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.