I.  THE GROWTH OF EXPLANATORY TRANSFORMATION MYTHS.


A few years since, Maxime Du Camp, an eminent member of the

French Academy, travelling from the Red Sea to the Nile through

the Desert of Kosseir, came to a barren slope covered with

boulders, rounded and glossy.



His Mohammedan camel-driver accounted for them on this wise:



"Many years ago Hadji Abdul-Aziz, a sheik of the dervishes, was

travelling on foot through this desert:  it was summer:  the sun

was hot and the dust stifling; thirst parched his lips, fatigue

weighed down his back, sweat dropped from his forehead, when

looking up he saw--on this very spot--a garden beautifully green,

full of fruit, and, in the midst of it, the gardener.



"`O fellow-man,' cried Hadji Abdul-Aziz, `in the name of Allah,

clement and merciful, give me a melon and I will give you my

prayers.'"



The gardener answered:  `I care not for your prayers; give me

money, and I will give you fruit.'



"`But,' said the dervish, `I am a beggar; I have never had

money; I am thirsty and weary, and one of your melons is all that

I need.'



"`No,' said the gardener; `go to the Nile and quench your

thirst.'



"Thereupon the dervish, lifting his eyes toward heaven, made this

prayer:  `O Allah, thou who in the midst of the desert didst make

the fountain of Zem-Zem spring forth to satisfy the thirst of

Ismail, father of the faithful:  wilt thou suffer one of thy

creatures to perish thus of thirst and fatigue?  '



"And it came to pass that, hardly had the dervish spoken, when an

abundant dew descended upon him, quenching his thirst and

refreshing him even to the marrow of his bones.



"Now at the sight of this miracle the gardener knew that the

dervish was a holy man, beloved of Allah, and straightway offered

him a melon.



"`Not so,' answered Hadji Abdul-Aziz; `keep what thou hast, thou

wicked man.  May thy melons become as hard as thy heart, and thy

field as barren as thy soul!'



"And straightway it came to pass that the melons were changed

into these blocks of stone, and the grass into this sand, and

never since has anything grown thereon."



In this story, and in myriads like it, we have a survival of that

early conception of the universe in which so many of the leading

moral and religious truths of the great sacred books of the world

are imbedded.



All ancient sacred lore abounds in such mythical explanations of

remarkable appearances in nature, and these are most frequently

prompted by mountains, rocks, and boulders seemingly misplaced.



In India we have such typical examples among the Brahmans as the

mountain-peak which Durgu threw at Parvati; and among the

Buddhists the stone which Devadatti hurled at Buddha.



In Greece the Athenian, rejoicing in his belief that Athena

guarded her chosen people, found it hard to understand why the

great rock Lycabettus should be just too far from the Acropolis

to be of use as an outwork; but a myth was developed which

explained all.  According to this, Athena had intended to make

Lycabettus a defence for the Athenians, and she was bringing it

through the air from Pallene for that very purpose; but,

unfortunately, a raven met her and informed her of the wonderful

birth of Erichthonius, which so surprised the goddess that she

dropped the rock where it now stands.



So, too, a peculiar rock at Aegina was accounted for by a long

and circumstantial legend to the effect that Peleus threw it at

Phocas.



A similar mode of explaining such objects is seen in the

mythologies of northern Europe.  In Scandinavia we constantly

find rocks which tradition accounts for by declaring that they

were hurled by the old gods at each other, or at the early

Christian churches.



In Teutonic lands, as a rule, wherever a strange rock or stone is

found, there will be found a myth or a legend, heathen or

Christian, to account for it.



So, too, in Celtic countries:  typical of this mode of thought in

Brittany and in Ireland is the popular belief that such features

in the landscape were dropped by the devil or by fairies.



Even at a much later period such myths have grown and bloomed.

Marco Polo gives a long and circumstantial legend of a mountain

in Asia Minor which, not long before his visit, was removed by a

Christian who, having "faith as a grain of mustard seed," and

remembering the Saviour's promise, transferred the mountain to

its present place by prayer, "at which marvel many Saracens

became Christians."[422]




[422] For Maxime Du Camp, see Le Nil: Egypte et Nubie, Paris,

1877, chapter v.  For India, see Duncker, Geschichte des

Alterthums, vol. iii, p. 366; also Coleman, Mythology of the

Hindus, p. 90.  For Greece, as to the Lycabettus myth, see Leake,

Topography of Athens, vol. i, sec. 3; also Burnouf, La Legende

Athenienne, p. 152.  For the rock at Aegina, see Charton, vol. i,

p. 310.  For Scandanavia, see Thorpe, Northern Antiquities,

passim.  For Teutonic countries, see Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie;

Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, vol. ii; Zingerle,

Sagen aus Tyrol, pp. 111 et seq., 488, 504, 543; and especially

J. B. Friedrich, Symbolik und Mythologie der Natur, pp. 116 et

seq.  For Celtic examples I am indebted to that learned and

genial scholar, Prof. J. P. Mahaffy, of Trinity College, Dublin.

See also story of the devil dropping a rock when forced by the

archangel Michael to aid him in building Mont Saint-Michel on the

west coast of France, in Sebillot's Traditions de la Haute

Bretagne, vol. i, p. 22; also multitudes of other examples in the

same work.  For Marco Polo, see in Grynaeus, p. 337; also

Charton, Voyageurs anciens et modernes, tome ii, pp. 274 et seq.,

where the legend is given in full.





Similar mythical explanations are also found, in all the older

religions of the world, for curiously marked meteoric stones,

fossils, and the like.



Typical examples are found in the imprint of Buddha's feet on

stones in Siam and Ceylon; in the imprint of the body of Moses,

which down to the middle of the last century was shown near Mount

Sinai; in the imprint of Poseidon's trident on the Acropolis at

Athens; in the imprint of the hands or feet of Christ on stones

in France, Italy, and Palestine; in the imprint of the Virgin's

tears on stones at Jerusalem; in the imprint of the feet of

Abraham at Jerusalem and of Mohammed on a stone in the Mosque of

Khait Bey at Cairo; in the imprint of the fingers of giants on

stones in the Scandinavian Peninsula, in north Germany, and in

western France; in the imprint of the devil's thighs on a rock

in Brittany, and of his claws on stones which he threw at

churches in Cologne and Saint-Pol-de-Leon; in the imprint of the

shoulder of the devil's grand mother on the "elbow-stone" at the

Mohriner see; in the imprint of St. Otho's feet on a stone

formerly preserved in the castle church at Stettin; in the

imprint of the little finger of Christ and the head of Satan at

Ehrenberg; and in the imprint of the feet of St. Agatha at

Catania, in Sicily. To account for these appearances and myriads

of others, long and interesting legends were developed, and out

of this mass we may take one or two as typical.



One of the most beautiful was evolved at Rome.  On the border of

the medieval city stands the church of "Domine quo vadis"; it

was erected in honour of a stone, which is still preserved,

bearing a mark resembling a human footprint--perhaps the bed of a

fossil.



Out of this a pious legend grew as naturally as a wild rose in a

prairie.  According to this story, in one of the first great

persecutions the heart of St. Peter failed him, and he

attempted to flee from the city:  arriving outside the walls he

was suddenly confronted by the Master, whereupon Peter in

amazement asked, "Lord, whither goest thou?"  (Domine quo

vadis?); to which the Master answered, "To Rome, to be crucified

again."  The apostle, thus rebuked, returned to martyrdom; the

Master vanished, but left, as a perpetual memorial, his footprint

in the solid rock.



Another legend accounts for a curious mark in a stone at

Jerusalem.  According to this, St. Thomas, after the ascension

of the Lord, was again troubled with doubts, whereupon the Virgin

Mother threw down her girdle, which left its imprint upon the

rock, and thus converted the doubter fully and finally.



And still another example is seen at the very opposite extreme of

Europe, in the legend of the priestess of Hertha in the island of

Rugen.  She had been unfaithful to her vows, and the gods

furnished a proof of her guilt by causing her and her child to

sink into the rock on which she stood.[423]



[423] For myths and legend crystallizing about boulders and other

stones curiously shaped or marked, see, on the general subject,

in addition to works already cited, Des Brosses, Les Dieux

Fetiches, 1760, passim, but especially pages 166, 167; and for a

condensed statement as to worship paid them, see Gerard de

Rialle, Mythologie comparee, vol. vi, chapter ii.   For imprints

of Buddha's feet, see Tylor, Researches into the Early History of

Mankind, London, 1878, pp. 115 et seq.; also Coleman, p. 203, and

Charton, Voyageurs anciens et modernes, tome i, pp. 365, 366,

where engravings of one of the imprints, and of the temple above

another, are seen.  There are five which are considered authentic

by the Siamese, and a multitude of others more or less strongly

insisted upon.  For the imprint os Moses' body, see travellers

from Sir John Mandeville down.  For the mark of Neptune's

trident, see last edition of Murray's Handbook of Greece, vol. i,

p. 322; and Burnouf, La Legende Athenienne, p. 153.  For imprint

of the feet of Christ, and of the Virgin's girdle and tears, see

many of the older travellers in Palestine, as Arculf, Bouchard,

Roger, and especially Bertrandon de la Brocquiere in Wright's

collection, pp. 339, 340; also Maundrell's Travels, and

Mandeville.  For the curious legend regarding the imprint of

Abraham's foot, see Weil, Biblische Legenden der Muselmanner, pp.

91 et seq.  For many additional examples in Palestine,

particularly the imprints of the bodies of three apostles on

stones in the Garden of Gethsemane and of St. Jerome's body in

the desert, see Beauvau, Relation du Voyage du Lavant, Nancy,

1615, passim.  For the various imprints made by Satan and giants

in Scandanavia and Germany, see Thorpe, vol. ii, p. 85;

Friedrichs, pp. 126 and passim.  For a very rich collection of

such explanatory legends regarding stones and marks in Germany,

see Karl Bartsch, Sagen, Marchen und Gebrauche aus Meklenburg,

Wien, 1880, vol. ii, pp. 420 et seq.  For a woodcut representing

the imprint of Christ's feet on the stone from which he ascended

to heaven, see woodcut in Mandeville, edition of 1484, in the

White Library, Cornell University.  For the legend of Domine quo

vadis, see many books of travel and nearly all guide books for

Rome, from the mediaeval Mirabilia Romae to the latest edition of

Murray.  The footprints of Mohammed at Cairo were shown to the

present writer in 1889.  On the general subject, with many

striking examples, see Falsan, La Periode glaciaire, Paris, 1889,

pp. 17, 294, 295.





Another and very fruitful source of explanatory myths is found in

ancient centres of volcanic action, and especially in old craters

of volcanoes and fissures filled with water.



In China we have, among other examples, Lake Man, which was once

the site of the flourishing city Chiang Shui--overwhelmed and

sunk on account of the heedlessness of its inhabitants regarding

a divine warning.



In Phrygia, the lake and morass near Tyana were ascribed to the

wrath of Zeus and Hermes, who, having visited the cities which

formerly stood there, and having been refused shelter by all the

inhabitants save Philemon and Baucis, rewarded their benefactors,

but sunk the wicked cities beneath the lake and morass.



Stories of similar import grew up to explain the crater near

Sipylos in Asia Minor and that of Avernus in Italy:  the latter

came to be considered the mouth of the infernal regions, as every

schoolboy knows when he has read his Virgil.



In the later Christian mythologies we have such typical legends

as those which grew up about the old crater in Ceylon; the salt

water in it being accounted for by supposing it the tears of Adam

and Eve, who retreated to this point after their expulsion from

paradise and bewailed their sin during a hundred years.



So, too, in Germany we have multitudes of lakes supposed to owe

their origin to the sinking of valleys as a punishment for human

sin.  Of these are the "Devil's Lake," near Gustrow, which rose

and covered a church and its priests on account of their

corruption; the lake at Probst-Jesar, which rose and covered an

oak grove and a number of peasants resting in it on account of

their want of charity to beggars; and the Lucin Lake, which rose

and covered a number of soldiers on account of their cruelty to a

poor peasant.



Such legends are found throughout America and in Japan, and will

doubtless be found throughout Asia and Africa, and especially

among the volcanic lakes of South America, the pitch lakes of the

Caribbean Islands, and even about the Salt Lake of Utah; for

explanatory myths and legends under such circumstances are

inevitable.[424]



[424] As to myths explaining volcanic craters and lakes, and

embodying ideas of the wrath of Heaven against former inhabitants

of the neighboring country, see Forbiger, Alte Geographie,

Hamburg, 1877, vol. i, p. 563.  For exaggerations concerning the

Dead Sea, see ibid., vol. i, p. 575.  For the sinking of Chiang

Shui and other examples, see Denny's Folklore of China, pp. 126

et seq.  For the sinking of the Phrygian region, the destruction

of its inhabitants, and the saving of Philemon and Baucis, see

Ovid's Metamorphoses, book viii; also Botticher, Baumcultus der

Alten, etc.  For the lake in Ceylon arising from the tears of

Adam and Eve, see variants of the original legend in Mandeville

and in Jurgen Andersen, Reisebeschreibung, 1669, vol. ii, p. 132.

For the volcanic nature of the Dead Sea, see Daubeny, cited in

Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. Palestine.  For lakes in

Germany owing their origin to human sin and various supernatural

causes, see Karl Bartsch, Sagen, Marche und Gebrauche aus

Meklenburg, vol. i, pp. 397 et seq.  For lakes in America, see

any good collection of Indian legends.  For lakes in Japan sunk

supernaturally, see Braun's Japanesische Marche und Sagen,

Leipsic, 1885, pp. 350, 351.





To the same manner of explaining striking appearances in physical

geography, and especially strange rocks and boulders, we mainly

owe the innumerable stories of the transformation of living

beings, and especially of men and women, into these natural

features.



In the mythology of China we constantly come upon legends of such

transformations--from that of the first Counsellor of the Han

dynasty to those of shepherds and sheep.  In the Brahmanic

mythology of India, Salagrama, the fossil ammonite, is recognised

as containing the body of Vishnu's wife, and the Binlang stone

has much the same relation to Siva; so, too, the nymph Ramba was

changed, for offending Ketu, into a mass of sand; by the breath

of Siva elephants were turned into stone; and in a very touching

myth Luxman is changed into stone but afterward released.  In

the Buddhist mythology a Nat demon is represented as changing

himself into a grain of sand.



