The Sin of Sodom & Gomorrah in the Bible and Jewish Tradition

I'm starting this thread to post some of my articles that originally appeared on a Jokes thread which should probably better appear in the "Bible Research & Study Articles" folder.   So here goes.....

What was the sin, or sin(s) that Sodom & Gormorrah was judged for?  The original account in Genesis actually DOES NOT SAY.  All we really know is what Gen. 13:13 says: "Now the people of Sodom were vicious men, great sinners against Yahweh."  Similarly, Gen 18:20 says: "How great an outcry there is against Sodom and Gomorrah!  How grievous is their sin!" without actually saying what the sin is.  Then there are the names of the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah in ch. 14.  While the kings on the offensive have somewhat real historically-based names, the names of the kings of the Cities of the Plain are of a sinister character:  Bera king of Sodom is a play on the Hebrew word for "evil,"  Birsha king of Gomorrah is a play on the word for "wickedness".  Bela, the other name for Zoar, means "devouring".  In none of this is there a clear picture of what constitutes the sin of the cities, except for perhaps "gluttony" hinted by the name of the city of Bela.

The sin is evidently something that everyone in the judged cities is guilty of, both man, woman, and child, since Abraham tries to intercede in ch. 18 and asks Yahweh to spare the cities if only ten "just" people were found in the cities.  The only other indication is the treatment of the visiting angels in ch. 19.  The text describes a mob of "the men of Sodom both young and old, all the people without exception" who bear on Lot's door and make the following demand: "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Send them out to us so that we may know [Heb. yada] them." This request could either mean that the men merely wanted to become "acquainted" with the visitors or they wanted to have "sexual relations" with them.  Which was it?  First of all, Lot's reaction to their request to yada his guests ("I beg you to do no such wicked thing") implies that the kind of yada meant was something "wicked".  Merely getting to know someone does not entail this, but demanding sex with one's guests does.  That in itself is not conclusive, but in v. 8 Lot offers his daughters whom he specifically describes as "virgin daughters."  In the original Hebrew, this reads as "daughters who have not known [yada] man."  Only three verses from use of yada in the request by the mob, this use clearly is sexual in nature since obviously, living with their father and living in the city, they were otherwise acquainted with men, hence the translation as "virgin daughters".  Aside from Gen 19:5 and 19:8, yada "know" refers to sexual activity in at least two other places in Genesis: 4:25 ("And Adam knew his wife again and she bore a son") and 38:26 ("And he knew her again no more, and it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold, twins were in her womb"). 

A sexual sense of yada thus seems quite probable in v. 5 of Gen. 19. But the crime is not necessarily specified as homosexual rape because the threat of the latter could not be responded with an offer of "virgin daughters".   What the mob was after was something more general.  Their aim was not to indulge in homosexual desires but rather to commit an act of violence against a household that dared to be hospitable to strangers.  This is indicated by the mob character of the crowd.  This is indicated by their violence in forcing Lot aside and trying to break down the door (v. 9).  Lot's offering of his own daughters was the only thing he could do to maintain his promise of hospitality in v. 2.  Lot tells the rioters: "Do nothing to them [my guests] for they have come under the shadow of my roof."  Their response shows exactly what their purpose and motivations were: "Here is one who came as a foreigner, and would set himself up as a judge.  Now we will treat you worse than them" (v. 9).  In other words, the mob was incensed that someone who himself was a foreigner and not originally from their town dared to go against the town's general inhospitable treatment of outsiders (e.g. leaving them to "sleep on the open street" v. 2).  The intent of crowd was to treat the visitors as inhospitably as they can by abusing them.

But this event is not the specific sin that Sodom was judged for, since the fate of the cities was already sealed before the angels arrived (v. 13).  At most, one would have to extrapolate and assume that what happened the night of the angels' visit was indicative of the general sin of the city.  In point of fact, the text does not directly spell out what the sin was.  It was up to later writings to develop this theme and bring more specific charges against the city.  The specification of the sins as "fornication" and "unnatural fornication" in the epistles of Jude and 2 Peter in the New Testament derive not from the Genesis narrative, but instead from extrabibical developments in the tradition of the cities judged by God.  This will be discussed in the next article.

