom) strengthen the hand of the poor and needy."  "Rich" Lot is excluding them in the same way as his rich neighbors have always excluded them!

    6 "And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him,

    7 "And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly."

    8 "Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out to you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof."

Using my supposition, supported somewhat by Ezekiel, Lot may have been only offering these excluded street people the entertainment his daughters had given the guests -- perhaps some singing and dancing.   But the sexually perverted minds of some readers are invited by a later editor (perhaps Essene, hung up on the importance of celibacy) to imagine an all-night SEXUAL ORGY!

 

    9 "And they said, Stand back.  And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them.  And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door."

    10 "But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut the door."

     11 "And they smote the men that were at the door with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to blind the door."

     12 "And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides?  son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place;--"

     13 "For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the Lord; and the Lord hath sent us to destroy it."

     14 "And Lot went out, and spoke unto his sons in law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for the Lord will destroy this city. But he seemed as one who mocked unto his sons in law."

Here are the forgotten people of this story, the other daughters of Lot and their husbands and children.  The ordinary people of every village and city.  The ones who don't make it into the NEWS headlines.     We don't remember from our Sunday School lessons that Lot had any more members in his family but two virgin daughters and a wife that turned to salt because she looked back when an angel told her not to do that.      He had other daughters because Genesis 19:12 and 14 say he did.  If Lot had sons in law he had other daughters.      Were his sons in law gay?  Obviously, No.      Were his other daughters Lesbians?  No more so than the 2 daughters that escaped with him, and lived in a cave with him.      The two daughters who got him drunk one after the other, had sex with him two nights in a row, got pregnant on the first try, and perpetuated the family.  Otherwise the family might have ended, because they assumed all the other men on earth available to them were now dead.      With a bad hangover for a few days, and 2 daughters who had morning sickness and no more menstrual periods, Lot probably caught on by 6 months later what had happened, but the situation being what it was, what to do but continue roughing it out in the cave and making it into the monastery that it became later.

     15 "And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city."

     16 "And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the Lord being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city."

     17 "And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain, escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.."

     18 "And Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my Lord; ---"

     19 "Behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die:--"

     20 "Behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one: Oh, let me escape thither, (is it not a little one?) and my soul shall live."

     21 ":And he said unto him, See, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow this city, for the which thou has spoken."

     22 "Hast thee, escape thither; for I cannot do any thing till thou be come thither.  Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar."

     23 "The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar."

Locating Zoar Steven Collins responds to a letter by Bill Schlegel Bill Schlegel and Steven Collins   •  12/11/2013     Responding to the article “Where Is Sodom?” in the March/April 2013 issue of BAR,       "So, what’s actually represented on the Madaba Map? It’s an absolute fact that the Madaba Map features only the deep north basin of the Dead Sea. This is detailed quite nicely in Neev and Emery’s geological work The Destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah and Jericho1 and numerous other geological resources. Based on numerous data-sets dealing with ancient Dead Sea levels, it’s clear that during the Roman and Byzantine Period the level of the Dead Sea was even lower than today—about -440m. As Neev and Emery point out, at the time when the Madaba Map was made there was no shallow south basin, thus no Lisan Peninsula. Zoar was then a deep-water port on the Bay of Mazra’a at the south end of the north basin. Also, there was a Roman road going east/west over the Lisan (not possible when the south basin is filled). Today, at the present historic low-level, you can easily see Roman and Byzantine ruins along the eastern shoreline of the Dead Sea, right next to the water! Mr. Schlegel’s suggestion that “Perhaps exactly the opposite is true—the Madaba Map depicts no Lisan because of high water levels” is made in abject ignorance of the facts. As Neev and Emery state: “As Zoar of the first century A.D. was a seaport, it had to be on the shore and must have been north of [the paved Roman road traversing the Lisan] or near the head of the Bay of Mazra’a [at the south end of the north basin]. The absence of any geographic indication for the [Lisan] peninsula’s existence on the Madaba Map leads to a similar conclusion. Such an outstanding and picturesque tongue-like shore would not have been overlooked by the artist-cartographer of that map.” They further state that “Postures of two cargo vessels portrayed on the Madaba Map imply that the main traffic was between Zoar, port at the southeast corner of the north basin, and the north coast as close as possible to Jericho, the gate to Judea. The Bay of Mazra’a was always the main, if not the only, natural deepwater haven … If Zoar were at Es-Safi, it never could have functioned as an efficient harbor.”

     24 "Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven."

     25 "And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants  of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground."

     26 "But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt."

    27 "And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the lord:---"

     28 "And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace."     

Because of the perceived sexual deviant bias probably added later to this story, Westboro Baptist Church and others like them have waged a religious Jihad against homosexuals and Lesbians (and later bisexuals and trans-genders) until modern times in which some degree of toleration for such things has been achieved -- even same-sex marriage.  The Essenes may be to blame for this.

This picture, painted by me after I first visited the ruins of the Qumran monastery in Nov. - Dec. of 1992 with any real knowledge of what went on there and what was taught there is of Jesus Christ riding a donkey on coats spread out to welcome him as the new Essene Messiah between 29 AD and 33 AD. Among other things they did, the Essenes copied (and edited) scrolls and books for the Jews of their generation.