Among the Greeks such transformation myths come constantly before

us--both the changing of stones to men and the changing of men to

stones.  Deucalion and Pyrrha, escaping from the flood,

repeopled the earth by casting behind them stones which became

men and women; Heraulos was changed into stone for offending

Mercury; Pyrrhus for offending Rhea; Phineus, and Polydectes with

his guests, for offending Perseus:  under the petrifying glance

of Medusa's head such transformations became a thing of course.



To myth-making in obedience to the desire of explaining unusual

natural appearances, coupled with the idea that sin must be

followed by retribution, we also owe the well-known Niobe myth.

Having incurred the divine wrath, Niobe saw those dearest to her

destroyed by missiles from heaven, and was finally transformed

into a rock on Mount Sipylos which bore some vague resemblance to

the human form, and her tears became the rivulets which trickled

from the neighbouring strata.



Thus, in obedience to a moral and intellectual impulse, a

striking geographical appearance was explained, and for ages

pious Greeks looked with bated breath upon the rock at Sipylos

which was once Niobe, just as for ages pious Jews, Christians,

and Mohammedans looked with awe upon the salt pillar at the Dead

Sea which was once Lot's wife.



Pausanias, one of the most honest of ancient travellers, gives us

a notable exhibition of this feeling.  Having visited this

monument of divine vengeance at Mount Sipylos, he tells us very

naively that, though he could discern no human features when

standing near it, he thought that he could see them when standing

at a distance.  There could hardly be a better example of that

most common and deceptive of all things--belief created by the

desire to believe.



In the pagan mythology of Scandinavia we have such typical

examples as Bors slaying the giant Ymir and transforming his

bones into boulders; also "the giant who had no heart"

transforming six brothers and their wives into stone; and, in

the old Christian mythology, St. Olaf changing into stone the

wicked giants who opposed his preaching.



So, too, in Celtic countries we have in Ireland such legends as

those of the dancers turned into stone; and, in Brittany, the

stones at Plesse, which were once hunters and dogs violating the

sanctity of Sunday; and the stones of Carnac, which were once

soldiers who sought to kill St. Cornely.



Teutonic mythology inherited from its earlier Eastern days a

similar mass of old legends, and developed a still greater mass

of new ones.  Thus, near the Konigstein, which all visitors to

the Saxon Switzerland know so well, is a boulder which for ages

was believed to have once been a maiden transformed into stone

for refusing to go to church; and near Rosenberg in Mecklenburg

is another curiously shaped stone of which a similar story is

told.  Near Spornitz, in the same region, are seven boulders

whose forms and position are accounted for by a long and

circumstantial legend that they were once seven impious herdsmen;

near Brahlsdorf is a stone which, according to a similar

explanatory myth, was once a blasphemous shepherd; near Schwerin

are three boulders which were once wasteful servants; and at

Neustadt, down to a recent period, was shown a collection of

stones which were once a bride and bridegroom with their

horses--all punished for an act of cruelty; and these stories are

but typical of thousands.



At the other extremity of Europe we may take, out of the

multitude of explanatory myths, that which grew about the

well-known group of boulders near Belgrade.  In the midst of

them stands one larger than the rest:  according to the legend

which was developed to account for all these, there once lived

there a swineherd, who was disrespectful to the consecrated Host;

whereupon he was changed into the larger stone, and his swine

into the smaller ones.  So also at Saloniki we have the pillars

of the ruined temple, which are widely believed, especially among

the Jews of that region, to have once been human beings, and are

therefore known as the "enchanted columns."



Among the Arabs we have an addition to our sacred account of

Adam--the legend of the black stone of the Caaba at Mecca, into

which the angel was changed who was charged by the Almighty to

keep Adam away from the forbidden fruit, and who neglected his

duty.



Similar old transformation legends are abundant among the Indians

of America, the negroes of Africa, and the natives of Australia

and the Pacific islands.



Nor has this making of myths to account for remarkable

appearances yet ceased, even in civilized countries.



About the beginning of this century the Grand Duke of Weimar,

smitten with the classical mania of his time, placed in the

public park near his palace a little altar, and upon this was

carved, after the manner so frequent in classical antiquity, a

serpent taking a cake from it.  And shortly there appeared, in

the town and the country round about, a legend to explain this

altar and its decoration.  It was commonly said that a huge

serpent had laid waste that region in the olden time, until a

wise and benevolent baker had rid the world of the monster by

means of a poisoned biscuit.



So, too, but a few years since, in the heart of the State of New

York, a swindler of genius having made and buried a "petrified

giant," one theologian explained it by declaring it a Phoenician

idol, and published the Phoenician inscription which he thought

he had found upon it; others saw in it proofs that "there were

giants in those days," and within a week after its discovery

myths were afloat that the neighbouring remnant of the Onondaga

Indians had traditions of giants who frequently roamed through

that region.[425]



[425] For transformation myths and legends, identifying rocks and

stones with gods and heroes, see Welcker, Gotterlehre, vol. i, p.

220.  For recent and more accessible statements for the general

reader, see Robertson Smith's admirable Lectures on the Religion

of the Semites, Edinburgh, 1889, pp. 86 et seq.  For some

thoughtful remarks on the ancient adoration of stones rather than

statues, with refernce to the anointing of stones at Bethel by

Jacob, see Dodwell, Tour through Greece, vol. ii, p. 172; also

Robertson Smith, as above, Lecture V.  For Chinese transformation

legends, see Denny's Folklore of China, pp. 96, 128.  For Hindu

and other ancient legends of transformations, see Dawson,

Dictionary of Hindu Mythology; also Coleman, as above; also Cox,

Mythology of the Aryan Nations, pp. 81-97, etc.  For such

transformations in Greece, see the Iliad, and Ovid, as above;

also Stark, Niobe und die Niobiden, p. 444 and elsewhere; also

Preller, Griechische Mythologie, passim; also Baumeister,

Denkmaler des classischen Alterthums, article Niobe; also

Botticher,as above; also Curtius, Griechische Geschichte, vol.i,

pp. 71, 72.  For Pausanius's naive confession regarding the

Sipylos rock, see book i, p. 215.  See also Texier, Asie Mineure,

pp. 265 et seq.; also Chandler, Travels in Greece, vol. ii, p.

80, who seems to hold to the later origin of the statue.  At the

end of Baumeister there is an engraving copied from Stuart which

seems to show that, as to the Niobe legend, at a later period,

Art was allowed to help Nature.  For the general subject, see

Scheiffle, Programm des K. Gymnasiums in Ellwangen: Mythologische

Parallelen, 1865.  For Scandinavian and Teutonic transformation

legends, see Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, vierte Ausg., vol. i, p.

457; also Thorpe, Northern Antiquities; also Friedrich, passim,

especially p. 116 et seq.; also, for a mass of very curious ones,

Karl Bartsch, Sagen, Marchen und gebrauche aus Meklenburg, vol.

i, pp. 420 et seq.; also Karl Simrock's edition of the Edda,

ninth edition, p. 319; also John Fiske, Myths and Myth-makers,

pp. 8, 9.  On the universality of such legends and myths, see

Ritter's Erdkunde, vol. xiv, pp. 1098-1122.  For Irish examples,

see Manz, Real-Encyclopadie, article Stein; and for multitudes of

examples in Brittany, see Sebillot, Traditions de la Haute-

Bretagne.  For the enchanted columns at Saloniki, see the latest

edition of Murray's Handbook of Turkey, vol. ii, p. 711.  For the

legend of the angel changed into stone for neglecting to guard

Adam, see Weil, university librarian at Heidelberg, Biblische

Legende der Muselmanner, Frankfort-am-Main, 1845, pp. 37, 84.

For similar transformation legends in Australia and among the

American Indians, see Andrew Lang, Mythology, French translation,

pp. 83, 102; also his Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. i, pp. 150

et seq., citing numerous examples from J. G. Muller,

Urreligionen, and Dorman's Primitive Superstitions; also Report

of the Bureau of Ethnoligy for 1880-'81; and for an African

example, see account of the rock at Balon which was once a woman,

in Berenger-Feraud, Contes populaires de la Senegambie, chap.

viii.  For the Weimar legend, see Lewes, Life of Goethe, book iv.

For the myths which arose about the swindling "Cardiff giant" in

the State of New York, see especially an article by G. A.

Stockwell, M. D., in The Popular Science Monthly for June, 1878;

see also W. A. McKinney in The New-Englander for October, 1875;

and for the "Phoenician inscription," given at length with a

translation, see the Rev. Alexander McWhorter, in The Galaxy for

July, 1872.  The present writer visited the "giant" shortly after

it was "discovered," carefully observed it, and the myths to

which it gave rise, has in his possession a mass of curious

documents regarding this fraud, and hopes ere long to prepare a

supplement to Dr. Stockwell's valuable paper.





To the same stage of thought belongs the conception of human

beings changed into trees.  But, in the historic evolution of

religion and morality, while changes into stone or rock were

considered as punishments, or evidences of divine wrath, those

into trees and shrubs were frequently looked upon as rewards, or

evidences of divine favour.



A very beautiful and touching form of this conception is seen in

such myths as the change of Philemon into the oak, and of Baucis

into the linden; of Myrrha into the myrtle; of Melos into the

apple tree; of Attis into the pine; of Adonis into the rose

tree; and in the springing of the vine and grape from the blood

of the Titans, the violet from the blood of Attis, and the

hyacinth from the blood of Hyacinthus.



Thus it was, during the long ages when mankind saw everywhere

miracle and nowhere law, that, in the evolution of religion and

morality, striking features in physical geography became

connected with the idea of divine retribution.[426]





[426] For the view taken in Greece and Rome of transformations

into trees and shrubs, see Botticher, Baumcultus der Hellenen,

book i, chap. xix; also Ovid, Metamorphoses, passim; also

foregoing notes.





But, in the natural course of intellectual growth, thinking men

began to doubt the historical accuracy of these myths and

legends--or, at least, to doubt all save those of the theology in

which they happened to be born; and the next step was taken when

they began to make comparisons between the myths and legends of

different neighbourhoods and countries:  so came into being the

science of comparative mythology--a science sure to be of vast

value, because, despite many stumblings and vagaries, it shows

ever more and more how our religion and morality have been

gradually evolved, and gives a firm basis to a faith that higher

planes may yet be reached.



Such a science makes the sacred books of the world more and more

precious, in that it shows how they have been the necessary

envelopes of our highest spiritual sustenance; how even myths

and legends apparently the most puerile have been the natural

husks and rinds and shells of our best ideas; and how the

atmosphere is created in which these husks and rinds and shells

in due time wither, shrivel, and fall away, so that the fruit

itself may be gathered to sustain a nobler religion and a purer

morality.



The coming in of Christianity contributed elements of inestimable

value in this evolution, and, at the centre of all, the thoughts,

words, and life of the Master.  But when, in the darkness that

followed the downfall of the Roman Empire, there was developed a

theology and a vast ecclesiastical power to enforce it, the most

interesting chapters in this evolution of religion and morality

were removed from the domain of science.



So it came that for over eighteen hundred years it has been

thought natural and right to study and compare the myths and

legends arising east and west and south and north of Palestine

with each other, but never with those of Palestine itself; so it

came that one of the regions most fruitful in materials for

reverent thought and healthful comparison was held exempt from

the unbiased search for truth; so it came that, in the name of

truth, truth was crippled for ages.  While observation, and

thought upon observation, and the organized knowledge or science

which results from these, progressed as regarded the myths and

legends of other countries, and an atmosphere was thus produced

giving purer conceptions of the world and its government, myths

of that little geographical region at the eastern end of the

Mediterranean retained possession of the civilized world in their

original crude form, and have at times done much to thwart the

noblest efforts of religion, morality, and civilization.







II.  MEDIAEVAL GROWTH OF THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS.





The history of myths, of their growth under the earlier phases of

human thought and of their decline under modern thinking, is one

of the most interesting and suggestive of human studies; but,

since to treat it as a whole would require volumes, I shall

select only one small group, and out of this mainly a single

myth--one about which there can no longer be any dispute--the

group of myths and legends which grew upon the shore of the Dead

Sea, and especially that one which grew up to account for the

successive salt columns washed out by the rains at its

southwestern extremity.



The Dead Sea is about fifty miles in length and ten miles in

width; it lies in a very deep fissure extending north and south,

and its surface is about thirteen hundred feet below that of the

Mediterranean.  It has, therefore, no outlet, and is the

receptacle for the waters of the whole system to which it

belongs, including those collected by the Sea of Galilee and

brought down thence by the river Jordan.



It certainly--or at least the larger part of it--ranks

geologically among the oldest lakes on earth.  In a broad sense

the region is volcanic:  On its shore are evidences of volcanic

action, which must from the earliest period have aroused wonder

and fear, and stimulated the myth-making tendency to account for

them.  On the eastern side are impressive mountain masses which

have been thrown up from old volcanic vents; mineral and hot

springs abound, some of them spreading sulphurous odours;

earthquakes have been frequent, and from time to time these have

cast up masses of bitumen; concretions of sulphur and large

formations of salt constantly appear.



The water which comes from the springs or oozes through the salt

layers upon its shores constantly brings in various salts in

solution, and, being rapidly evaporated under the hot sun and dry

wind, there has been left, in the bed of the lake, a strong brine

heavily charged with the usual chlorides and bromides--a sort of

bitter "mother liquor" This fluid has become so dense as to have

a remarkable power of supporting the human body; it is of an

acrid and nauseating bitterness; and by ordinary eyes no

evidence of life is seen in it.



Thus it was that in the lake itself, and in its surrounding

shores, there was enough to make the generation of explanatory

myths on a large scale inevitable.



The main northern part of the lake is very deep, the plummet

having shown an abyss of thirteen hundred feet; but the southern

end is shallow and in places marshy.



