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sign that he understood the message that his daughters intended to send him.

CHAPTER THREE

LIFE AGAINST DEATH
     
    The Sacred Incest of Lot’s Daughters
     
    G OOD AND E VIL IN THE S TORY OF L OT
A T RAGIC B UFFOON
I NCEST IN THE A NCIENT W ORLD S ISTER AND W IFE
S EX AS P OLITICS W HAT D ID S ARAH S EE ?
“W HO I S THE T HIRD W HO W ALKS A LWAYS B ESIDE Y OU ?”
L IFE A GAINST D EATH
     
     
    A pologists of three religions have tried to explain away the scandalous conduct of Lot and his daughters ever since their tale was first recorded in the Book of Genesis. And yet, curiously enough, Lot’s willingness to cast his virgin daughters to a lusty mob and his own incestuous (if unconscious) couplings with his daughters after their flight into the mountains are not regarded by clergy and commentators as his worst offenses as a father, a husband, and a man.
    Lot is the hapless nephew of Abraham, the patriarch and “paradigm of the man of faith” 1 on whom God bestows a rich and enduring blessing: “I will make of thee a great nation,” God tells Abraham (Gen. 12:2). Lot, by contrast, is something of a schlemiel who tags along after Abraham and relies on his kindly uncle to get him out of trouble-According to one of the oddest passages of the Bible, Abraham—a gentle old man “rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold” (Gen. 13:2)—is shown as a rough-and-ready campaigner who mounts up and rides out at the head of an army to rescue Lot from a powerful king who has taken Lot hostage (Gen. 14:14–16). The last and greatest of Abraham’s favors to Lot—an act of audacity that Abraham does not undertake even when God orders him to sacrifice his own son—is the patriarch’s plea toGod to spare the righteous of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18:23), Lot and his family presumably among them.
    The jury of biblical exegetes, so to speak, is hung when it comes to the question of whether Lot is righteous at all. One faction insists that Lot, like his Uncle Abe, is “perfect and pious,” as one of the sages put it. 2 Christian tradition regards Lot as a “righteous man,” in the words of Peter, who likens him to Noah and argues that the rescue of Lot and his family from Sodom is a sign of God’s willingness to “deliver the godly out of temptations” (2 Pet. 2:7–9 Scofield KJV). The Koran characterizes Lot, like Mohammed himself, as a prophet sent by Allah to rebuke the wicked. 3 The other faction holds that Lot is not much better than his fellow Sodomites: Lot is described elsewhere in rabbinical literature as “lascivious,” 4 and it is suggested that he chose to settle in Sodom precisely because he was attracted by the ribald goings-on.
    The Bible itself is undecided on the moral worthiness of Lot. But it appears that sleeping with his own daughters in a drunken stupor—not once but twice—is the least of his crimes.

G OOD AND E VIL IN THE S TORY OF L OT
     
    Lot’s righteousness—or lack of it—is the unspoken subtext of a remarkable debate between the patriarch Abraham and the Almighty over the fate of Sodom, where the question takes on life-and-death implications for Lot and his family. Abraham, who will later raise a knife to his son’s throat at God’s command without a single word of protest, summons up the courage to argue with God over good and evil, a gesture of defiance that may seem bizarre to any Bible reader who is under the impression that God prefers his believers to shut up and do what they are told.
    One hot afternoon, as the story is told in Genesis, God * couple of his angelic sidekicks appear at Abraham’s tent “by the terebinths of Mamre” in the guise of desert travelers, and Abraham hastens to make them welcome by washing their feet and serving them a meal Since the dietary laws against mixing meat and milk will not go into effect until Moses comes along a few centuries later, the divine guests dig into a distinctly nonkosher meal that includes a veal roast
and
“curd and milk”