Leolaia

In the preceding article, I showed that the Genesis text was not explicit about the what sin(s) the cities were judged for, but it contains a story of an inhospitable mob threatening to abuse and rape the angelic visitors Lot had so kindly taken under his roof.  The violation of the right of guests to protection is itself a grievous crime; the "shadow of his roof" (Gen. 19:8) was the place of security for guests, the violation of which constituted a moral crime.  Lot's warning, and his offer of his daughters, appeals to their moral responsibility and gives them an opportunity at repentence, which they roundly reject.  This story is evidently the kernal from which later writers expanded into what they refer as "the fornication of Sodom and Gomorrah" (Jude 7).  But nowhere are acts of fornication mentioned in the Genesis narrative.  And nowhere does the Genesis text actually say that the mob succeeded in raping the angels.  In fact, it indicates that the rioters were smitten with blindness before they could do any harm. 

Some of the earliest allusions of the destruction of the Cities of the Plain make no reference to what constituted their sin (Hosea 11:8; Deuteronomy 29:22; Isaiah 1:9).  Ezekiel knows of no explicit sexual crime of Sodom; the sins he lists are all of a non-sexual nature: "Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, gluttony of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.  They were haughty." (Ezekiel 16:49-50)  According to this list, it was primarily the Sodomites' pride and their failure to aid the poor amidst their own prosperity that caused God to smite them.  This tradition is probably the original or older one and it may represent a stream of tradition independent of the Genesis narrative.  

The emphasis on non-sexual sins remained salient in Jewish tradition for centuries afterward, as it is attested in various intertestimental books.  Sirach 16:8 states: "He did not spare the neighbors of Lot, whose arrogance made them hateful."  Wisdom 19:14 says: "Others [the Sodomites] had refused to receive strangers when they came to them."  3 Maccabees 2:5 similarly states: "You [God] burned with fire and brimestone the arrogant Sodomites."  Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 1:194-195 wrote:

Note that the historian makes absolutely no reference to a sexual crime!  This traditional understanding of the Sodomites' sin was also shared by Jesus.  He hurled his curses on the Galilean cities as he was being arrogantly rejected by them and he told his disciples: "And if anyone does not receive you ... truly I say to you it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town" (Matt. 10:14-15).  This understanding continued into the rabbinical period.  In Pirqei de R. Eliezer 25, we read:

So where the hell did the idea that fornication was the sin of Sodom come from?  The text of Gen. 19 indicated that the men of Sodom wanted intercourse with Lot's guests, and though no such act is explicitly described, later writers assumed that the sin of Sodom must have included sexual crimes.  The earliest hint of this is in Jeremiah 23:14: "They [Jerusalem prophets] commit adultery and deal falsely and encourage evildoers, so that no one repents -- they are all like Sodom to me."  The earliest known work to outright identify the sin of Sodom with fornication is the Book of Jubilees 16:5-6 which described the Sodomites as "wicked and exceedingly sinful, and they defile themselves and commit fornication in the flesh, and work uncleaness on the earth."  This idea was advanced further in the same work, which likened the sin of Sodom with the sin of the giants born of the fallen angels: "Later on, Abraham told them about the punishment of the giants and the punishment of Sodom -- how they were condemned because of their wickedness, because of the sexual impurity, uncleanness, and corruption among themselves they died in sexual impurity."

This idea would later be developed in the Enochian literature into a sin of having sex or desiring to have sex with divine flesh. It is THIS stage in the tradition that Jude and 2 Peter draw their allusions from. As most scholars recognize, 2 Peter is literarily dependent on Jude.  Jude 6-8 likens the sin of Sodom, the "unnatural fornication" of Sodom, with the situation of the fallen angels of Gen. 6:1-4:

The key to understanding this text are the words "equally unnatural" in Jude 7: what did the situation of Sodom and Gomorrah have in common with the situation of the incarnation of angels before the Flood that was "equally unnatural"?  It was having sex with angels.  Note also how v. 8 applies both situations to heretics who figuratively "defile their bodies" and "abuse the glorious angels", both descriptions of the same thing situation.  The parallel text in 2 Peter 2:6-11 is derivative of the Jude text and its secondary features arise from the author's use of the more original Jude text.  It is unclear whether Jude believes that intercourse actually occurred between angels and humans at Sodom and Gomorrah, what constituted the porneia "fornication" for him was the lust for angels -- shared by the human females in Gen 6.