The system of which it forms a part shows a likeness to that in

South America of which the mountain lake Titicaca is the main

feature; as a receptacle for surplus waters, only rendering them

by evaporation, it resembles the Caspian and many other seas; as

a sort of evaporating dish for the leachings of salt rock, and

consequently holding a body of water unfit to support the higher

forms of animal life, it resembles, among others, the Median lake

of Urumiah; as a deposit of bitumen, it resembles the pitch

lakes of Trinidad.[427]



[427] For modern views of the Dead Sea, see the Rev. Edward

Robinson, D. D., Biblical Researches, various editions; Lynch's

Exploring Expedition; De Saulcy, Voyage autour de la Mer Morte;

Stanley's Palestine and Syria; Schaff's Through Bible Lands; and

other travellers hereafter quoted.  For good photogravures,

showing the character of the whole region, see the atlas forming

part of De Luynes's monumental Voyage d'Exploration.  For

geographical summaries, see Reclus, La Terre, Paris, 1870, pp.

832-834; Ritter, Erdkunde, volumes devoted to Palestine and

especially as supplemented in Gage's translation with additions;

Reclus, Nouvelle Geographie Universelle, vol. ix, p. 736, where a

small map is given presenting the difference in depth between the

two ends of the lake, of which so much was made theologically

before Lartet.  For still better maps, see De Saulcy, and

especially De Luynes, Voyage d'Exploration (atlas).  For very

interesting panoramic views, see last edition of Canon Tristram's

Land of Israel, p. 635.  For the geology, see Lartet, in his

reports to the French Geographical Society, and especially in

vol. iii of De Luynes's work, where there is an admirable

geological map with sections, etc.; also Ritter; also Sir J. W.

Dawson's Egypt and Syria, published by the Religious Tract

Society; also Rev. Cunningham Geikie, D. D., Geology of

Palestine; and for pictures showing salt formation, Tristram, as

above.  For the meteorology, see Vignes, report to De Luynes, pp.

65 et seq.  For chemistry of the Dead Sea, see as above, and

Terreil's report, given in Gage's Ritter, vol. iii, appendix 2,

and tables in De Luynes's third volume.  For zoology of the Dead

Sea, as to entire absence of life in it, see all earlier

travellers; as to presence of lower forms of life, see

Ehrenberg's microscopic examinations in Gage's Ritter.  See also

reports in third volume of De Luynes.  For botany of the Dead

Sea, and especially regarding "apples of Sodom," see Dr. Lortet's

La Syrie, p. 412; also Reclus, Nouvelle Geographie, vol. ix, p.

737; also for photographic representations of them, see portfolio

forming part of De Luynes's work, plate 27.  For Strabo's very

perfect description, see his Geog., lib. xvi, cap. ii; also

Fallmerayer, Werke, pp. 177, 178.  For names and positions of a

large number of salt lakes in various parts of the world more or

less resembling the Dead Sea, see De Luynes, vol. iii, pp. 242 et

seq.  For Trinidad "pitch lakes," found by Sir Walter Raleigh in

1595, see Lengegg, El Dorado, part i, p. 103, and part ii, p.

101; also Reclus, Ritter, et al.  For the general subject, see

Schenkel, Bibel-Lexikon, s.v. Todtes Meer, an excellent summery.

The description of the Dead Sea in Lenormant's great history is

utterly unworthy of him, and must have been thrown together from

old notes after his death.  It is amazing to see in such a work

the old superstitions that birds attempting to fly over the sea

are sufficated.  See Lenormant, Histoire ancienne de l'Orient,

edition of 1888, vol. vi, p. 112.  For the absorption and

adoption of foreign myths and legends by the Jews, see

Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, p. 390.  For the

views of Greeks and Romans, see especially Tacitus, Historiae,

book v, Pliny, and Strabo, in whose remarks are the germs of many

of the mediaeval myths.  For very curious examples of these, see

Baierus, De Excidio Sodomae, Halle, 1690, passim.





In all this there is nothing presenting any special difficulty to

the modern geologist or geographer; but with the early dweller

in Palestine the case was very different.  The rocky, barren

desolation of the Dead Sea region impressed him deeply; he

naturally reasoned upon it; and this impression and reasoning we

find stamped into the pages of his sacred literature, rendering

them all the more precious as a revelation of the earlier thought

of mankind.  The long circumstantial account given in Genesis,

its application in Deuteronomy, its use by Amos, by Isaiah, by

Jeremiah, by Zephaniah, and by Ezekiel, the references to it in

the writings attributed to St. Paul, St. Peter, and St.

Jude, in the Apocalypse, and, above all, in more than one

utterance of the Master himself--all show how deeply these

geographical features impressed the Jewish mind.



At a very early period, myths and legends, many and

circumstantial, grew up to explain features then so

incomprehensible.



As the myth and legend grew up among the Greeks of a refusal of

hospitality to Zeus and Hermes by the village in Phrygia, and the

consequent sinking of that beautiful region with its inhabitants

beneath a lake and morass, so there came belief in a similar

offence by the people of the beautiful valley of Siddim, and the

consequent sinking of that valley with its inhabitants beneath

the waters of the Dead Sea.  Very similar to the accounts of the

saving of Philemon and Baucis are those of the saving of Lot and

his family.



But the myth-making and miracle-mongering by no means ceased in

ancient times; they continued to grow through the medieval and

modern period until they have quietly withered away in the light

of modern scientific investigation, leaving to us the religious

and moral truths they inclose.



It would be interesting to trace this whole group of myths:

their origin in times prehistoric, their development in Greece

and Rome, their culmination during the ages of faith, and their

disappearance in the age of science.  It would be especially

instructive to note the conscientious efforts to prolong their

life by making futile compromises between science and theology

regarding them; but I shall mention this main group only

incidentally, confining my self almost entirely to the one above

named--the most remarkable of all--the myth which grew about the

salt pillars of Usdum.



I select this mainly because it involves only elementary

principles, requires no abstruse reasoning, and because all

controversy regarding it is ended.  There is certainly now no

theologian with a reputation to lose who will venture to revive

the idea regarding it which was sanctioned for hundreds, nay,

thousands, of years by theology, was based on Scripture, and was

held by the universal Church until our own century.



The main feature of the salt region of Usdum is a low range of

hills near the southwest corner of the Dead Sea, extending in a

southeasterly direction for about five miles, and made up mainly

of salt rock.  This rock is soft and friable, and, under the

influence of the heavy winter rains, it has been, without doubt,

from a period long before human history, as it is now, cut ever

into new shapes, and especially into pillars or columns, which

sometimes bear a resemblance to the human form.



An eminent clergyman who visited this spot recently speaks of the

appearance of this salt range as follows:



"Fretted by fitful showers and storms, its ridge is exceedingly

uneven, its sides carved out and constantly changing;...and

each traveller might have a new pillar of salt to wonder over at

intervals of a few years."[428]



[428] As to the substance of the "pillars" or "statues" or

"needles" of salt at Usdum, many travellers speak of it as "marl

and salt."  Irby and Mangles, in their Travels in Egypt, Nubia,

Syria, and the Holy Land, chap. vii, call it "salt and hardened

sand."  The citation as to frequent carving out of new "pillars"

is from the Travels in Palestine of the Rev. H. F. Osborn, D. D.;

see also Palmer, Desert of the Exodus, vol.ii, pp. 478, 479.  For

engravings of the salt pillar at different times, compare that

given by Lynch in 1848, when it appeared as a column forty feet

high, with that given by Palmer as the frontpiece to his Desert

of the Exodus, Cambridge, England, 1871, when it was small and

"does really bear a curious resemblance to an Arab woman with a

child upon he shoulders", and this again with the picture of the

salt formation at Usdum given by Canon Tristram, at whose visit

there was neither "pillar" nor "statue."  See The Land of Israel,

by H. B. Tristram, D. D., F. R. S., London, 1882, p. 324.  For

similar pillars of salt washed out from the mud at Catalonia, see

Lyell.





Few things could be more certain than that, in the indolent

dream-life of the East, myths and legends would grow up to

account for this as for other strange appearances in all that

region.  The question which a religious Oriental put to himself

in ancient times at Usdum was substantially that which his

descendant to-day puts to himself at Kosseir.  "Why is this

region thus blasted?"  "Whence these pillars of salt?"  or

"Whence these blocks of granite?"  "What aroused the vengeance of

Jehovah or of Allah to work these miracles of desolation?"



And, just as Maxime Du Camp recorded the answer of the modern

Shemite at Kosseir, so the compilers of the Jewish sacred books

recorded the answer of the ancient Shemite at the Dead Sea; just

as Allah at Kosseir blasted the land and transformed the melons

into boulders which are seen to this day, so Jehovah at Usdum

blasted the land and transformed Lot's wife into a pillar of

salt, which is seen to this day.



No more difficulty was encountered in the formation of the Lot

legend, to account for that rock resembling the human form, than

in the formation of the Niobe legend, which accounted for a

supposed resemblance in the rock at Sipylos:  it grew up just as

we have seen thousands of similar myths and legends grow up about

striking natural appearances in every early home of the human

race.  Being thus consonant with the universal view regarding

the relation of physical geography to the divine government, it

became a treasure of the Jewish nation and of the Christian

Church--a treasure not only to be guarded against all hostile

intrusion, but to be increased, as we shall see, by the

myth-making powers of Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans for

thousands of years.  The spot where the myth originated was

carefully kept in mind; indeed, it could not escape, for in that

place alone were constantly seen the phenomena which gave rise to

it.  We have a steady chain of testimony through the ages, all

pointing to the salt pillar as the irrefragable evidence of

divine judgment.  That great theological test of truth, the

dictum of St. Vincent of Lerins, would certainly prove that the

pillar was Lot's wife, for it was believed so to be by Jews,

Christians, and Mohammedans from the earliest period down to a

time almost within present memory-- "always, everywhere, and by

all."  It would stand perfectly the ancient test insisted upon by

Cardinal Newman," Securus judicat orbis terrarum."



For, ever since the earliest days of Christianity, the identity

of the salt pillar with Lot's wife has been universally held and

supported by passages in Genesis, in St. Luke's Gospel, and in

the Second Epistle of St. Peter--coupled with a passage in the

book of the Wisdom of Solomon, which to this day, by a majority

in the Christian Church, is believed to be inspired, and from

which are specially cited the words, "A standing pillar of salt

is a monument of an unbelieving soul."[429]



[429] For the usual biblical citations, see Genesis xix, 26; St.

Luke xvii, 32; II Peter ii, 6.  For the citation from Wisdom, see

chap. x, v. 7.  For the account of the transformation of Lot's

wife put into its proper relations with the Jehovistic and

Elohistic documents, see Lenormant's La Genese, Paris, 1883, pp.

53, 199, and 317, 318.





Never was chain of belief more continuous.  In the first century

of the Christian era Josephus refers to the miracle, and declares

regarding the statue, "I have seen it, and it remains at this

day"; and Clement, Bishop of Rome, one of the most revered

fathers of the Church, noted for the moderation of his

statements, expresses a similar certainty, declaring the

miraculous statue to be still standing.



In the second century that great father of the Church, bishop and

martyr, Irenaeus, not only vouched for it, but gave his approval

to the belief that the soul of Lot's wife still lingered in the

statue, giving it a sort of organic life:  thus virtually began

in the Church that amazing development of the legend which we

shall see taking various forms through the Middle Ages--the story

that the salt statue exercised certain physical functions which

in these more delicate days can not be alluded to save under

cover of a dead language.



This addition to the legend, which in these signs of life, as in

other things, is developed almost exactly on the same lines with

the legend of the Niobe statue in the rock of Mount Sipylos and

with the legends of human beings transformed into boulders in

various mythologies, was for centuries regarded as an additional

confirmation of revealed truth.



In the third century the myth burst into still richer bloom in a

poem long ascribed to Tertullian.  In this poem more miraculous

characteristics of the statue are revealed.  It could not be

washed away by rains; it could not be overthrown by winds; any

wound made upon it was miraculously healed; and the earlier

statements as to its physical functions were amplified in

sonorous Latin verse.



With this appeared a new legend regarding the Dead Sea; it

became universally believed, and we find it repeated throughout

the whole medieval period, that the bitumen could only he

dissolved by such fluids as in the processes of animated nature

came from the statue.



The legend thus amplified we shall find dwelt upon by pious

travellers and monkish chroniclers for hundreds of years:  so it

came to he more and more treasured by the universal Church, and

held more and more firmly--"always, everywhere, and by all."



In the two following centuries we have an overwhelming mass of

additional authority for the belief that the very statue of salt

into which Lot's wife was transformed was still existing.  In

the fourth, the continuance of the statue was vouched for by St.

Silvia, who visited the place:  though she could not see it, she

was told by the Bishop of Segor that it had been there some time

before, and she concluded that it had been temporarily covered by

the sea.  In both the fourth and fifth centuries such great

doctors in the Church as St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, and

St. Cyril of Jerusalem agreed in this belief and statement; hence

it was, doubtless, that the Hebrew word which is translated in

the authorized English version "pillar," was translated in the

Vulgate, which the majority of Christians believe virtually

inspired, by the word "statue"; we shall find this fact insisted

upon by theologians arguing in behalf of the statue, as a result

and monument of the miracle, for over fourteen hundred years

afterward.[430]



[430] See Josephus, Antiquities, book i, chap. xi; Epist. I;

Cyril Hieros, Catech., xix; Chrysostom, Hom. XVIII, XLIV, in

Genes.; Irenaeus, lib. iv, c. xxxi, of his Heresies, edition

Oxon., 1702.  For St. Silvia, see S. Silviae Aquitanae

Peregrinatio ad Loca Sancta, Romae, 1887, p. 55; also edition of

1885, p. 25.  For recent translation, see Pilgrimage of St.

Silvia, p. 28, in publications of Palestine Text Society for

1891.  For legends of signs of continued life in boulders and

stones into which human beings have been transformed for sin, see

Karl Bartsch, Sage, etc., vol. ii, pp. 420 et seq.





About the middle of the sixth century Antoninus Martyr visited

the Dead Sea region and described it, but curiously reversed a

simple truth in these words:  "Nor do sticks or straws float

there, nor can a man swim, but whatever is cast into it sinks

to the bottom."  As to the statue of Lot's wife, he threw doubt

upon its miraculous renewal, but testified that it was still

standing.



