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Josephus and Rabbinic tradition describe Sodom’s sin as arrogance due to excessive wealth, leading to hostility toward outsiders. Josephus says they grew arrogant and hated foreigners and tractate Sanhedrin says they conspired to drive everyone away.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 1.11.1
Classical
1 At this time, the Sodomites grew arrogant from their riches and good fortune. They sinned against men and offended God, forgetting His favors, hating foreigners, and engaging in perversions. God was therefore indignant and resolved to punish them for their pride, destroying both their city and their country so nothing would grow from it. 2 Once God decided the fate of the Sodomites, Abraham was sitting near the Oak of Mambre at his tent’s door and saw three angels, mistaking them for travelers. He ran to greet them, urging them to accept hospitality and dine with him. They agreed, so he had fresh cakes made and roasted a calf, serving it under the oak. While they feasted, they asked for his wife Sarah, and when he replied she was inside, they foretold that she would bear a son on their next visit. Sarah, overhearing, laughed, thinking it impossible at her age of ninety—and with Abraham at one hundred. The angels then revealed themselves as divine messengers: one came about the child, two to destroy Sodom.
Date: 93-94 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Sanhedrin 109a
Babylonian Talmud
Rabbinic
It was taught in a baraita: “Wicked” is referring to sins they committed with their money; “and sinners” is referring to sins they committed with their bodies. “Wicked” is referring to sins they committed with their money, as it is written: “And your eye is wicked against your poor brother and you give him nothing” (Deuteronomy 15:9). “And sinners” is referring to sins they committed with their bodies, as it is written with regard to Joseph and the wife of Potiphar: “And sin against God” (Genesis 39:9). “Before the Lord”; this is referring to blessing, a euphemism for cursing, God. “Exceedingly [meod ]” is referring to bloodshed, as it is stated: “Moreover Manasseh shed very [meod ] much blood” (II Kings 21:16). The Sages taught: The people of Sodom became haughty and sinned due only to the excessive goodness that the Holy One, Blessed be He, bestowed upon them. And what is written concerning them, indicating that goodness? “As for the earth, out of it comes bread, and underneath it is turned up as it were by fire. Its stones are the place of sapphires, and it has dust of gold. That path no bird of prey knows, neither has the falcon’s eye seen it. The proud beasts have not trodden it, nor has the lion passed thereby” (Job 28:5–8). The reference is to the city of Sodom, which was later overturned, as it is stated thereafter: “He puts forth His hand upon the flinty rock; He overturns the mountains by the roots” (Job 28:9). The people of Sodom said: Since we live in a land from which bread comes and has the dust of gold, we have everything that we need. Why do we need travelers, as they come only to divest us of our property? Come, let us cause the proper treatment of travelers to be forgotten from our land, as it is stated: “He breaks open a watercourse in a place far from inhabitants, forgotten by pedestrians, they are dried up, they have moved away from men” (Job 28:4).
Date: 450-550 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... While Josephus claims to be drawing solely on scripture, Thackeray notes that he has expanded this material by incorporating “a miscellaneous mass of traditional lore, forming a collection of first century Midrash of considerable value.” This difference in the two writers’ understanding is made clear from the outset of Josephus’s account, where he explicitly describes the crimes of the Sodomites. Now about this time the Sodomites, overweeningly proud of their numbers and the extent of their wealth, showed themselves insolent to men and impious to the Divinity, inasmuch that they no more remembered the benefits that they had received from him, hated foreigners (misoxenoi) and declined all intercourse with others (Antiquities 1.194). The Sodomites are proud, avaricious and xenophobic in strong contrast to Philo’s description of them as addicts “of strong liquor…and forbidden forms of intercourse.” ...”
Jordan, Mark D.
Sodomy: A History of a Christian Biblical Myth
(pp. 73-74) University of Chicago Press, 2006
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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