Further light on what Jude meant is found in the Enochian literature.  Jude is heavily steeped in the pseudepigraphal literature of the time (such as the allusion to The Assumption of Moses in Jude 9), especially the Books of Enoch which tell the story of the fallen angels who had intercourse with human women.  Jude 14 is a verbatim quotation from 1 Enoch 1:9.  Jude 14 also matches 1 Enoch 60:8 which refers to Enoch as "the seventh as Adam".  Compare Jude 6 with 1 Enoch 10:4-6 ("Bind Azazel hand and foot and throw him into the darkness....He covered his face in order that he may not see light; and in order that he may be sent into the fire on the great day of judgment") and 10:11-12: "Bind Semjaza and the others who are with him, who fornicated with the women, that they will die together with them in all their defilement...Bind them for seventy generations underneath the rocks of the ground until the day of their judgment and of their consummation, until the eternal judgment is concluded."  What is more, the connection between the sin of the fallen angels and the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah also derives from the Enochian literature.  The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs quote and refer to a lost Enoch book that is related to 2 Enoch (cf. 2 Enoch 34:2 which relates sodomy to the sin of the angels), and this book clearly relates the two situations:

In another reference to the fallen angels, the Testament of Reuben 5:5 says: "Flee from fornication....For it was thus they [women] had charmed the Watchers, who were before the Flood."  The Testament of Benjamin 9:1 also states: "Now I suppose, from the words of the righteous Enoch, that there will be also evil-doings among you: for ye will commit fornication with the fornication of Sodom, and shall perish all save a few, and will multiply inordinate lusts with women."  Here the sin of Sodom is again discussed by a work concerned with the sin of the angels, and its likening with "lusts with women" does not suggest homosexuality per se but rather fornication.  Similarly Testment of Asher 7:1 says that Sodom "did not recognize the Lord's angels and perished forever," the sin thus being related to a failure to respect the divine angelic order in their fornication and not homosexuality per se.  Jude, indebted as he was by the Enochian literature, is probably making a similar point.

The two separate strands of tradition, one emphasizing the arrogance of the Sodomites and the other stressing fornication, were occasionally combined in the intertestamental period and beyond.  Philo, Abraham 134-135 wrote in the first century BC:  "The region of the Sodomites ... was laden with innumerable injustices, especially those arising from gluttony and lust....The cause of this excess in licentiousness among the inhabitants was the unfailing abundance of their wealth....They threw off from their necks the law of nature by indulging in strong drink, rich food, and forbidden forms of intercourse."   The Targum Onkelos Gen. 13:13 states: "Now the men of Sodom were wicked with their wealth, and they were sinful with their bodies before the Lord," and the Targum Neophyti Gen. 13:13 said: "And the people of Sodom were wicked toward one another and sinful with sexual sins and bloodshed and idolatry before the Lord."

So what we, then, see is that in the intertestimental period between the Old and New Testaments, there was a shift in tradition about Sodom and original story in popular storytelling.  The traditions in Jude and 2 Peter derive not from the biblical text, but the stream of extrabiblical traditions attested in apocryphal and pseudepigraphal literature.

Leolaia

So every time I say "Yada yada yada..." in a disimissive manner, I'm really saying "F*** f*** f***"?

Very interesting Leolaia.

Something you did not mention (or I missed it) is the strikingly similar popular story about hospitality in Judges 19 about Gibea, where no mal'akim = messengers = angels are involved. The comparison can be useful for a narrative analysis.

Just for the sake of clarity, we could perhaps add that the "sons of the gods" in Genesis 6:3 are not "angels" but gods (the story obviously originates in a polytheistic context). Only in the so-called intertestament could they be seen as "angels" of the one God, and thus related to the Genesis 19 story as you made very clear.

Nice thread.  I just finished reading ,"The Logic of Incest" and the Structuralist analysis of patriarcal narratives was relatively new to me.  The stories follow a certain pattern.  In the author's opinion the role of Lot shifts from "outside" to "inside" to create eponyminous founders of Israel's neighbors and cult rivals.  His wife is killed and daughters fill in to relieve tension in the story.   Hell, I didn't understand half the book.

Narkissos....yes, agreed on the interpretation of Gen. 6 was referring to "angels" is a later development in Jewish tradition, where the original text refers to "sons of God" unlike Gen 19:1 where reference is to "messengers" or "angels". And yes, the crime of the men of Gibeah in Jud. 19 is a close variant of the same story in Gen. 19 and does shed some additional light on what is meant in the Gen. text since it has a different ending -- we see what the mob does do with the virgin daughter.