In the seventh century the Targum of Jerusalem not only testified

that the salt pillar at Usdum was once Lot's wife, but declared

that she must retain that form until the general resurrection.

In the seventh century too, Bishop Arculf travelled to the Dead

Sea, and his work was added to the treasures of the Church.  He

greatly develops the legend, and especially that part of it given

by Josephus.  The bitumen that floats upon the sea "resembles

gold and the form of a bull or camel"; "birds can not live near

it"; and "the very beautiful apples" which grow there, when

plucked, "burn and are reduced to ashes, and smoke as if they

were still burning."



In the eighth century the Venerable Bede takes these statements

of Arculf and his predecessors, binds them together in his work

on The Holy Places, and gives the whole mass of myths and

legends an enormous impulse.[431]



[431] For Antoninus Martyr, see Tobler's edition of his work in

the Itinera, vol. i, p. 100, Geneva, 1877.  For the Targum of

Jerusalem, see citation in Quaresmius, Terrae Sanctae

Elucidation, Peregrinatio vi, cap. xiv; new Venice edition.  For

Arculf, see Tobler.  For Bede, see his De Locis Sanctis in

Tobler's Itinera, vol. i, p. 228.  For an admirable statement of

the mediaeval theological view of scientific research, see

Eicken, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung,

Stuttgart, 1887, chap. vi.





In the tenth century new force is given to it by the pious Moslem

Mukadassi.  Speaking of the town of Segor, near the salt region,

he says that the proper translation of its name is "Hell"; and

of the lake he says, "Its waters are hot, even as though the

place stood over hell-fire."



In the crusading period, immediately following, all the legends

burst forth more brilliantly than ever.



The first of these new travellers who makes careful statements is

Fulk of Chartres, who in 1100 accompanied King Baldwin to the

Dead Sea and saw many wonders; but, though he visited the salt

region at Usdum, he makes no mention of the salt pillar:

evidently he had fallen on evil times; the older statues had

probably been washed away, and no new one had happened to be

washed out of the rocks just at that period.



But his misfortune was more than made up by the triumphant

experience of a far more famous traveller, half a century

later--Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela.



Rabbi Benjamin finds new evidences of miracle in the Dead Sea,

and develops to a still higher point the legend of the salt

statue of Lot's wife, enriching the world with the statement that

it was steadily and miraculously rene wed; that, though the

cattle of the region licked its surface, it never grew smaller.

Again a thrill of joy went through the monasteries and pulpits of

Christendom at this increasing "evidence of the truth of

Scripture."



Toward the end of the thirteenth century there appeared in

Palestine a traveller superior to most before or since--Count

Burchard, monk of Mount Sion.  He had the advantage of knowing

something of Arabic, and his writings show him to have been

observant and thoughtful.  No statue of Lot's wife appears to

have been washed clean of the salt rock at his visit, but he

takes it for granted that the Dead Sea is "the mouth of hell,"

and that the vapour rising from it is the smoke from Satan's

furnaces.



These ideas seem to have become part of the common stock, for

Ernoul, who travelled to the Dead Sea during the same century,

always speaks of it as the "Sea of Devils."



Near the beginning of the fourteenth century appeared the book of

far wider influence which bears the name of Sir John Mandeville,

and in the various editions of it myths and legends of the Dead

Sea and of the pillar of salt burst forth into wonderful

luxuriance.



This book tells us that masses of fiery matter are every day

thrown up from the water "as large as a horse"; that, though it

contains no living thing, it has been shown that men thrown into

it can not die; and, finally, as if to prove the worthlessness

of devout testimony to the miraculous, he says:  "And whoever

throws a piece of iron therein, it floats; and whoever throws a

feather therein, it sinks to the bottom; and, because that is

contrary to nature, I was not willing to believe it until I saw

it."



The book, of course, mentions Lot's wife, and says that the

pillar of salt "stands there to-day," and "has a right salty

taste."



Injustice has perhaps been done to the compilers of this famous

work in holding them liars of the first magnitude.  They simply

abhorred scepticism, and thought it meritorious to believe all

pious legends.  The ideal Mandeville was a man of overmastering

faith, and resembled Tertullian in believing some things "because

they are impossible"; he was doubtless entirely conscientious;

the solemn ending of the book shows that he listened, observed,

and wrote under the deepest conviction, and those who re-edited

his book were probably just as honest in adding the later stories

of pious travellers.



The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, thus appealing to the

popular heart, were most widely read in the monasteries and

repeated among the people.  Innumerable copies were made in

manuscript, and finally in print, and so the old myths received a

new life.[432]



[432] For Fulk of Chartres and crusading travellers generally,

see Bongars' Gesta Dei and the French Recueil; also Histories of

the Crusades by Wilken, Sybel, Kugler, and others; see also

Robinson, Biblical Researches, vol. ii, p. 109, and Tobler,

Bibliographia Geographica Palestinae, 1867, p. 12.  For Benjamin

of Tudela's statement, see Wright's Collection of Travels in

Palestine, p. 84, and Asher's edition of Benjamin of Tudela's

travels, vol. i, pp. 71, 72; also Charton, vol. i, p. 180.  For

Borchard or Burchard, see full text in the Reyssbuch dess

Heyligen Landes; also Grynaeus, Nov. Orbis, Basil, 1532, fol.

298, 329.  For Ernoul, see his L'Estat de la Cite de Hierusalem,

in Michelant and Reynaud, Itineraires Francaises au 12me et 13me

Siecles.  For Petrus Diaconus, see his book De Locis Sanctis,

edited by Gamurrini, Rome, 1887, pp. 126, 127.  For Mandeville I

have compared several editions, especially those in the

Reyssbuch, in Canisius, and in Wright, with Halliwell's reprint

and with the rare Strasburg edition of 1484 in the Cornell

University Library: the whole statement regarding the experiment

with iron and feathers is given differently in different copies.

The statement that he saw the feathers sink and the iron swim is

made in the Reyssbuch edition, Frankfort, 1584.  The story, like

the saints' legends, evidently grew as time went on, but is none

the less interesting as showing the general credulity.  Since

writing the above, I have been glad to find my view of

Mandeville's honesty confirmed by the Rev. Dr. Robinson, and by

Mr. Gage in his edition of Ritter's Palestine.





In the fifteenth century wonders increased.  In 1418 we have the

Lord of Caumont, who makes a pilgrimage and gives us a statement

which is the result of the theological reasoning of centuries,

and especially interesting as a typical example of the

theological method in contrast with the scientific.  He could

not understand how the blessed waters of the Jordan could be

allowed to mingle with the accursed waters of the Dead Sea.  In

spite, then, of the eye of sense, he beheld the water with the

eye of faith, and calmly announced that the Jordan water passes

through the sea, but that the two masses of water are not

mingled.  As to the salt statue of Lot's wife, he declares it to

be still existing; and, copying a table of indulgences granted by

the Church to pious pilgrims, he puts down the visit to the salt

statue as giving an indulgence of seven years.



Toward the end of the century we have another traveller yet more

influential:  Bernard of Breydenbach, Dean of Mainz.  His book of

travels was published in 1486, at the famous press of Schoeffer,

and in various translations it was spread through Europe,

exercising an influence wide and deep.  His first important

notice of the Dead Sea is as follows:  "In this, Tirus the

serpent is found, and from him the Tiriac medicine is made.  He

is blind, and so full of venom that there is no remedy for his

bite except cutting off the bitten part.  He can only be taken by

striking him and making him angry; then his venom flies into his

head and tail."  Breydenbach calls the Dead Sea "the chimney of

hell," and repeats the old story as to the miraculous solvent for

its bitumen.  He, too, makes the statement that the holy water of

the Jordan does not mingle with the accursed water of the

infernal sea, but increases the miracle which Caumont had

announced by saying that, although the waters appear to come

together, the Jordan is really absorbed in the earth before it

reaches the sea.



As to Lot's wife, various travellers at that time had various

fortunes.  Some, like Caumont and Breydenbach, took her

continued existence for granted; some, like Count John of Solms,

saw her and were greatly edified; some, like Hans Werli, tried to

find her and could not, but, like St. Silvia, a thousand years

before, were none the less edified by the idea that, for some

inscrutable purpose, the sea had been allowed to hide her from

them; some found her larger than they expected, even forty feet

high, as was the salt pillar which happened to be standing at the

visit of Commander Lynch in 1848; but this only added a new proof

to the miracle, for the text was remembered, "There were giants

in those days."



Out of the mass of works of pilgrims during the fifteenth century

I select just one more as typical of the theological view then

dominant, and this is the noted book of Felix Fabri, a preaching

friar of Ulm.  I select him, because even so eminent an

authority in our own time as Dr. Edward Robinson declares him to

have been the most thorough, thoughtful, and enlightened

traveller of that century.



Fabri is greatly impressed by the wonders of the Dead Sea, and

typical of his honesty influenced by faith is his account of the

Dead Sea fruit; he describes it with almost perfect accuracy,

but adds the statement that when mature it is "filled with ashes

and cinders."



As to the salt statue, he says:  "We saw the place between the

sea and Mount Segor, but could not see the statue itself because

we were too far distant to see anything of human size; but we saw

it with firm faith, because we believed Scripture, which speaks

of it; and we were filled with wonder."



To sustain absolute faith in the statue he reminds his reader's

that "God is able even of these stones to raise up seed to

Abraham," and goes into a long argument, discussing such

transformations as those of King Atlas and Pygmalion's statue,

with a multitude of others, winding up with the case, given in

the miracles of St. Jerome, of a heretic who was changed into a

log of wood, which was then burned.



He gives a statement of the Hebrews that Lot's wife received her

peculiar punishment because she had refused to add salt to the

food of the angels when they visited her, and he preaches a short

sermon in which he says that, as salt is the condiment of food,

so the salt statue of Lot's wife "gives us a condiment of

wisdom."[433]



[433] For Bernard of Breydenbach, I have used the Latin edition,

Mentz, 1486, in the White collection, Cornell University, also

the German edition in the Reyssbuch.  For John of Solms, Werli,

and the like, see the Reyssbuch, which gives a full text of their

travels.  For Fabri (Schmid), see, for his value, Robinson; also

Tobler, Bibliographia, pp. 53 et seq.; and for texts, see

Reyssbuch, pp. 122b et seq., but best the Fratris Fel. Fabri

Evagatorium, ed. Hassler, Stuttgart, 1843, vol. iii, pp. 172 et

seq.  His book now has been translated into English by the

Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society.





There were, indeed, many discrepancies in the testimony of

travellers regarding the salt pillar--so many, in fact, that at a

later period the learned Dom Calmet acknowledged that they shook

his belief in the whole matter; but, during this earlier time,

under the complete sway of the theological spirit, these

difficulties only gave new and more glorious opportunities for

faith.



For, if a considerable interval occurred between the washing of

one salt pillar out of existence and the washing of another into

existence, the idea arose that the statue, by virtue of the soul

which still remained in it, had departed on some mysterious

excursion.  Did it happen that one statue was washed out one

year in one place and another statue another year in another

place, this difficulty was surmounted by believing that Lot's

wife still walked about.  Did it happen that a salt column was

undermined by the rains and fell, this was believed to be but

another sign of life.  Did a pillar happen to be covered in part

by the sea, this was enough to arouse the belief that the statue

from time to time descended into the Dead Sea depths--possibly to

satisfy that old fatal curiosity regarding her former neighbours.



Did some smaller block of salt happen to be washed out near the

statue, it was believed that a household dog, also transformed

into salt, had followed her back from beneath the deep.  Did more

statues than one appear at one time, that simply made the mystery

more impressive.



In facts now so easy of scientific explanation the theologians

found wonderful matter for argument.



One great question among them was whether the soul of Lot's wife

did really remain in the statue.  On one side it was insisted

that, as Holy Scripture declares that Lot's wife was changed into

a pillar of salt, and as she was necessarily made up of a soul

and a body, the soul must have become part of the statue.  This

argument was clinched by citing that passage in the Book of

Wisdom in which the salt pillar is declared to be still standing

as "the monument of an unbelieving SOUL."  On the other hand, it

was insisted that the soul of the woman must have been

incorporeal and immortal, and hence could not have been changed

into a substance corporeal and mortal.  Naturally, to this it

would be answered that the salt pillar was no more corporeal than

the ordinary materials of the human body, and that it had been

made miraculously immortal, and "with God all things are

possible."  Thus were opened long vistas of theological

discussion.[434]



[434] For a brief statement of the main arguments for and against

the idea that the soul of Lot's wife remained within the salt

statue, see Cornelius a Lapide, Commentarius in Pentateuchum,

Antwerp, 1697, chap. xix.





As we enter the sixteenth century the Dead Sea myths, and

especially the legends of Lot's wife, are still growing.  In

1507 Father Anselm of the Minorites declares that the sea

sometimes covers the feet of the statue, sometimes the legs,

sometimes the whole body.



In 1555, Gabriel Giraudet, priest at Puy, journeyed through

Palestine.  His faith was robust, and his attitude toward the

myths of the Dead Sea is seen by his declaration that its waters

are so foul that one can smell them at a distance of three

leagues; that straw, hay, or feathers thrown into them will

sink, but that iron and other metals will float; that criminals

have been kept in them three or four days and could not drown.

As to Lot's wife, he says that he found her "lying there, her

back toward heaven, converted into salt stone; for I touched her,

scratched her, and put a piece of her into my mouth, and she

tasted salt."



At the centre of all these legends we see, then, the idea that,

though there were no living beasts in the Dead Sea, the people of

the overwhelmed cities were still living beneath its waters,

probably in hell; that there was life in the salt statue; and

that it was still curious regarding its old neighbours.



Hence such travellers in the latter years of the century as Count

Albert of Lowenstein and Prince Nicolas Radziwill are not at all

weakened in faith by failing to find the statue.  What the former

is capable of believing is seen by his statement that in a

certain cemetery at Cairo during one night in the year the dead

thrust forth their feet, hands, limbs, and even rise wholly from

their graves.



