Sodom and Gomorrah

N

Nisus

by peace he shall destroy many
Registered Senior Member
What was the 'abomination' of Sodom and Gomorrah? Some tend to over simplify and say it was strictly homosexuality. But, I think the facts are that if anything, it was a plethora of sexual deviancy.

1. Everyone had to be burned and destroyed in the city, man, woman etc; with the exception of Lot and his family. Does that mean the entire population was homosexual? No. How would they have continued into any generation if there wasn't some form of heterosexuality? Someone must have been making babies =p

2. After Lot leaves the city his daughters get him drunk and sleep with him. i.e. incest.

Thus, Sodom and Gomorrah was more likely a place where anything sexual goes. :shrug:

thoughts?
 
Sodom and Gomorrah is not about homosexuality, it is about hospitality to strangers.
 
I have some pretty far out ideas on this one and i'm too tired to fight bible thumpers AND scientists in a religious thread...so that's all I have to say about that.
 
nietzschefan said:
I have some pretty far out ideas on this one and i'm too tired to fight bible thumpers AND scientists in a religious thread...so that's all I have to say about that.
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May I hear them? I promise not to bash. Are there aliens involved?
 
I think this is the ancient theist interpretation of a volcano eruption, not because they were sexually anything; it was because of a natural disaster some priests used to scare people into their religion.
 
Wisdom_Seeker said:
I think this is the ancient theist interpretation of a volcano eruption, not because they were sexually anything; it was because of a natural disaster some priests used to scare people into their religion.
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Yes a primitive hebrew explanation of why it happened. Volcano, thunderstorms, is the safe answer. To explain all the description, I favor ancient nuclear war.
 
S.A.M. said:
Sodom and Gomorrah is not about homosexuality, it is about hospitality to strangers.
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Wrong. Sodom and Gomorrah is about homosexuality, along with some other things.

ISLAMIC VIEW

In Islamic tradition, the nephew of Abraham or Ibrahim is known as Lut (Arabic: لوط ) and is considered a prophet.

As in other traditions, Islam teaches that Lut had originally lived in Ur and was a nephew of Abraham. His story is often used as a reference by traditional Islamic scholars to show homosexuality to be against God's law or Haraam. He was commanded by God to go to the land of Sodom and Gomorrah to preach to the people on monotheism and to bring their sinful behavior to an end. Their sins included indecent practices such as public orgies, aggressiveness in their public places of assembly, blocking free passage of the roads, the killing and robbing of travellers, and dishonesty in the markets. In the Qur'an as in the Bible, Lut's messages are ignored, and Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed. However, this does not mean that his wife used to practice homosexuality but worshipped what her people used to worship (that is, she was a polytheist).

The two major differences between the Biblical and Qur'anic stories are that in the Qur'an Lot's wife is left in the city to be destroyed along with its inhabitants, as she remained a polythiest; and that the Qur'an does not contain any passages concerning Lot's drunken incest with his daughters.

7:80 Remember the words of Lot, who said to his people: “Will you persist in these indecent acts which no other nation has committed before you?
7:81 You lust after men instead of women. Truly, you are a degenerate people.”

Qur'an

If you'd like, I can post the Jewish and Christian viewpoint as well, which includes the sinful component of homosexuality in Sodom and Gomorrah, amongst many other things.
 
Yeah, strange how all the Hadiths regarding this innovation appeared after the Persian and Byzantine influences. Or do you think homosexual penguins are against the law of nature?:rolleyes:

Will you persist in these indecent acts which no other nation has committed before you?
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Really? no homosexuals in the history before Lut? Are you quite quite certain about this?

And the Arabic word used for "lust" there (in 7:81), what exactly does it mean? Does this lust cover natural desire or wanton behaviour? Is it applied in other parts of the Quran differently?

Also do you know when this verse was revealed? Under what circumstances? Where was Mohammed at the time of this revelation? What problems was he facing when he recited these verses to the people of Mecca?
 
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Who cares what some guy thought God was angry about when he killed some people. God kills the innocent and the guilty every day. i think it's sick that some people think they know why God killed this or that person and uses this interpretation to take a smack at people they really know nothing about.
 
In the Bible the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah included not just mistreatment of strangers and guests (more important than the homosexual angle), but the capital sin of them all, the abomination mentioned in so many places in the Bible: charging interest on loaned money.

That one tends to be less emphasized, these days.

