The common view of those who deny the historical reality of Lot is that this name simply stands for the ethnic group, Moab and Ammon. Wellhausen, e.g., expressly calls "Lot" a national name (Volksname). As to what is told of him in Gen he remarks: "Were it not for the remarkable depression in which the Dead Sea lies, Sodom and Gomorrah would not have perished; were it not for the little flat tongue of land that reaches out into the swamp from the Southeast, Lot would have fled at once to the mountains of his sons, Moab and Ammon, and not have made the detour by Zoar, which merely serves the purpose of explaining why this corner is excepted from `the overthrow,' to the territory of which it really belongs" (Prolegomena 6, 323). Meyer confesses that nothing can be made of Lot, because "any characteristic feature that might furnish a point of attachment is entirely lacking." The first of the families of the Horites of Seir was named Lotan (Ge 36:20,22), and this writer believes it "probable that this name is derived from Lot; but that Lot was ever a tribal name (Stammname) follows neither from this fact (rather the contrary) nor from the designation of Moab and the bene `Ammon as `Sons of Lot' " (Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstamme, 311; Compare 261, 339). If "Horite" was understood as "cave-dweller," the story in Ge 19:30 might be adduced in support of this combination. But the most recent line of reasoning concerning these patriarchal figures makes their names "neither Divine names nor tribal names, whether in actual use or regarded as such, but rather simple personal names like Tom, Dick and Harry. .... Typical names they became .... so that .... Israel's story-tellers would connect the name of Lot with the overthrow of the cities" (Gressmann, article in ZATW, 1910). These names were chosen just because "they were very common at the time when the narratives were stamped into types"; later they became unfashionable, but the story-tellers held fast to the old names. "One sees from this at once into how ancient a time the proper names Abraham and Lot must reach, and understands therefore the more easily how they could be changed into tribal ancestors." It does not require the cautions, uttered by writers of this way of thinking, against regarding their views as a return to the old historical view of the patriarchs, to remind us that, in spite of all that may be said to the contrary, the present trend of thought among the most radical critics of the Genesis-traditions is much mote favorable to that conservative historical view than were the opinions which they have overthrown. So that it may justly be asserted, as Gressmann writes: "Confidence in tradition is in any case on the rise."
Lot's Wife: This woman, unknown by name, figures in the narrative of Lot that relates his escape from Sodom. She is mentioned in Ge 19:1-38 only in verses Ge 15:1-21-Ge 17:1-27, where she is commanded to flee from the doomed city with her husband and daughters, and is laid hold upon by the angelic visitors in their effort to hasten the slow departure; and in Ge 19:26, where she alone of the four fugitives disobeys the warning, looks back, and becomes a "pillar of salt" This disobedience, with the moral state it implied and the judgment it entailed, is held up as an example by Christ in Lu 17:32. In the Scriptures this is all that is said of a person and event that furnished the basis for a great deal of speculation. Josephus (Ant., I, xi, 4) adds to the statement derived from Gen, "She was changed into a pillar of salt," the words, "for I visited it, and it still remains even now" (see also The Wisdom of Solomon 10:7).
Among Christian writers contemporary with and subsequent to Josephus, as well as among the Jews themselves and other Orientals, the same assertion is found, and down to recent times travelers have reported the persistence of such a "pillar of salt," either on the testimony of natives or as eyewitnesses. The question of the origin and nature of these "pillars" is a part of the larger question of Sodom and its neighborhood (see SALT; SIDDIM; SLIME); for that no one particular "pillar" has persisted through the centuries may be regarded as certain; nor if it had, would the identification of Lot's wife with it and with it alone be ascertainable. This is just an early, persistent and notable case of that "identification" of Biblical sites which prevails all over the Holy Land. It is to be classed with the myth-and legend-building turn of mind in simple peoples, which has e.g. embroidered upon this Old Testament account of the destruction of Sodom such marvelous details and embellishments.
The principal thing to observe is the vagueness and the simplicity of the story in Gen. For it does not necessarily imply the "metamorphosis" popularly attributed to it, in the strict sense of that word. And it lacks, even in a narrative like this, where the temptation would be greatest, all indications of that "popular archaeology" or curiosity, which according to some critics, is alleged to have furnished the original motive for the invention of the patriarchal narratives. "She became a pillar of salt," and "Remember Lot's wife": this is the extent of the Biblical allusions. All the rest is comment, or legend, or guess, or "science."
J. Oscar Boyd