Pete...I also read some interesting stuff on the Sodom and Gomorrah story being a sort of native Levant version of the Flood myth, as it shares some interesting motifs in common. In a version of the tale in Asia Minor, an aged Phrygian couple give shelter in their humble dwelling to Zeus and Hermes in human guise, when every other door is closed against them. As a reward for their hospitality, they were directed to flee to the mountain and there, looking back, they see the whole district inundated by a flood, except their own wretched hut which has been transformed into a temple. Here we see the same combination of kindness of divine beings rewarded by escape from a destructive visitation in which a whole neighborhood perishes for its impious neglect of the duties of hospitality. Although flooding is nowhere mentioned in the final version of the Sodom tale, there is good reason to believe that it originally formed part of the story. Note that Gen. 13 and 14 present the region around Sodom that is presently at the bottom of the Dead Sea as the "vale of Siddim," and the story would have been the opportunity to explain how the area was flooded and changed into a sea. It is possible that the inclusion of a second flooding story was militated against by the incorporation of the Babylonian flood myth in Gen 6-8 and a deluge of water was changed into a rain of fire and brimestone. On the other hand, the story's special features are suggested by the weird scenary of the Dead Sea region -- its barrenness, the cloud of vapour hanging over it, its salt rocks and grotesque formations, its beds of sulphur and asphalt, and perhaps occasional conflagurations bursting out among them. The catastrophe is presented as a local one, like the Phrygian myth which was a local flood. However, in the story of Lot and his daughters, v. 31 seems to presuppose a universal catastrophe, in which the whole human race has disappeared, except Lot and his daughters. The idea of Gunkel is that the narrative in Gen 18-19, which is set in the Dead Sea region, is a Moabite parallel to the story of the Flood (hence, the etiology of the nations of Moab and Ammon from Lot) which is thus of greater antiquity than the Noah story. Lot is the counterpart of Noah and just as the Noah of 9:20 steps into the place of the Babylonian Flood-hero, so the Lot of 19:30 was identified with the hospitable host of deities in the original Moabite myth that possibly lies at the basis of 19:1-10.

Leolaia

Leolaia - thanks for the info!  Awesome... I could understand everything!

This is all quite interesting but slightly above my head, but interesting all the same.

 

Has there ever been a movie about this, Sodom and Gomorrah ?

Could be both educational and informative.

Maybe starring Jenna Jamison or someone .....

***** Rub a Dub

Leolaia,

Thanks for this information.  There has been so much research done on the fact that this parable or story was not about homosexual sex at all, yet most people will not look at this information if I send it to them or other gay people do because, of course, it "advances our agenda."  Its so good to see a fair and impartial look at it without the usual rhetoric and dogma.

Gretchen

THe `sons of God' mentioned in genisis may actually have been the descendants of Cain, so I heard from a certain source.

Badboy: the similar piece of fundamentalistic eisegesis (reading INTO the text whatever you want it to mean) I heard of featured the descendents of Seth as the "sons of God" and the (female) descendents of Cain as the "daughters of men"...

Thanks 4 the correction,Narkisssos.

The intepretation of "the sons of God" in Gen. 6 as referring to "angels" (as stated explicitly in the LXX rendering hoi angeloi tou theou, and the elaborated tales of Jubilees and 1 Enoch, and passed thence into Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4 in the NT and also to Josephus) is probably closer to the original meaning than other interpretations. In the OT the expressions bene 'elohim, bene 'elim, and bene 'el (i.e. "sons of El") refer to lesser members of the divine order who make up the divine assembly or council in heaven, and who make up the "heavenly hosts" that Yahweh Sabaoth commands. The direct source of this usage is probably Canaanite mythology, where the council of heaven is made up of seventy sons begat by El and Asherah. Psalms 82:1 and 89:5-10 are closest to the traditional conception, and where the deities are referred to as "the assembly of El" ('dw 'l), "sons of Elyon" (in Canaanite mythology, an epithet of El is Elyon), "gods" ('lhym), "assembly of holy ones in heaven," and "sons of El" (bn 'l). Some have suggested that "gods" ('elohim) was the word that originally occurred in Gen. 6:1 (in a sense similar to Ps. 82:1) but the compiler of J or Genesis added the word bene "son of" to remove any hint of polytheism.