       When I was helping Ron Wyatt in 1989 I had not yet learned about the Essenes and their extreme bias towards no sexual activity of any type, and I helped him label everything in the Dead Sea area as potentially "Sodom and Gomorrah" or related to God's raining burning balls of sulphur on people and cities, particularly in the Masada area.

      It was not until 1993 that I really took a good look at the Marl cliffs and eroded Marl banks that he was labeling as destroyed cities.  These are no more destroyed cities than what you see in the Grand Canyon or in the Black Hills of South Dakota are "destroyed cities".  Water and wind erosion can make any kind of shape you can imagine!

It was on a trip I took to Masada in 1993 that I took the time to instead of directly taking the bus to the entry way to the Masada tramway or elevator instead walk down a side road partly up the hill.      There it was, laid out before me, all of Ron Wyatt's fake city of Sodom, that he had been "selling" to his religious fans all those years!

       Once you get a ways away from these formations, and look down on them from slightly over head, it becomes more obvious that this is an illusion.

       Ron Wyatt later on began labeling some of his "Sodom and Gomorrah" pictures as being taken near Masada, but this doesn't mean much to those who have not, like myself, been there and done that!

   The sulphur balls are real, they did rain down from the sky in this area, and Ron Wyatt was not very far away from where someone else, with better research and not just relying on hunches and good luck did find at least two of the cities that were destroyed by fire and brimstone.  But not for homosexuality.  For living over an earthquake fault and very flammable petroleum products in great quantity!

The "Bible and Spade" Summer 1999 (Vol 12, No. 3) from the Associates for Biblical Research announces "The Discovery of the Sin Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah". The name of these two cities have long been by-words in our language for wickedness. And many scholars and archaeologists have long searched for the truth about these cities.

"And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar." Genesis 13:10 (KJV)

"And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two daughters with him: for he feared to dwell in Zoar: and he dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters." Genesis 19:30 (KJV)

"And there went out the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrah, and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar;) and they joined battle with them in the vale of Siddim;" Genesis 14:10 (KJV)

The first most important source for locating Sodom and Gomorrah is the location of Zoar ( see more) and Lot's cave and is from the mosaic map on the floor of a church in Madaba, Jordan, known as the Madaba map and as shown on the left here.

       Fig 2 below shows the excavation site of the known traditional location of the "Sanctuary of Lot" in the hills above the indicated site for Zoar.

    One popular theory for a long time was that the Sodom and Gomorrah were located in the plain south of the Dead Sea and later covered by the waters as the Dead sea water level has changed over time. The level of the waters has receded in recent years and search of the area has located no evidence to verify this location. Searches starting in 1973 began to discover evidences of occupied cities in the area southeast of the Dead Sea, most of them located so as to obtain the benefit of water flow from the many Wadi's of the area. The map of the proposed locations is shown in Fig 3 below.

To date there has been located only evidence for two of the five Cities of the Plain, but they are proposing that the evidence is strong that the two most important cities of Sodom and Gomorrah have been found. That being the evidences found of destruction by fire at each site due to the layers of ash found in the digs by archaeologists. Bab edh-Dhra ( Sodom ) is the largest of the two sites, the 7 meter wide (23 feet) city wall enclosed 9-10 acres with gates located at the west and the northeast. The northeast gate had two flanking towers with massive stone and timber foundations, possibly the gate in which Lot sat (Genesis 19:1). Estimated population at the time of the destruction was between 600-1200. There was a large cemetery at Bab edh-Dhra ( Sodom ) and pottery evidence indicates that some of the residents of Numeira ( Gomorrah ) buried their dead in this cemetery. It appears that Numeria was in existence for only a short time, possibly less than 100 years. Paleobotany investigations indicated that a rich diversity of crops were grown

in the area including barley, wheat, grapes, figs, lintels, flax, chickpeas, peas, broad beans, dates, and olives; an indicator that the area was "well watered" per Genesis 13:10.

      Concerning the proposed cause of the destruction of the plain where Sodom and Gomorrah were, they are proposing that it was the result of an earthquake that forced combustible material to the surface and into the atmosphere. Surveys have located bitumen, petroleum, natural gas and sulfur in the area. And to the east of the Dead Sea is a major fault line and these cities are located exactly on this fault line. See Fig 4 below.

       The Scriptures say that Abraham looked and saw "the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace" and does not seem to mention a quaking, but does use the Hebrew term for "overturning" in Deuteronomy 29:23. Possibly this is an indication that the earthquake proposal is valid. Changes of elevation of up to 164 feet have been noted which caused a change in direction of the Wadi Numeria at the site, which is believed to be the event that caused the destruction. Also found were evidences that the residents hastily fled the site and buried skeletons of those who were caught in the destruction.

( The above three figures are from B&S Vol 20 No. 3 Summer 2007, p78-84 )

Conclusion: The author proposes that "... it is clear that the infamous cities of Sodom and Gomorrah have now been found." You may visit their web site at http://www.ChristianAnswers.net/ abr/ abrhome.html

Sumerian Mural -- Abraham, as IB-RU-UM was a Sumerian, not a Hebrew.

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