There seemed, then, no limit to these pious beliefs.  The idea

that there is merit in credulity, with the love of myth-making

and miracle-mongering, constantly made them larger.  Nor did the

Protestant Reformation diminish them at first; it rather

strengthened them and fixed them more firmly in the popular mind.

They seemed destined to last forever.  How they were thus

strengthened at first, under Protestantism, and how they were

finally dissolved away in the atmosphere of scientific thought,

will now be shown.[435]



[435] For Father Anselm, see his Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, in H.

Canisius, Thesaurus Monument Eccles., Basnage edition, Amsterdam,

1725, vol. iv, p. 788.  For Giraudet, see his Discours du Voyage

d'Outre-Mer, Paris, 1585, p. 56a.  For Radziwill and Lowenstein,

see the Reyssbuch, especially p. 198a.









III.  POST-REFORMATION CULMINATION OF THE DEAD SEA

LEGENDS.--BEGINNINGS OF A HEALTHFUL SCEPTICISM.





The first effect of the Protestant Reformation was to popularize

the older Dead Sea legends, and to make the public mind still

more receptive for the newer ones.



Luther's great pictorial Bible, so powerful in fixing the ideas

of the German people, showed by very striking engravings all

three of these earlier myths--the destruction of the cities by

fire from heaven, the transformation of Lot's wife, and the vile

origin of the hated Moabites and Ammonites; and we find the salt

statue, especially, in this and other pictorial Bibles, during

generation after generation.



Catholic peoples also held their own in this display of faith.

About 1517 Francois Regnault published at Paris a compilation on

Palestine enriched with woodcuts:  in this the old Dead Sea

legend of the "serpent Tyrus" reappears embellished, and with it

various other new versions of old stories.  Five years later

Bartholomew de Salignac travels in the Holy Land, vouches for the

continued existence of the Lot's wife statue, and gives new life

to an old marvel by insisting that the sacred waters of the

Jordan are not really poured into the infernal basin of the Dead

Sea, but that they are miraculously absorbed by the earth.



These ideas were not confined to the people at large; we trace

them among scholars.



In 1581, Bunting, a North German professor and theologian,

published his Itinerary of Holy Scripture, and in this the Dead

Sea and Lot legends continue to increase.  He tells us that the

water of the sea "changes three times every day"; that it "spits

forth fire" that it throws up "on high" great foul masses which

"burn like pitch" and "swim about like huge oxen"; that the

statue of Lot's wife is still there, and that it shines like

salt.



In 1590, Christian Adrichom, a Dutch theologian, published his

famous work on sacred geography.  He does not insist upon the

Dead Sea legends generally, but declares that the statue of Lot's

wife is still in existence, and on his map he gives a picture of

her standing at Usdum.



Nor was it altogether safe to dissent from such beliefs.  Just

as, under the papal sway, men of science were severely punished

for wrong views of the physical geography of the earth in

general, so, when Calvin decided to burn Servetus, he included in

his indictment for heresy a charge that Servetus, in his edition

of Ptolemy, had made unorthodox statements regarding the physical

geography of Palestine.[436]



[436] For biblical engravings showing Lot's wife transformed into

a salt statue, etc., see Luther's Bible, 1534, p. xi; also the

pictorial Electoral Bible; also Merian's Icones Biblicae of 1625;

also the frontpiece of the Luther Bible published at Nuremberg in

1708; also Scheuchzer's Kupfer-Bibel, Augsburg, 1731, Tab. lxxx.

For the account of the Dead Sea serpent "Tyrus," etc., see La

Grande Voyage de Hierusalem, Paris (1517?), p. xxi.  For De

Salignac's assertion regarding the salt pillar and suggestion

regarding the absorption of the Jordan before reaching the Dead

Sea, see his Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, Magdeburg, 1593, SS

34 and 35.  For Bunting, see his Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae,

Magdeburg, 1589, pp. 78, 79.  For Andrichom's picture of the salt

statue, see map, p. 38, and text, p. 205, of his Theatrum Terrae

Sanctae, 1613.  For Calvin and Servetus, see Willis, Servetus and

Calvin, pp. 96, 307; also the Servetus edition of Ptolemy.





Protestants and Catholics vied with each other in the making of

new myths.  Thus, in his Most Devout Journey, published in

1608, Jean Zvallart, Mayor of Ath in Hainault, confesses himself

troubled by conflicting stories about the salt statue, but

declares himself sound in the faith that "some vestige of it

still remains," and makes up for his bit of freethinking by

adding a new mythical horror to the region--"crocodiles," which,

with the serpents and the "foul odour of the sea," prevented his

visit to the salt mountains.



In 1615 Father Jean Boucher publishes the first of many editions

of his Sacred Bouquet of the Holy Land.  He depicts the horrors

of the Dead Sea in a number of striking antitheses, and among

these is the statement that it is made of mud rather than of

water, that it soils whatever is put into it, and so corrupts the

land about it that not a blade of grass grows in all that region.



In the same spirit, thirteen years later, the Protestant

Christopher Heidmann publishes his Palaestina, in which he

speaks of a fluid resembling blood oozing from the rocks about

the Dead Sea, and cites authorities to prove that the statue of

Lot's wife still exists and gives signs of life.



Yet, as we near the end of the sixteenth century, some evidences

of a healthful and fruitful scepticism begin to appear.



The old stream of travellers, commentators, and preachers,

accepting tradition and repeating what they have been told, flows

on; but here and there we are refreshed by the sight of a man

who really begins to think and look for himself.



First among these is the French naturalist Pierre Belon.  As

regards the ordinary wonders, he had the simple faith of his

time.  Among a multitude of similar things, he believed that he

saw the stones on which the disciples were sleeping during the

prayer of Christ; the stone on which the Lord sat when he raised

Lazarus from the dead; the Lord's footprints on the stone from

which he ascended into heaven; and, most curious of all, "the

stone which the builders rejected."  Yet he makes some advance on

his predecessors, since he shows in one passage that he had

thought out the process by which the simpler myths of Palestine

were made.  For, between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, he sees a

field covered with small pebbles, and of these he says:  "The

common people tell you that a man was once sowing peas there,

when Our Lady passed that way and asked him what he was doing;

the man answered "I am sowing pebbles" and straightway all the

peas were changed into these little stones."



His ascribing belief in this explanatory transformation myth to

the "common people" marks the faint dawn of a new epoch.



Typical also of this new class is the German botanist Leonhard

Rauwolf.  He travels through Palestine in 1575, and, though

devout and at times credulous, notes comparatively few of the old

wonders, while he makes thoughtful and careful mention of things

in nature that he really saw; he declines to use the eyes of the

monks, and steadily uses his own to good purpose.



As we go on in the seventeenth century, this current of new

thought is yet more evident; a habit of observing more carefully

and of comparing observations had set in; the great voyages of

discovery by Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan, and others were

producing their effect; and this effect was increased by the

inductive philosophy of Bacon, the reasonings of Descartes, and

the suggestions of Montaigne.



So evident was this current that, as far back as the early days

of the century, a great theologian, Quaresmio of Lodi, had made

up his mind to stop it forever.  In 1616, therefore, he began

his ponderous work entitled The Historical, Theological, and

Moral Explanation of the Holy Land.  He laboured upon it for nine

years, gave nine years more to perfecting it, and then put it

into the hands of the great publishing house of Plantin at

Antwerp:  they were four years in printing and correcting it, and

when it at last appeared it seemed certain to establish the

theological view of the Holy Land for all time.  While taking

abundant care of other myths which he believed sanctified by Holy

Scripture, Quaresmio devoted himself at great length to the Dead

Sea, but above all to the salt statue; and he divides his

chapter on it into three parts, each headed by a question:

First, "HOW was Lot's wife changed into a statue of salt?"

secondly, "WHERE was she thus transformed?" and, thirdly, "DOES

THAT STATUE STILL EXIST?"  Through each of these divisions he

fights to the end all who are inclined to swerve in the slightest

degree from the orthodox opinion.  He utterly refuses to

compromise with any modern theorists.  To all such he says, "The

narration of Moses is historical and is to be received in its

natural sense, and no right-thinking man will deny this."  To

those who favoured the figurative interpretation he says, "With

such reasonings any passage of Scripture can be denied."



As to the spot where the miracle occurred, he discusses four

places, but settles upon the point where the picture of the

statue is given in Adrichom's map.  As to the continued

existence of the statue, he plays with the opposing view as a cat

fondles a mouse; and then shows that the most revered ancient

authorities, venerable men still living, and the Bedouins, all

agree that it is still in being.  Throughout the whole chapter

his thoroughness in scriptural knowledge and his profundity in

logic are only excelled by his scorn for those theologians who

were willing to yield anything to rationalism.



So powerful was this argument that it seemed to carry everything

before it, not merely throughout the Roman obedience, but among

the most eminent theologians of Protestantism.



As regards the Roman Church, we may take as a type the missionary

priest Eugene Roger, who, shortly after the appearance of

Quaresmio's book, published his own travels in Palestine.  He

was an observant man, and his work counts among those of real

value; but the spirit of Quaresmio had taken possession of him

fully. His work is prefaced with a map showing the points of most

importance in scriptural history, and among these he identifies

the place where Samson slew the thousand Philistines with the

jawbone of an ass, and where he hid the gates of Gaza; the

cavern which Adam and Eve inhabited after their expulsion from

paradise; the spot where Balaam's ass spoke; the tree on which

Absalom was hanged; the place where Jacob wrestled with the

angel; the steep place where the swine possessed of devils

plunged into the sea; the spot where the prophet Elijah was taken

up in a chariot of fire; and, of course, the position of the salt

statue which was once Lot's wife.  He not only indicates places

on land, but places in the sea; thus he shows where Jonah was

swallowed by the whale, and "where St. Peter caught one hundred

and fifty-three fishes."



As to the Dead Sea miracles generally, he does not dwell on them

at great length; he evidently felt that Quaresmio had exhausted

the subject; but he shows largely the fruits of Quaresmio's

teaching in other matters.



So, too, we find the thoughts and words of Quaresmio echoing afar

through the German universities, in public disquisitions,

dissertations, and sermons.  The great Bible commentators, both

Catholic and Protestant, generally agreed in accepting them.



But, strong as this theological theory was, we find that, as time

went on, it required to be braced somewhat, and in 1692 Wedelius,

Professor of Medicine at Jena, chose as the subject of his

inaugural address The Physiology of the Destruction of Sodom and

of the Statue of Salt.



It is a masterly example of "sanctified science."  At great

length he dwells on the characteristics of sulphur, salt, and

thunderbolts; mixes up scriptural texts, theology, and chemistry

after a most bewildering fashion; and finally comes to the

conclusion that a thunderbolt, flung by the Almighty, calcined

the body of Lot's wife, and at the same time vitrified its

particles into a glassy mass looking like salt.[437]



[437] For Zvallart, see his Tres-devot Voyage de Ierusalem,

Antwerp, 1608, book iv, chapter viii.  His journey was made

twenty years before.  For Father Boucher, see his Bouquet de la

Terre Saincte, Paris, 1622, pp. 447, 448.  For Heidmann, see his

Palaestina, 1689, pp. 58-62.  For Belon's credulity in matters

referred to, see his Observations de Plusieurs Singularitez,

etc., Paris, 1553, pp. 141-144; and for the legend of the peas

changed into pebbles, p. 145; see also Lartet in De Luynes, vol.

iii, p. 11.  For Rauwolf, see the Reyssbuch, and Tobler,

Bibliographia.  For a good acoount of the influence of Montaigne

in developing French scepticism, see Prevost-Paradol's study on

Montaigne prefixed to the Le Clerc edition of the Essays, Paris,

1865; also the well-known passages in Lecky's Rationalism in

Europe.  For Quaresmio I have consulted both the Plantin edition

of 1639 and the superb new Venice edition of 1880-'82.  The

latter, though less prized by book fanciers, is the more

valuable, since it contains some very interesting recent notes.

For the above discussion, see Plantin edition, vol. ii, pp. 758

et seq., and Venice edition, vol. ii, pp. 572-574.  As to the

effect of Quaresmio on the Protestant Church, see Wedelius, De

Statua Salis, Jenae, 1692, pp.6, 7, and elswehere.  For Eugene

Roger, see his La Terre Saincte, Paris, 1664; the map, showing

various sites referred to, is in the preface; and for basilisks,

salamanders, etc., see pp. 89-92, 139, 218, and elsewhere.





Not only were these views demonstrated, so far as

theologico-scientific reasoning could demonstrate anything, but

it was clearly shown, by a continuous chain of testimony from the

earliest ages, that the salt statue at Usdum had been recognised

as the body of Lot's wife by Jews, Mohammedans, and the universal

Christian Church, "always, everywhere, and by all."



Under the influence of teachings like these--and of the winter

rains--new wonders began to appear at the salt pillar.  In 1661

the Franciscan monk Zwinner published his travels in Palestine,

and gave not only most of the old myths regarding the salt

statue, but a new one, in some respects more striking than any of

the old--for he had heard that a dog, also transformed into salt,

was standing by the side of Lot's wife.



Even the more solid Benedictine scholars were carried away, and

we find in the Sacred History by Prof. Mezger, of the order of

St. Benedict, published in 1700, a renewal of the declaration

that the salt statue must be a "PERPETUAL memorial."



But it was soon evident that the scientific current was still

working beneath this ponderous mass of theological authority.  A

typical evidence of this we find in 1666 in the travels of

Doubdan, a canon of St. Denis.  As to the Dead Sea, he says

that he saw no smoke, no clouds, and no "black, sticky water"; as

to the statue of Lot's wife, he says, "The moderns do not believe

so easily that she has lasted so long"; then, as if alarmed at

his own boldness, he concedes that the sea MAY be black and

sticky in the middle; and from Lot's wife he escapes under cover

of some pious generalities.  Four years later another French

ecclesiastic, Jacques Goujon, referring in his published travels

to the legends of the salt pillar, says:  "People may believe


these stories as much as they choose; I did not see it, nor did

I go there."  So, too, in 1697, Morison, a dignitary of the

French Church, having travelled in Palestine, confesses that, as

to the story of the pillar of salt, he has difficulty in

believing it.



