Sodom?  What makes a "fine city" wicked?

What people seem to miss is that Sodom was considered a fine city.  As described by Josephus:

"the city of Sodom: which was then a fine city, but is now destroyed"

"the people of Sodom were in a flourishing condition; both as to riches, and the number of their youth".

And the place was nice enough that Lot seems to have pitched his lot with
them.  Going so far as to aid them, 

"Lot, who had come to assist the Sodomites"

and to engage his daughters both to dwellers of the city:

"daughters; who were two, and still virgins: for those that were betrothed to them were above the thoughts of going; and deemed that Lot's words were trifling".

So we ask, what changed about Sodom that made them worthy of destruction,
at least in the writings of the fictionalizing scribes who sought
punitive fables of a wrathful causality?

Did they discover homosexuality and backdoor sexual action in the few years between Lot's arrival and the arrival of these men?  

Josephus, and the Koran btw, seem to have this opinion of the visitors, and are not shy about it:

"young men to be of beautiful countenances, and this to an extraordinary degree"

"beautiful boys".

We do have this explanation from Josephus:

"the Sodomites grew proud, on account of their riches and great wealth: they became unjust towards men, and impious towards God: insomuch that they did not call to mind the advantages they received from him: they hated strangers, and abused themselves with Sodomitical practices. God was therefore much displeased at them; and determined to punish them for their pride"

and may wonder about what the abuse of self with Sodomitical practices might be.

Er, after all, is described repeatedly as wicked, and the impression we get is that he hasn't as good an excuse as Onan (possibly an Irish twin but still too young and too loyal to his mother's instruction to pull out and spill, lest she be demoted wrt Tamar; see Testament of Judah).

Nevertheless, some kind of self-abuse does seem to be the problem and the stranger-hating at Lot's tent door could not be clearer:  if not sodomy itself, which we know as Greek because of Spartans, and so many others, then the gang rape aspect of Sodom.  Anthropology of antiquity assures us that male on male pouncing is more about power and humiliation than sexual enjoyment, be that as it may for many in our time.

And we have an ordering of transgressions:  

Pride number one;

then unjustness toward men;

then impiety toward God, who is not yet Yahweh let's remember, but more likely El in a Baalist sense of him, especially if "they did not call to mind the advantages they received form him".  

That last point is important for a Baalist.  Not expiative oblation, not propitiative, not prospective.  But thankful, gratitude, appreciative ritual.  Hopefully not molech dm.  I'm just saying.  Before Yahweh, that's what you did if you were Canaanite.  So their #3 transgression is not sacrificing children for thanksgiving in re trade surplus.  Remember the timeline of Canaanite theology.  (** in fact, if their sacrifice rate was lower because they were imbibing Jericho-Yarikhist moon-cult in lieu of extant storm cult, their sodomitical practices might have been a form of birth control; ask the great digger Larry Stager or the next Catholic teen you interview.)

Then #4, Sodomitical practices, whatever those are, though probably what you think they are, though probably not for the reasons you received through the medieval church's guilt over its monastic guild.  

In any case, after the Battle of Siddim, seven years passed (the time of Ishmael's life, or Abram's 42 reward with Hagar to the visit of the "angels" at his 49), we are talking about a war ravaged city.  A war ravaged conurbation of four or five cities (four plus a little Zoar/Bela).  This is why Sodom is lawless.  And also lawless:  Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Zoar.  Under the leadership btw of Ballas, Barsas, Senabar, and Sumobor, if one wants to do Josephus etymologies.

First, where is this?  Clearly in the Moabite Plain, on the opposite side of the Kikkar (the disk) from Jericho.  So in the shadow of modern Amman and medieval Madaba.  Basically where you find the city As-Salt today, though that name should be taken with a grain of salt.

Most importantly, this is apparently an place where VOCs are found on the ground.  Volatile Organic Compounds.  We are repeatedly told that this is where asphalt and tar and bitumen are found.  This will be important soon.  If you want to take a break, have a look at the explosions of oil terminal storage in Russia under Ukrainian drone assault, and the falling oil-soaked rain.

So most likely the post-war cities were lawless.  See also Jerome, Arizona, when it got labeled most wicked.  The pride and failure-to-sacrifice-to-Baal was post hoc religious moralizing.

So do we think Tall-el-Hamman is the right place?  Yes.  The burn layer is too suggestive.  Do we think it was a Tanguska airburst from a meteorite?  No.  The phenomenology does not match.  You don't get to wake up the next day and see the fires like furnaces throwing smoke visible for miles.  Even if you had a modern electrical grid, the flattening would be instantaneous from an airburst.

So what the hey happened?