I agree with Roy Blount about the PR campaign - the main problem is that Sodomy has too much of a ring to it. It poetically biases the arguments. If charging interest was sodomy, and gay and oral sex was gomorrahism even -

or better (given the ubiquity): Newyorkism, Franciscolarity, Philadelphia -

some of the fog might lift from the issues.
 
S.A.M. said:
Yeah, strange how all the Hadiths regarding this innovation appeared after the Persian and Byzantine influences. Or do you think homosexual penguins are against the law of nature?:rolleyes:



Really? no homosexuals in the history before Lut? Are you quite quite certain about this?

And the Arabic word used for "lust" there (in 7:81), what exactly does it mean? Does this lust cover natural desire or wanton behaviour? Is it applied in other parts of the Quran differently?

Also do you know when this verse was revealed? Under what circumstances? Where was Mohammed at the time of this revelation? What problems was he facing when he recited these verses to the people of Mecca?
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The unprecedented indecent acts refer to their overall problems, such as the very frequent killing/robbery/dishonesty/public orgies, etc. The following verse deals with the homosexuality aspect of their lifestyles.

Regarding the timing and setting of these verses, I am not sure it matters. Can you think of why it would? Additionally, do you know the answers to your own questions? Can any answer invalidate the message behind Lut's words?
 
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S.A.M. said:
Sodom and Gomorrah is not about homosexuality, it is about hospitality to strangers.
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M*W: Yes, S.A.M., you are right. This is the story that biblical scholars refer to--men's inhospitality to his fellow man.
 
Medicine*Woman said:
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M*W: Yes, S.A.M., you are right. This is the story that biblical scholars refer to--men's inhospitality to his fellow man.
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Bullshit.
Any read through the Old Testament and it's readily apparent that it's just as full of bigoted intolerance and violence as any religion today. Anything otherwise is a misdirected attempt to interpret it as something it's not; a common practice amongst liberal theists. To do so is to distort history. The Bible was written by savage and bloodthirsty Middle Easterners to preserve their brutal and bloodthirsty culture.
 
Nisus said:
What was the 'abomination' of Sodom and Gomorrah? Some tend to over simplify and say it was strictly homosexuality. But, I think the facts are that if anything, it was a plethora of sexual deviancy.

1. Everyone had to be burned and destroyed in the city, man, woman etc; with the exception of Lot and his family. Does that mean the entire population was homosexual? No. How would they have continued into any generation if there wasn't some form of heterosexuality? Someone must have been making babies =p

2. After Lot leaves the city his daughters get him drunk and sleep with him. i.e. incest.

Thus, Sodom and Gomorrah was more likely a place where anything sexual goes. :shrug:

thoughts?
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M*W: See my reply to S.A.M..

In answer to your Q1):

It wasn't about sexual deviancy at all. I doubt that the citizens of S&G were anymore deviant than the citizens of other towns in the region. Back then sexual activities weren't frowned upon. They were part of human nature and embedded into the culture.

Homosexuality has been around since the beginning of time and found in every culture. Many, if not most, of the homosexuals in history were married and had children. Homosexuality was a way to have sexual relations without bearing the responsibility of pregnancy, and therefore, it was culturallly accepted.

In answer to your Q2):

This is a mythological story created to tell the story of one man's faith (Lot). Having sexual relations between parent and children was not considered to be a crime of incest at that time. In that culture and time, probably Egyptian or an offshoot, it was common practice to have sexual relations and marriage between close relatives to ensure the bloodline (especially among the royals).

The myth of Lot's daughters' mother showed her own faith was someowhat lacking. The reality of this story is that there is a mountain peak in the desert south of the salty Dead Sea that is formed in the shape of a woman, albeit a very large woman, known to archeological and biblical scholars as Lot's Wife. None of these people were real.

S&G became known historically as the towns that were destroyed because of their deviant sexual ways. It was much later in history that the town of Sodom became associated with homosexuality, but that was an invention of some puritanical lawmaker somewhere.

Deviant sexual practices are found literally everywhere on the globe. S&G got a bad name from those folks (i.e. King James) who set out to destroy any hint of homosexuality because he was one.
 
Wisdom_Seeker said:
I think this is the ancient theist interpretation of a volcano eruption, not because they were sexually anything; it was because of a natural disaster some priests used to scare people into their religion.
Click to expand...
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M*W: I think you are right. It was most likely some sort of eruption, but not from a volcano. Biblical archeologists tend to believe it was an eruption or explosion from the oil reserves that lie deep within the Earth south and beneath of the Dead Sea.
 
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