The same current is observed working still more strongly in the

travels of the Rev. Henry Maundrell, an English chaplain at

Aleppo, who travelled through Palestine during the same year.

He pours contempt over the legends of the Dead Sea in general:

as to the story that birds could not fly over it, he says that he

saw them flying there; as to the utter absence of life in the

sea, he saw small shells in it; he saw no traces of any buried

cities; and as to the stories regarding the statue of Lot's wife

and the proposal to visit it, he says, "Nor could we give faith

enough to these reports to induce us to go on such an errand."



The influence of the Baconian philosophy on his mind is very

clear; for, in expressing his disbelief in the Dead Sea apples,

with their contents of ashes, he says that he saw none, and he

cites Lord Bacon in support of scepticism on this and similar

points.



But the strongest effect of this growing scepticism is seen near

the end of that century, when the eminent Dutch commentator

Clericus (Le Clerc) published his commentary on the Pentateuch

and his Dissertation on the Statue of Salt.



At great length he brings all his shrewdness and learning to bear

against the whole legend of the actual transformation of Lot's

wife and the existence of the salt pillar, and ends by saying

that "the whole story is due to the vanity of some and the

credulity of more."



In the beginning of the eighteenth century we find new

tributaries to this rivulet of scientific thought.  In 1701

Father Felix Beaugrand dismisses the Dead Sea legends and the

salt statue very curtly and dryly--expressing not his belief in

it, but a conventional wish to believe.



In 1709 a scholar appeared in another part of Europe and of

different faith, who did far more than any of his predecessors to

envelop the Dead Sea legends in an atmosphere of truth--Adrian

Reland, professor at the University of Utrecht.  His work on

Palestine is a monument of patient scholarship, having as its

nucleus a love of truth as truth:  there is no irreverence in

him, but he quietly brushes away a great mass of myths and

legends:  as to the statue of Lot's wife, he treats it warily,

but applies the comparative method to it with killing effect, by

showing that the story of its miraculous renewal is but one among

many of its kind.[438]



[438] For Zwinner, see his Blumenbuch des Heyligen Landes,

Munchen, 1661, p. 454.  For Mezger, see his Sacra Historia,

Augsburg, 1700, p. 30.  For Doubdan, see his Voyage de la Terre-

Sainte, Paris, 1670, pp. 338, 339; also Tobler and Gage's Ritter.

For Goujon, see his Histoire et Voyage de la Terre Saincte,

Lyons, 1670, p. 230, etc.  For Morison, see his Voyage, book ii,

pp. 516, 517.  For Maundrell, see in Wright's Collection, pp. 383

et seq.  For Clericus, see his Dissertation de Salis Statua, in

his Pentateuch, edition of 1696, pp. 327 et seq.  For Father

Beaugrand, see his Voyage, Paris, 1701, pp. 137 et seq.  For

Reland, see his Palaestina, Utrecht, 1714, vol. i, pp. 61-254,

passim.





Yet to superficial observers the old current of myth and marvel

seemed to flow into the eighteenth century as strong as ever, and

of this we may take two typical evidences.  The first of these

is the Pious Pilgrimage of Vincent Briemle.  His journey was made

about 171O; and his work, brought out under the auspices of a

high papal functionary some years later, in a heavy quarto, gave

new life to the stories of the hellish character of the Dead Sea,

and especially to the miraculous renewal of the salt statue.



In 172O came a still more striking effort to maintain the old

belief in the north of Europe, for in that year the eminent

theologian Masius published his great treatise on The Conversion

of Lot's Wife into a Statue of Salt.



Evidently intending that this work should be the last word on

this subject in Germany, as Quaresmio had imagined that his work

would be the last in Italy, he develops his subject after the

high scholastic and theologic manner.  Calling attention first

to the divine command in the New Testament, "Remember Lot's

wife," he argues through a long series of chapters.  In the ninth

of these he discusses "the impelling cause" of her looking back,

and introduces us to the question, formerly so often treated by

theologians, whether the soul of Lot's wife was finally saved.

Here we are glad to learn that the big, warm heart of Luther

lifted him above the common herd of theologians, and led him to

declare that she was "a faithful and saintly woman," and that she

certainly was not eternally damned.  In justice to the Roman

Church also it should be said that several of her most eminent

commentators took a similar view, and insisted that the sin of

Lot's wife was venial, and therefore, at the worst, could only

subject her to the fires of purgatory.



The eleventh chapter discusses at length the question HOW she

was converted into salt, and, mentioning many theological

opinions, dwells especially upon the view of Rivetus, that a

thunderbolt, made up apparently of fire, sulphur, and salt,

wrought her transformation at the same time that it blasted the

land; and he bases this opinion upon the twenty-ninth chapter of

Deuteronomy and the one hundred and seventh Psalm.



Later, Masius presents a sacred scientific theory that "saline

particles entered into her until her whole body was infected";

and with this he connects another piece of sanctified science, to

the effect that "stagnant bile" may have rendered the surface of

her body "entirely shining, bitter, dry, and deformed."



Finally, he comes to the great question whether the salt pillar

is still in existence.  On this he is full and fair.  On one

hand he allows that Luther thought that it was involved in the

general destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and he cites various

travellers who had failed to find it; but, on the other hand, he

gives a long chain of evidence to show that it continued to

exist:  very wisely he reminds the reader that the positive

testimony of those who have seen it must outweigh the negative

testimony of those who have not, and he finally decides that the

salt statue is still in being.



No doubt a work like this produced a considerable effect in

Protestant countries; indeed, this effect seems evident as far

off as England, for, in 172O, we find in Dean Prideaux's Old and

New Testament connected a map on which the statue of salt is

carefully indicated.  So, too, in Holland, in the Sacred

Geography published at Utrecht in 1758 by the theologian

Bachiene, we find him, while showing many signs of rationalism,

evidently inclined to the old views as to the existence of the

salt pillar; but just here comes a curious evidence of the real

direction of the current of thought through the century, for,

nine years later, in the German translation of Bachiene's work we

find copious notes by the translator in a far more rationalistic

spirit; indeed, we see the dawn of the inevitable day of

compromise, for we now have, instead of the old argument that the

divine power by one miraculous act changed Lot's wife into a salt

pillar, the suggestion that she was caught in a shower of sulphur

and saltpetre, covered by it, and that the result was a lump,

which in a general way IS CALLED in our sacred books "a pillar

of salt."[439]



[439] For Briemle, see his Andachtige Pilgerfahrt, p. 129.  For

Masius, see his De Uxore Lothi in Statuam Salis Conversa,

Hafniae, 1720, especially pages 29-31.  For Dean Prideaux, see

his Old and New Testament connected in the History of the Jews,

1720,  map at page 7. For Bachiene, see his Historische und

geographische Beschreibung von Palaestina, Leipzig, 1766, vol. i,

pp. 118-120, and notes.





But, from the middle of the eighteenth century, the new current

sets through Christendom with ever-increasing strength.  Very

interesting is it to compare the great scriptural commentaries of

the middle of this century with those published a century

earlier.



Of the earlier ones we may take Matthew Poole's Synopsis as a

type:  as authorized by royal decree in 1667 it contains very

substantial arguments for the pious belief in the statue.  Of

the later ones we may take the edition of the noted commentary of

the Jesuit Tirinus seventy years later:  while he feels bound to

present the authorities, he evidently endeavours to get rid of

the subject as speedily as possible under cover of

conventionalities; of the spirit of Quaresmio he shows no

trace.[440]



[440] For Poole (Polus) see his Synopsis, 1669, p. 179; and for

Titinus, the Lyons edition of his Commentary, 1736, p. 10.





About 1760 came a striking evidence of the strength of this new

current.  The Abate Mariti then published his book upon the Holy

Land; and of this book, by an Italian ecclesiastic, the most

eminent of German bibliographers in this field says that it first

broke a path for critical study of the Holy Land.  Mariti is

entirely sceptical as to the sinking of the valley of Siddim and

the overwhelming of the cities.  He speaks kindly of a Capuchin

Father who saw everywhere at the Dead Sea traces of the divine

malediction, while he himself could not see them, and says, "It

is because a Capuchin carries everywhere the five senses of

faith, while I only carry those of nature."  He speaks of "the

lies of Josephus," and makes merry over "the rude and shapeless

block" which the guide assured him was the statue of Lot's wife,

explaining the want of human form in the salt pillar by telling

him that this complete metamorphosis was part of her punishment.



About twenty years later, another remarkable man, Volney,

broaches the subject in what was then known as the "philosophic"

spirit.  Between the years 1783 and 1785 he made an extensive

journey through the Holy Land and published a volume of travels

which by acuteness of thought and vigour of style secured general

attention.  In these, myth and legend were thrown aside, and we

have an account simply dictated by the love of truth as truth.

He, too, keeps the torch of science burning by applying his

geological knowledge to the regions which he traverses.



As we look back over the eighteenth century we see mingled with

the new current of thought, and strengthening it, a constantly

increasing stream of more strictly scientific observation and

reflection.



To review it briefly:  in the very first years of the century

Maraldi showed the Paris Academy of Sciences fossil fishes found

in the Lebanon region; a little later, Cornelius Bruyn, in the

French edition of his Eastern travels, gave well-drawn

representations of fossil fishes and shells, some of them from

the region of the Dead Sea; about the middle of the century

Richard Pococke, Bishop of Meath, and Korte of Altona made more

statements of the same sort; and toward the close of the

century, as we have seen, Volney gave still more of these

researches, with philosophical deductions from them.



The result of all this was that there gradually dawned upon

thinking men the conviction that, for ages before the appearance

of man on the planet, and during all the period since his

appearance, natural laws have been steadily in force in Palestine

as elsewhere; this conviction obliged men to consider other than

supernatural causes for the phenomena of the Dead Sea, and myth

and marvel steadily shrank in value.



But at the very threshold of the nineteenth century Chateaubriand

came into the field, and he seemed to banish the scientific

spirit, though what he really did was to conceal it temporarily

behind the vapours of his rhetoric.  The time was propitious for

him.  It was the period of reaction after the French Revolution,

when what was called religion was again in fashion, and when even

atheists supported it as a good thing for common people:  of such

an epoch Chateaubriand, with his superficial information, thin

sentiment, and showy verbiage, was the foreordained prophet.

His enemies were wont to deny that he ever saw the Holy Land;

whether he did or not, he added nothing to real knowledge, but

simply threw a momentary glamour over the regions he described,

and especially over the Dead Sea.  The legend of Lot's wife he

carefully avoided, for he knew too well the danger of ridicule in

France.



As long as the Napoleonic and Bourbon reigns lasted, and indeed

for some time afterward, this kind of dealing with the Holy Land

was fashionable, and we have a long series of men, especially of

Frenchmen, who evidently received their impulse from

Chateaubriand.



About 1831 De Geramb, Abbot of La Trappe, evidently a very noble

and devout spirit, sees vapour above the Dead Sea, but stretches

the truth a little--speaking of it as "vapour or smoke."  He

could not find the salt statue, and complains of the "diversity

of stories regarding it."  The simple physical cause of this

diversity--the washing out of different statues in different

years--never occurs to him; but he comforts himself with the

scriptural warrant for the metamorphosis.[441]



[441] For Mariti, see his Voyage, etc., vol. ii, pp. 352-356.

For Tobler's high opinion of him, see the Bibliographia, pp. 132,

133.  For Volney, see his Voyage en Syrie et Egypte, Paris, 1807,

vol. i, pp. 308 et seq.; also, for a statement of contributions

of the eighteenth century to geology, Lartet in De Luynes's Mer

Morte, vol. iii, p. 12.  For Cornelius Bruyn, see French edition

of his works, 1714 (in which his name is given as "Le Brun"),

especially for representations of fossils, pp. 309, 375.  For

Chateaubriand, see his Voyage, etc., vol. ii, part iii.  For De

Geramb, see his Voyage, vol. ii, pp. 45-47.





But to the honour of scientific men and scientific truth it

should be said that even under Napoleon and the Bourbons there

were men who continued to explore, observe, and describe with the

simple love of truth as truth, and in spite of the probability

that their researches would be received during their lifetime

with contempt and even hostility, both in church and state.



The pioneer in this work of the nineteenth century was the German

naturalist Ulrich Seetzen.  He began his main investigation in

1806, and soon his learning, courage, and honesty threw a flood

of new light into the Dead Sea questions.



In this light, myth and legend faded more rapidly than ever.

Typical of his method is his examination of the Dead Sea fruit.

He found, on reaching Palestine, that Josephus's story regarding

it, which had been accepted for nearly two thousand years, was

believed on all sides; more than this, he found that the

original myth had so grown that a multitude of respectable people

at Bethlehem and elsewhere assured him that not only apples, but

pears, pomegranates, figs, lemons, and many other fruits which

grow upon the shores of the Dead Sea, though beautiful to look

upon, were filled with ashes.  These good people declared to

Seetzen that they had seen these fruits, and that, not long

before, a basketful of them which had been sent to a merchant of

Jaffa had turned to ashes.



Seetzen was evidently perplexed by this mass of testimony and

naturally anxious to examine these fruits.  On arriving at the

sea he began to look for them, and the guide soon showed him the

"apples."  These he found to be simply an asclepia, which had

been described by Linnaeus, and which is found in the East

Indies, Arabia, Egypt, Jamaica, and elsewhere--the "ashes" being

simply seeds.  He looked next for the other fruits, and the

guide soon found for him the "lemons":  these he discovered to be

a species of solanum found in other parts of Palestine and

elsewhere, and the seeds in these were the famous "cinders."  He

looked next for the pears, figs, and other accursed fruits; but,

instead of finding them filled with ashes and cinders, he found

them like the same fruits in other lands, and he tells us that he

ate the figs with much pleasure.



So perished a myth which had been kept alive two thousand

years,--partly by modes of thought natural to theologians, partly

by the self-interest of guides, and partly by the love of

marvel-mongering among travellers.