The legend that underlies Gen. 6:1-4, the interrmarriage of human women and the gods and their fantastic offspring (in Heb. gibbor, "mighty ones"), that the early inhabitants of the earth were men of gigantic stature and that marriages between gods and mortals were common in the heroic age, was well-known in the Near East. It underlay the Greek legends of the Titans and heroes (cf. Homer Illiad 5.302, Herodotus History 1.68, Virgil Aenid 12.900, Pliny HN, 7.73ff), the Phoenician legends of Sanchuniathon on intermarriages between deities and mortals (cf. Eusebius Praep. Ev. 1.10), and the Sumerian Gilgamesh legend. This myth however also functions as an etiological legend of the origin of the aboriginal inhabitants of Canaan -- the Nephilim who according to Num. 13:33 were giants. This theme also occurs in Deuteronomy 1:28, 2:10-21, 9:2, Joshua 15:14, Amos 2:9, and other OT texts that conceptualize the original inhabitants of the land as giants. A late survival of this belief in giants as the primeval inhabitants of the land appears in the Quran, which refers to the 'Ad and Thamud (cf. Surat al-Araf, 74). Other names of these peoples in the Hextateuch include the Anakim, the Zuzim (or Zamzummim), the Rephaim, and many of these are mentioned in Gen. 14 as the inhabitants of Canaan in Abram's day. Note that for Gen. 6:1-4 to function as an etiological legend of the origin of the Nephilim, Rephaim, and similar peoples, this tradition originally knew nothing of the Flood of Noah, which would have destroyed the very ancestors of the giants in Joshua's day. The story of the Nephilim thus likely came from an early layer of J that preceded the inclusion of the Flood story (indicated also by the story of Nimrod in Gen. 10:8 who was described as the "first gibbor on the earth" but born after the Flood, and the story of Noah the vine-grower which depicts Noah's sons as juveniles and not the married men of the Flood story). Baruch 3:26-28 also cites Gen. 6:1-4 as referring to the Canaanite inhabitants of the land in the days of Joshua and David, and mentions God's decision in 1 Samuel 16:7: "In Israel were born the giants, famous to us from antiquity, immensely tall, expert in war; God's choice did not fall on these and they perished for lack of wisdom, perished in their own folly." The words "and even afterwards" in Gen. 6:4 appears to be a harmonizing gloss that implies that the Nephilim survived the Flood and remained in the land afterwards.

The case of the Rephaim is fascinating since they are mentioned in poetic texts as the "spirits of the dead" and the "denizens of Sheol" (cf. Job 26:5; Proverbs 9:18, 21:16, where the Rephaim gather around the injust in Sheol). In Isaiah 14:9, they are not just the shades of the dead but the ghosts of dead kings that will greet tyrants. This conception of the Rephaim also derives from pagan mythology. In Phoenician inscriptions, the Rephaim are the shades of the dead living in the underworld and in the Canaanite Ugarit texts, the Rephaim are a line of ancient mighty, dead kings. The description of the Nephilim as the "mighty of old, heroes of renown" in Gen. 6 comes very close to Canaanite conceptions of the Rephaim. One of these heroes of old was Danel, a legendary semi-divine king who played a significant role in the Aqhat legend. The memory of the Canaanite hero Danel remained strong in Israel and was alluded to several times by Ezekiel (cf. 14:12-20, 28:1-2). As later Jewish tradition reconceptualized the gods that intermarried with human women as fallen angels, the dead Rephaim in Sheol were also reconceptualized as not the spirits of mighty ancient kings in the underworld but the spirits of the angels themselves and of their unholy offspring chained in punishment in the darkness of the underworld. This development occurred in the Hellenistic period (and elaborated most clearly in 1 Enoch and restated in Jude 6) and likely drew from Greek myths of the Titans chained in Tartarus. 2 Peter 2:4 in fact makes the influence from Greek mythology explicit. Because of these developments, the ancient hero Danel became recast as a fallen angel in 1 Enoch 6:7, 69:2 (which also mentions a number of details from the Aqhat legend) or as the father-in-law of Enoch (Jubilees 4:17-21).

The interpretation of "the sons of God" as the pious line of Seth dates back to Julius Africanus (AD 160-240) and became widely adopted by Church Fathers and later on by Luther and Calvin. Most scholars recognize that "daughters of men" cannot have a narrower reference in v. 2 than in v. 1 of Gen. 6, and that consequently "sons of God" cannot denote a section of mankind. This view also ignores the long, ancient line of tradition that the "angel" interpretation derives from.

