History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

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 suffocated. 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.