The other myths fared no better.  As to the appearance of the

sea, he found its waters not "black and sticky," but blue and

transparent; he found no smoke rising from the abyss, but tells

us that sunlight and cloud and shore were pleasantly reflected

from the surface.  As to Lot's wife, he found no salt pillar

which had been a careless woman, but the Arabs showed him many

boulders which had once been wicked men.



His work was worthily continued by a long succession of true

investigators,--among them such travellers or geographers as

Burckhardt, Irby, Mangles, Fallmerayer, and Carl von Raumer:  by

men like these the atmosphere of myth and legend was steadily

cleared away; as a rule, they simply forgot Lot's wife

altogether.



In this noble succession should be mentioned an American

theologian, Dr. Edward Robinson, professor at New York.

Beginning about 1826, he devoted himself for thirty years to the

thorough study of the geography of Palestine, and he found a

worthy coadjutor in another American divine, Dr. Eli Smith.

Neither of these men departed openly from the old traditions:

that would have cost a heart-breaking price--the loss of all

further opportunity to carry on their researches.  Robinson did

not even think it best to call attention to the mythical

character of much on which his predecessors had insisted; he

simply brought in, more and more, the dry, clear atmosphere of

the love of truth for truth's sake, and, in this, myths and

legends steadily disappeared.  By doing this he rendered a far

greater service to real Christianity than any other theologian

had ever done in this field.



Very characteristic is his dealing with the myth of Lot's wife.

Though more than once at Usdum,--though giving valuable

information regarding the sea, shore, and mountains there, he

carefully avoids all mention of the salt pillar and of the legend

which arose from it.  In this he set an example followed by most

of the more thoughtful religious travellers since his time.

Very significant is it to see the New Testament injunction,

"Remember Lot's wife," so utterly forgotten.  These later

investigators seem never to have heard of it; and this constant

forgetfulness shows the change which had taken place in the

enlightened thinking of the world.



But in the year 1848 came an episode very striking in its

character and effect.



At that time, the war between the United States and Mexico having

closed, Lieutenant Lynch, of the United States Navy, found

himself in the port of Vera Cruz, commanding an old hulk, the

Supply.  Looking about for something to do, it occurred to him

to write to the Secretary of the Navy asking permission to

explore the Dead Sea.  Under ordinary circumstances the proposal

would doubtless have been strangled with red tape; but,

fortunately, the Secretary at that time was Mr. John Y. Mason, of

Virginia.  Mr. Mason was famous for his good nature.  Both at

Washington and at Paris, where he was afterward minister, this

predominant trait has left a multitude of amusing traditions; it

was of him that Senator Benton said, "To be supremely happy he

must have his paunch full of oysters and his hands full of

cards."



The Secretary granted permission, but evidently gave the matter

not another thought.  As a result, came an expedition the most

comical and one of the most rich in results to be found in

American annals.  Never was anything so happy-go-lucky.

Lieutenant Lynch started with his hulk, with hardly an instrument

save those ordinarily found on shipboard, and with a body of men

probably the most unfit for anything like scientific

investigation ever sent on such an errand; fortunately, he picked

up a young instructor in mathematics, Mr. Anderson, and added to

his apparatus two strong iron boats.



Arriving, after a tedious voyage, on the coast of Asia Minor, he

set to work.  He had no adequate preparation in general history,

archaeology, or the physical sciences; but he had his American

patriotism, energy, pluck, pride, and devotion to duty, and these

qualities stood him in good stead.  With great labour he got the

iron boats across the country.  Then the tug of war began.

First of all investigators, he forced his way through the whole

length of the river Jordan and from end to end of the Dead Sea.

There were constant difficulties--geographical, climatic, and

personal; but Lynch cut through them all.  He was brave or

shrewd, as there was need.  Anderson proved an admirable helper,

and together they made surveys of distances, altitudes, depths,

and sundry simple investigations in a geological, mineralogical,

and chemical way.  Much was poorly done, much was left undone,

but the general result was most honourable both to Lynch and

Anderson; and Secretary Mason found that his easy-going patronage

of the enterprise was the best act of his official life.



The results of this expedition on public opinion were most

curious.  Lynch was no scholar in any sense; he had travelled

little, and thought less on the real questions underlying the

whole investigation; as to the difference in depth of the two

parts of the lake, he jumped--with a sailor's disregard of

logic--to the conclusion that it somehow proved the mythical

account of the overwhelming of the cities, and he indulged in

reflections of a sort probably suggested by his recollections of

American Sunday-schools.



Especially noteworthy is his treatment of the legend of Lot's

wife.  He found the pillar of salt.  It happened to be at that

period a circular column of friable salt rock, about forty feet

high; yet, while he accepts every other old myth, he treats the

belief that this was once the wife of Lot as "a superstition."

One little circumstance added enormously to the influence of this

book, for, as a frontispiece, he inserted a picture of the salt

column.  It was delineated in rather a poetic manner:  light

streamed upon it, heavy clouds hung above it, and, as a

background, were ranged buttresses of salt rock furrowed and

channelled out by the winter rains:  this salt statue picture was

spread far and wide, and in thousands of country pulpits and

Sunday-schools it was shown as a tribute of science to Scripture.



Nor was this influence confined to American Sunday-school

children:  Lynch had innocently set a trap into which several

European theologians stumbled.  One of these was Dr. Lorenz

Gratz, Vicar-General of Augsburg, a theological professor.  In

the second edition of his Theatre of the Holy Scriptures,

published in 1858, he hails Lynch's discovery of the salt pillar

with joy, forgets his allusion to the old theory regarding it as

a superstition, and does not stop to learn that this was one of a

succession of statues washed out yearly by the rains, but accepts

it as the originaL Lot's wife.



The French churchmen suffered most.  About two years after

Lynch, De Saulcy visited the Dead Sea to explore it thoroughly,

evidently in the interest of sacred science--and of his own

promotion.  Of the modest thoroughness of Robinson there is no

trace in his writings.  He promptly discovered the overwhelmed

cities, which no one before or since has ever found, poured

contempt on other investigators, and threw over his whole work an

air of piety.  But, unfortunately, having a Frenchman's dread of

ridicule, he attempted to give a rationalistic explanation of

what he calls "the enormous needles of salt washed out by the

winter rain," and their connection with the Lot's wife myth, and

declared his firm belief that she, "being delayed by curiosity or

terror, was crushed by a rock which rolled down from the

mountain, and when Lot and his children turned about they saw at

the place where she had been only the rock of salt which covered

her body."



But this would not do at all, and an eminent ecclesiastic

privately and publicly expostulated with De Saulcy--very

naturally declaring that "it was not Lot who wrote the book of

Genesis."



The result was that another edition of De Saulcy's work was

published by a Church Book Society, with the offending passage

omitted; but a passage was retained really far more suggestive of

heterodoxy, and this was an Arab legend accounting for the origin

of certain rocks near the Dead Sea curiously resembling salt

formations.  This in effect ran as follows:



"Abraham, the friend of God, having come here one day with his

mule to buy salt, the salt-workers impudently told him that they

had no salt to sell, whereupon the patriarch said:  `Your words

are, true.  you have no salt to sell,' and instantly the salt of

this whole region was transformed into stone, or rather into a

salt which has lost its savour."



Nothing could be more sure than this story to throw light into

the mental and moral process by which the salt pillar myth was

originally created.



In the years 1864 and 1865 came an expedition on a much more

imposing scale:  that of the Duc de Luynes.  His knowledge of

archaeology and his wealth were freely devoted to working the

mine which Lynch had opened, and, taking with him an iron vessel

and several savants, he devoted himself especially to finding

the cities of the Dead Sea, and to giving less vague accounts of

them than those of De Saulcy.  But he was disappointed, and

honest enough to confess his disappointment.  So vanished one of

the most cherished parts of the legend.



But worse remained behind.  In the orthodox duke's company was

an acute geologist, Monsieur Lartet, who in due time made an

elaborate report, which let a flood of light into the whole

region.



The Abbe Richard had been rejoicing the orthodox heart of France

by exhibiting some prehistoric flint implements as the knives

which Joshua had made for circumcision.  By a truthful statement

Monsieur Lartet set all France laughing at the Abbe, and then

turned to the geology of the Dead Sea basin.  While he conceded

that man may have seen some volcanic crisis there, and may have

preserved a vivid remembrance of the vapour then rising, his

whole argument showed irresistibly that all the phenomena of the

region are due to natural causes, and that, so far from a sudden

rising of the lake above the valley within historic times, it has

been for ages steadily subsiding.



Since Balaam was called by Balak to curse his enemies, and

"blessed them altogether," there has never been a more unexpected

tribute to truth.



Even the salt pillar at Usdum, as depicted in Lynch's book, aided

to undermine the myth among thinking men; for the background of

the picture showed other pillars of salt in process of formation;

and the ultimate result of all these expeditions was to spread an

atmosphere in which myth and legend became more and more

attenuated.



To sum up the main points in this work of the nineteenth century:

Seetzen, Robinson, and others had found that a human being could

traverse the lake without being killed by hellish smoke; that

the waters gave forth no odours; that the fruits of the region

were not created full of cinders to match the desolation of the

Dead Sea, but were growths not uncommon in Asia Minor and

elsewhere; in fact, that all the phenomena were due to natural

causes.



Ritter and others had shown that all noted features of the Dead

Sea and the surrounding country were to be found in various other

lakes and regions, to which no supernatural cause was ascribed

among enlightened men.  Lynch, Van de Velde, Osborne, and others

had revealed the fact that the "pillar of salt" was frequently

formed anew by the rains; and Lartet and other geologists had

given a final blow to the myths by making it clear from the

markings on the neighbouring rocks that, instead of a sudden

upheaval of the sea above the valley of Siddim, there had been a

gradual subsidence for ages.[442]



[442] For Seetzen, see his Reisen, edited by Kruse, Berlin, 1854-

'59; for the "Dead Sea Fruits," vol. ii, pp. 231 et seq.; for the

appearance of the sea, etc., p. 243, and elsewhere; for the Arab

explanatory transformation legends, vol. iii, pp. 7, 14, 17.  As

to similarity of the "pillars of salt" to columns washed out by

rains elsewhere, see Kruse's commentary in vol. iv, p. 240; also

Fallmerayer, vol. i, p. 197.  For Irby and Mangles, see work

already cited.  For Robinson, see his Biblical Researches,

London,1841; also his Later Biblical Researches, London, 1856.

For Lynch, see his Narrative, London, 1849.  For Gratz, see his

Schauplatz der Heyl. Schrift, pp. 186, 187.  For De Saulcy, see

his Voyage autour de la Mer Morte, Paris, 1853, especially vol.

i, p. 252, and his journal of the early months of 1851, in vol.

ii, comparing it with his work of the same title published in

1858 in the Bibliotheque Catholique de Voyages et du Romans, vol.

i, pp. 78-81.  For Lartet, see his papers read before the

Geographical Society at Paris; also citations in Robinson; but,

above all, his elaborate reports which form the greater part of

the second and third volumes of the monumental work which bears

the name of De Luynes, already cited.  For exposures of De

Saulcey's credulity and errors, see Van de Velde, Syria and

Palestine, passim; also Canon Tristram's Land of Israel; also De

Luynes, passim.





Even before all this evidence was in, a judicial decision had

been pronounced upon the whole question by an authority both

Christian and scientific, from whom there could be no appeal.

During the second quarter of the century Prof. Carl Ritter, of

the University of Berlin, began giving to the world those

researches which have placed him at the head of all geographers

ancient or modern, and finally he brought together those relating

to the geography of the Holy Land, publishing them as part of his

great work on the physical geography of the earth.  He was a

Christian, and nothing could be more reverent than his treatment

of the whole subject; but his German honesty did not permit him

to conceal the truth, and he simply classed together all the

stories of the Dead Sea--old and new--no matter where found,

whether in the sacred books of Jews, Christians, or Mohammedans,

whether in lives of saints or accounts of travellers, as "myths"

and "sagas."



From this decision there has never been among intelligent men any

appeal.



The recent adjustment of orthodox thought to the scientific view

of the Dead Sea legends presents some curious features.  As

typical we may take the travels of two German theologians between

1860 and 1870--John Kranzel, pastor in Munich, and Peter Schegg,

lately professor in the university of that city.



The archdiocese of Munich-Freising is one of those in which the

attempt to suppress modern scientific thought has been most

steadily carried on.  Its archbishops have constantly shown

themselves assiduous in securing cardinals' hats by thwarting

science and by stupefying education.  The twin towers of the old

cathedral of Munich have seemed to throw a killing shadow over

intellectual development in that region.  Naturally, then, these

two clerical travellers from that diocese did not commit

themselves to clearing away any of the Dead Sea myths; but it is

significant that neither of them follows the example of so many

of their clerical predecessors in defending the salt-pillar

legend:  they steadily avoid it altogether.



The more recent history of the salt pillar, since Lynch, deserves

mention.  It appears that the travellers immediately after him

found it shaped by the storms into a spire; that a year or two

later it had utterly disappeared; and about the year 1870 Prof.

Palmer, on visiting the place, found at some distance from the

main salt bed, as he says, "a tall, isolated needle of rock,

which does really bear a curious resemblance to an Arab woman

with a child upon her shoulders."



And, finally, Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, the standard work

of reference for English-speaking scholars, makes its concession

to the old belief regarding Sodom and Gomorrah as slight as

possible, and the myth of Lot's wife entirely disappears.







IV.  THEOLOGICAL EFFORTS AT COMPROMISE.--

TRIUMPH OF THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW.





The theological effort to compromise with science now came in

more strongly than ever.  This effort had been made long before:

as we have seen, it had begun to show itself decidedly as soon as

the influence of the Baconian philosophy was felt.  Le Clerc

suggested that the shock caused by the sight of fire from heaven

killed Lot's wife instantly and made her body rigid as a statue.

Eichhorn suggested that she fell into a stream of melted bitumen.

Michaelis suggested that her relatives raised a monument of salt

rock to her memory.  Friedrichs suggested that she fell into the

sea and that the salt stiffened around her clothing, thus making

a statue of her.  Some claimed that a shower of sulphur came

down upon her, and that the word which has been translated "salt"

could possibly be translated "sulphur."  Others hinted that the

salt by its antiseptic qualities preserved her body as a mummy.