Leolaia

Leolaia,

I didn't read your second article, but the first one is interesting! It's amazing how much we infer at times.

Thanks.

Observador.

Brilliant synthesis Leolaia. I had forgotten how old the Cainite vs. Sethite interpretation was -- although I can still recall a well-known Calvinist professor blindly defending it!

Just two questions for the pleasure of reading more from you:

- Do you really think an addition of bene would remove any hint of polytheism?

- Do you still believe in "J"?

Narkissos

Observador: Read the next article as well. The comment in Jude 7 referring to the "fornication of Sodom and Gomorrah" is not based on Genesis, which nowhere mentions such fornication, but instead is based on growing Jewish lore on what constituted the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. Even Jesus in the synoptic gospels had a different understanding of what the sin was.

Narkissos: You're right that there is still a "hint" in bene elohim. The use of elohim to refer to beings of the divine order in heaven (as opposed to the gods of other nations or capital-E elohim "God") was though quite marked and rare, confined mainly to the poetical works, I believe. As for the documentary hypothesis, I am aware of the problems of old-fashioned JEDP source analysis and so I hedged myself by referring to "the redactor of J or Genesis".....I have no doubt that Genesis drew on earlier sources but it is not clear whether these narrative units were always necessarily written documents. I think the analysis of Jesuine parables shows that stories of some moderate length (especially the story parables of Luke & Matthew, or the elaborate story parable of GThom 64) can be transmitted intact as units in oral tradition. I am quite convinced that the stylistic and linguistic differences between J and P material are genuine and that P material is later than that of J. It is also clear tho that the JEDP analysis fails to account for the complexities in the primeval saga of ch. 2-11 where two separate layers of tradition may be detected: the two antediluvian geneologies that are variants of each other, the evidence that the Flood story was a later addition, and the parallel "city" and "tower" stories that have been intertwined in the Tower of Babel narrative. If there was a J, one could speak of an earlier edition that lacked the Flood story, but the way traditions have been freely combined and dislocated suggests that (perhaps in a fashion similar to the Gospel of John) several written and/or oral sources were freely and creatively used and it is very difficult of not impossible to reconstruct any such earlier documents. The doublet between Gen. 19 and Judg. 19 may be one example of how an oral tradition may be differently adapted.

One thing I'm really fascinated with is how the composition of the Pentateuch + Joshua, Judges utilized traditions from diverse geographical locales in Israel and Judah and arranged them in a new linear order as part of the national epic -- which of course changed the original context of these traditions. As the narrative now stands, the Sojourn in Egypt and Exodus separate the patriarchical traditions in Genesis from the stories in Judges. Yet, the doublets between Gen. 19 and Judg. 19 and the doublets between the Shechem stories in Gen. 34 and Judg. 9 (which have ties also to the Abimelech story in Gen. 20) suggest to me that the patriarchical stories and the stories of the Judges belong to the same rough cultural/historical milieu, and that the real reason why the Middle Bronze Age is thought of by conservative scholars as the "Age of the Patriarchs" is because of the artificial order in which they are made to precede the Sojourn and Exodus. I think that is why the Abraham stories contain so many "anachronisms" (i.e. referring to Beersheba, the Philistines, etc.). The anachronisms are just the result of where the stories were located in the overall grand narrative; the original Abraham stories may well concerned a legendary early Iron Age figure associated with certain cultic sites. There are a few other enigmatic clues. 1 Chronicles 4:22 refers to two grandchildren of Judah named "Joash and Saraph who went to Moab to take wives before returning to Jerusalem. Events these are of long ago." This story is not otherwise narrated in the Bible but it is curious because this would have had to have been when Israel was in Egypt, if Joash and Saraph were indeed the grandchildren of Judah. Yet here they are presented as residents of Bethleham, in the very territory where the tribe of Judah was to later reside. This would suggest a tradition that knew nothing of the Sojourn and Exodus. Yet if we look at Ruth 1:1-3 we find a similar but different story about Ephrathites named Elimelech and his wife Naomi who left Bethlehem to live in Moab. So a story somehow projected into the age before the Exodus may in fact reflect Iron Age conditions and traditions.

Leolaia

Thanks for your reply Leolaia. One thing I never thought of is the role of the (Deuteronomistic and later) megahistory in the very formation of the narrative doublets from earlier (oral or written) material. Sounds very promising.