The clues are a bit contradictory.  On the one hand, the beautiful boys arrive with premeditation and determination.  We have to ask why.  On the other hand, the archaeology does not match the timeline.  Off by enough that we have to wonder.

The dialogue with Abraham about finding ten good men is such an invention it hurts.  It's more like a Dr. Seuss dialogue than anything else I can think of.  Pure invention.  But they were there for a reason, and seem to have been headed to the Kikkar.  They left one in the tent with Sarah, but I can't blam him:  have you seen the description of Sarah in Genesis Apocryphon?  

So we have to ask why they would hold a grudge for a place, all of its people, with such punishment in mind.  Did they get scammed?  Did they buy something online from ebay-Sodom and it arrived late?  Or did someone they cared about die traveling through.  One of the biggest sins in nomadic cultures is failing to give hospitality.  Abraham offered food, foot rub, and spouse.  Lot offered two daughters and a night under the big tent.  Sodom offered non-consensual gang rape.  That might be bigger than ebay-late shipping, on par with banditry of traders, or fatal indifference to someone in need.

Did they even intend to wipe out the whole city of Sodom?  And Gomorrah, which we at some point hypothesized to be what, gang scissoring?  I think the prudes need to go back and read more temple sex and "classic" era sexual relations.  They weren't sailing for Lesbos or Sparta 1000yrs later; they were mad at Sodom.  Or some people specifically in Sodom.  The other cities were accidental damage.

We know the sulfur/brimstone was plentiful in the region and antiquity understood its pyrogenic properties.  I had assumed the aerial attack was St. Olga's trick, 2500yrs earlier, with birds carrying sulfur.  The clue was the blinding of the gang rapists at the tent the night before.  Blinding?  Sulfur.

They needn't have needed to intend the whole city, one city, to ignite.  Just one section would have been sufficient.  Neroization of Rome.  O'Learyization of Chicago.  Post-war shanties easy enough to set ablaze, VOCs do the rest.  Fireworks shoot into the air.

Josephus is explicit about the mechanism:  a lightning strike.  This is your Ukrainian drone on an oil processing plant.  Ignited the vein, four cities probably all boroughs of the same Broadway, sent up in smoke over the next few days.  Time for people to get out.

But Tall-el-Hamman says 1650ish, and my timeline says 1760ish.  That's hard to reconcile.

So remember that punishment tales require the invention of prior acts to justify geophysical calamities.  Who says the men who visited Abraham were actually the initiators of the conflagration?  Especially if Josephus's aetiology is correct.  The pretty boys did the deed, escaped the rape, maybe even threw the sulfur.  But they didn't throw lightning bolts.  They had no flock of seagulls to return to sender, like St. Olga of Kyiv.

So the resolution, and I have to thank Claude for the idea, is that the moral to the story, the punishment of Sodom and its suburbs, invented the connection.  110yrs, plus or minus the carbon dating m.o.e. (because my timeline is very tight) separated the visit, the threat at the tent, and the destruction.

The nature of the people there, postwar lawlessness amid ruin, was real.  It was a wicked city, even among people who were banging every which way they knew how (no fanduel to keep the young men better occupied, and yes, there were sheep).  Sorry but if you thought Athens was better than Sparta, it wasn't wrt sodomitical, uh, pederastic practices.  So the wickedness was not Er's later orientation, but pride and failure to practice molech and host their stranger nomads with wives and daughters.

In fact, over 110 years, Sodom probably recovered its wealth and respect for law and norms.  Probably returned to molech as required by Baalist fellow Canaanites.  Probably even ended the gang rape propensity, though I see men in India still trying to kick the habit.

It's like Southerners saying New Orleans drowns today because General William Tecmseh Sherman taught at the future LSU there and Confederates hold long grudges spun in tall tales.  Learn a little science, man.

The coolest thing about the Lot story is not just the daughters taking things into their own hands.  It's the language of the complaint itself.  There were no men left.  None who had flocks and were worthy matches for the heretofore pampered but suddenly fallen?  None to meet in the cafe down the cliff for banter over latte?  Or none whatsoever.   Probably none they could land, because war had disproportionately affected demographics, and they probably weren't the lookers that aunt Sarai was.  I say the latter.  

But note the scoping error of the terminoloty.  

You see the same thing with Noah.  There were plenty of other survivors of lahar.  Just not in the Khabur River Valley among Amorite villagers.  

And the primacy of Adam.  There were plenty of other humans in the Ancient Near East in 2150bce (2148-2161).  But if we're talking about a particular lineage of West Semitic MarTu future Amorite tribal lords infiltrating the rest of Mesopotamia and the Levant?  Yeah, you can call him the first "man".