De Saulcy, as we have seen, thought that a piece of salt rock

fell upon her, and very recently Principal Dawson has ventured

the explanation that a flood of salt mud coming from a volcano

incrusted her.



But theologians themselves were the first to show the inadequacy

of these explanations.  The more rationalistic pointed out the

fact that they were contrary to the sacred text:  Von Bohlen, an

eminent professor at Konigsberg, in his sturdy German honesty,

declared that the salt pillar gave rise to the story, and

compared the pillar of salt causing this transformation legend to

the rock in Greek mythology which gave rise to the transformation

legend of Niobe.



On the other hand, the more severely orthodox protested against

such attempts to explain away the clear statements of Holy Writ.

Dom Calmet, while presenting many of these explanations made as

early as his time, gives us to understand that nearly all

theologians adhered to the idea that Lot's wife was instantly and

really changed into salt; and in our own time, as we shall

presently see, have come some very vigorous protests.



Similar attempts were made to explain the other ancient legends

regarding the Dead Sea.  One of the most recent of these is that

the cities of the plain, having been built with blocks of

bituminous rock, were set on fire by lightning, a contemporary

earthquake helping on the work.  Still another is that

accumulations of petroleum and inflammable gas escaped through a

fissure, took fire, and so produced the catastrophe.[443]



[443] For Kranzel, see his Reise nach Jerusalem, etc.  For Schegg,

see his Gedenkbuch einer Pilgerreise, etc., 1867, chap. xxiv.

For Palmer, see his Desert of the Exodus, vol. ii, pp. 478, 479.

For the various compromises, see works alredy cited, passim.  For

Von Bohlen, see his Genesis, Konigsberg, 1835, pp. 200-213.  For

Calmet, see his Dictionarium, etc, Venet., 1766.  For very recent

compromises, see J. W. Dawson and Dr. Cunningham Geikie in works

cited.





The revolt against such efforts to RECONCILE scientific fact

with myth and legend had become very evident about the middle of

the nineteenth century.  In 1851 and 1852 Van de Velde made his

journey.  He was a most devout man, but he confessed that the

volcanic action at the Dead Sea must have been far earlier than

the catastrophe mentioned in our sacred books, and that "the

overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah had nothing to do with this."  A

few years later an eminent dignitary of the English Church, Canon

Tristram, doctor of divinity and fellow of the Royal Society, who

had explored the Holy Land thoroughly, after some generalities

about miracles, gave up the whole attempt to make science agree

with the myths, and used these words:  "It has been frequently

assumed that the district of Usdum and its sister cities was the

result of some tremendous geological catastrophe....Now,

careful examination by competent geologists, such as Monsieur

Lartet and others, has shown that the whole district has assumed

its present shape slowly and gradually through a succession of

ages, and that its peculiar phenomena are similar to those of

other lakes."  So sank from view the whole mass of Dead Sea myths

and legends, and science gained a victory both for geology and

comparative mythology.



As a protest against this sort of rationalism appeared in 1876 an

edition of Monseigneur Mislin's work on The Holy Places.  In

order to give weight to the book, it was prefaced by letters from

Pope Pius IX and sundry high ecclesiastics--and from Alexandre

Dumas! His hatred of Protestant missionaries in the East is

phenomenal:  he calls them "bagmen," ascribes all mischief and

infamy to them, and his hatred is only exceeded by his credulity.

He cites all the arguments in favour of the salt statue at Usdum

as the identical one into which Lot's wife was changed, adds some

of his own, and presents her as "a type of doubt and heresy."

With the proverbial facility of dogmatists in translating any

word of a dead language into anything that suits their purpose,

he says that the word in the nineteenth chapter of Genesis which

is translated "statue" or "pillar," may be translated "eternal

monument"; he is especially severe on poor Monsieur De Saulcy

for thinking that Lot's wife was killed by the falling of a piece

of salt rock; and he actually boasts that it was he who caused De

Saulcy, a member of the French Institute, to suppress the

obnoxious passage in a later edition.



Between 1870 and 1880 came two killing blows at the older

theories, and they were dealt by two American scholars of the

highest character.  First of these may be mentioned Dr. Philip

Schaff, a professor in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at

New York, who published his travels in 1877.  In a high degree

he united the scientific with the religious spirit, but the trait

which made him especially fit for dealing with this subject was

his straightforward German honesty.  He tells the simple truth

regarding the pillar of salt, so far as its physical origin and

characteristics are concerned, and leaves his reader to draw the

natural inference as to its relation to the myth.  With the fate

of Dr. Robertson Smith in Scotland and Dr. Woodrow in South

Carolina before him--both recently driven from their

professorships for truth-telling-- Dr. Schaff deserves honour

for telling as much as he does.



Similar in effect, and even more bold in statement, were the

travels of the Rev. Henry Osborn, published in 1878.  In a

truly scientific spirit he calls attention to the similarity of

the Dead Sea, with the river Jordan, to sundry other lake and

river systems; points out the endless variations between writers

describing the salt formations at Usdum; accounts rationally for

these variations, and quotes from Dr. Anderson's report,

saying, "From the soluble nature of the salt and the crumbling

looseness of the marl, it may well be imagined that, while some

of these needles are in the process of formation, others are

being washed away."



Thus came out, little by little, the truth regarding the Dead Sea

myths, and especially the salt pillar at Usdum; but the final

truth remained to be told in the Church, and now one of the

purest men and truest divines of this century told it.  Arthur

Stanley, Dean of Westminster, visiting the country and thoroughly

exploring it, allowed that the physical features of the Dead Sea

and its shores suggested the myths and legends, and he sums up

the whole as follows:  "A great mass of legends and

exaggerations, partly the cause and partly the result of the old

belief that the cities were buried under the Dead Sea, has been

gradually removed in recent years."



So, too, about the same time, Dr. Conrad Furrer, pastor of the

great church of St. Peter at Zurich, gave to the world a book

of travels, reverent and thoughtful, and in this honestly

acknowledged that the needles of salt at the southern end of the

Dead Sea "in primitive times gave rise to the tradition that

Lot's wife was transformed into a statue of salt."  Thus was the

mythical character of this story at last openly confessed by

Leading churchmen on both continents.



Plain statements like these from such sources left the high

theological position more difficult than ever, and now a new

compromise was attempted.  As the Siberian mother tried to save

her best-beloved child from the pursuing wolves by throwing over

to them her less favoured children, so an effort was now made in

a leading commentary to save the legends of the valley of Siddim

and the miraculous destruction of the cities by throwing

overboard the legend of Lot's wife.[444]



[444] For Mislin, see his Les Saints Lieux, Paris, vol. iii, pp.

290-293, especially note at foot of page 292.  For Schaff, see

his Through Bible Lands, especially chapter xxix; see also Rev.

H. S. Osborn, M. A., The Holy Land, pp. 267 et seq.; also

Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, London, 1887, especially pp.

290-293. For Furrer, see his En Palestine, Geneva, 1886, vol. i,

p.246. For the attempt to save one legend by throwing overboard

the other, see Keil and Delitzsch, Biblischer Commentar uber das

Alte Testament, vol. i, pp. 155, 156.  For Van de Velde, see his

Syria and Palestine, vol. ii, p. 120.





An amusing result has followed this development of opinion.  As

we have already seen, traveller after traveller, Catholic and

Protestant, now visits the Dead Sea, and hardly one of them

follows the New Testament injunction to "remember Lot's wife."

Nearly every one of them seems to think it best to forget her.

Of the great mass of pious legends they are shy enough, but that

of Lot's wife, as a rule, they seem never to have heard of, and

if they do allude to it they simply cover the whole subject with

a haze of pious rhetoric.[445]



[445] The only notice of the Lot's wife legend in the editions of

Robinson at my command is a very curious one by Leopold von Buch,

the eminent geologist. Robinson, with a fearlessness which does

him credit, consulted Von Buch, who in his answer was evidently

inclined to make things easier for Robinson by hinting that Lot

was so much struck by the salt formations that HE IMAGINED that

his wife had been changed into salt. On this theory, Robinson

makes no comment. See Robinson, Biblical Researches in Palestine,

etc., London, 1841, vol. ii, p. 674.





Naturally, under this state of things, there has followed the

usual attempt to throw off from Christendom the responsibility of

the old belief, and in 1887 came a curious effort of this sort.

In that year appeared the Rev. Dr. Cunningham Geikie's

valuable work on The Holy Land and the Bible.  In it he makes the

following statement as to the salt formation at Usdum:  "Here and

there, hardened portions of salt withstanding the water, while

all around them melts and wears off, rise up isolated pillars,

one of which bears among the Arabs the name of `Lot's wife.'"



In the light of the previous history, there is something at once

pathetic and comical in this attempt to throw the myth upon the

shoulders of the poor Arabs.  The myth was not originated by

Mohammedans; it appears, as we have seen, first among the Jews,

and, I need hardly remind the reader, comes out in the Book of

Wisdom and in Josephus, and has been steadily maintained by

fathers, martyrs, and doctors of the Church, by at least one

pope, and by innumerable bishops, priests, monks, commentators,

and travellers, Catholic and Protestant, ever since.  In thus

throwing the responsibility of the myth upon the Arabs Dr.

Geikie appears to show both the "perfervid genius" of his

countrymen and their incapacity to recognise a joke.



Nor is he more happy in his rationalistic explanations of the

whole mass of myths.  He supposes a terrific storm, in which the

lightning kindled the combustible materials of the cities, aided

perhaps by an earthquake; but this shows a disposition to break

away from the exact statements of the sacred books which would

have been most severely condemned by the universal Church during

at least eighteen hundred years of its history.  Nor would the

explanations of Sir William Dawson have fared any better:  it is

very doubtful whether either of them could escape unscathed today

from a synod of the Free Church of Scotland, or of any of the

leading orthodox bodies in the Southern States of the American

Union.[446]



[446] For these most recent explanations, see Rev. Cunningham

Geikie, D. D., in work cited; also Sir J. W. Dawson, Egypt and

Syria, published by the Religious Tract Society, 1887, pp. 125,

126; see also Dawson's article in The Expositor for January,

1886.





How unsatisfactory all such rationalism must be to a truly

theological mind is seen not only in the dealings with Prof.

Robertson Smith in Scotland and Prof. Woodrow in South

Carolina, but most clearly in a book published in 1886 by

Monseigneur Haussmann de Wandelburg.  Among other things, the

author was Prelate of the Pope's House-hold, a Mitred Abbot,

Canon of the Holy Sepulchre, and a Doctor of Theology of the

Pontifical University at Rome, and his work is introduced by

approving letters from Pope Leo XIII and the Patriarch of

Jerusalem.  Monseigneur de Wandelburg scorns the idea that the

salt column at Usdum is not the statue of Lot's wife; he points

out not only the danger of yielding this evidence of miracle to

rationalism, but the fact that the divinely inspired authority of

the Book of Wisdom, written, at the latest, two hundred and fifty

years before Christ, distinctly refers to it.  He summons

Josephus as a witness.  He dwells on the fact that St. Clement of

Rome, Irenaeus, Hegesippus, and St. Cyril, "who as Bishop of

Jerusalem must have known better than any other person what

existed in Palestine," with St. Jerome, St. Chrysostom, and a

multitude of others, attest, as a matter of their own knowledge

or of popular notoriety, that the remains of Lot's wife really

existed in their time in the form of a column of salt; and he

points triumphantly to the fact that Lieutenant Lynch found this

very column.  In the presence of such a continuous line of

witnesses, some of them considered as divinely inspired, and all

of them greatly revered--a line extending through thirty-seven

hundred years--he condemns most vigorously all those who do not

believe that the pillar of salt now at Usdum is identical with

the wife of Lot, and stigmatizes them as people who "do not wish

to believe the truth of the Word of God."



His ignorance of many of the simplest facts bearing upon the

legend is very striking, yet he does not hesitate to speak of men

who know far more and have thought far more upon the subject as

"grossly ignorant."  The most curious feature in his ignorance is

the fact that he is utterly unaware of the annual changes in the

salt statue.  He is entirely ignorant of such facts as that the

priest Gabriel Giraudet in the sixteenth century found the statue

lying down; that the monk Zwinner found it in the seventeenth

century standing, and accompanied by a dog also transformed into

salt; that Prince Radziwill found no statue at all; that the

pious Vincent Briemle in the eighteenth century found the

monument renewing itself; that about the middle of the nineteenth

century Lynch found it in the shape of a tower or column forty

feet high; that within two years afterward De Saulcy found it

washed into the form of a spire; that a year later Van de Velde

found it utterly washed away; and that a few years later Palmer

found it "a statue bearing a striking resemblance to an Arab

woman with a child in her arms."  So ended the last great

demonstration, thus far, on the side of sacred science--the last

retreating shot from the theological rear guard.



It is but just to say that a very great share in the honour of

the victory of science in this field is due to men trained as

theologians.  It would naturally be so, since few others have

devoted themselves to direct labour in it; yet great honour is

none the less due to such men as Reland, Mariti, Smith, Robinson,

Stanley, Tristram, and Schat.



They have rendered even a greater service to religion than to

science, for they have made a beginning, at least, of doing away

with that enforced belief in myths as history which has become a

most serious danger to Christianity.



For the worst enemy of Christianity could wish nothing more than

that its main Leaders should prove that it can not be adopted

save by those who accept, as historical, statements which

unbiased men throughout the world know to be mythical.  The

result of such a demonstration would only be more and more to

make thinking people inside the Church dissemblers, and thinking

people outside, scoffers.  Far better is it to welcome the aid of

science, in the conviction that all truth is one, and, in the

light of this truth, to allow theology and science to work

together in the steady evolution of religion and morality.



The revelations made by the sciences which most directly deal

with the history of man all converge in the truth that during the

earlier stages of this evolution moral and spiritual teachings

must be inclosed in myth, legend, and parable.  "The Master"

felt this when he gave to the poor peasants about him, and so to

the world, his simple and beautiful illustrations.  In making

this truth clear, science will give to religion far more than it

will take away, for it will throw new life and light into all

sacred literature.