101 Myths of the Bible: how ancient scribes - Conscious Evolution TV

yth #52:
Lot fathered Ammon and Moab.
The Myth: And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the mountain, and his two
daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar: and he dwelt in a cave, he and his
two daughters. And the firstborn said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is
not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth: Come, let
us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of
our father…Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. And the
firstborn bare a son, and called his name Moab: the same is the father of the Moabites
unto this day. And the younger, she also bare a son, and called his name Ben-ammi: the
same is the father of the children of Ammon unto this day. (Gen. 19:30–32, 36–38)
The Reality: This story continues the anachronistic genealogy through which
educated Hebrews in the Babylonian/Persian periods, hoping to impress their culturally
sophisticated neighbors with claims of a common Mesopotamian background,
attempted to associate members of Abraham’s family with a Mesopotamian background.
After the destruction of Sodom, Lot and his two daughters thought they were the
only survivors in the world, and his daughters thought they should sleep with their
father in order to have children and propagate the race. As their father would have
considered this immoral, they first got him drunk on wine and then came to him, each
on a separate night. As a result of these unions, each daughter had a child. The first
child born they named Moab and he was the ancestor of the Moabites. The other
child they named Ben-ammi, a strange name meaning“son of the people”—what people
would this be?—and he was identified as the ancestor of the Ammonites. Both territories
were neighbors near the southern portion of the Dead Sea. During the first
millennium B.C., they were constant enemies of the Israelites.
The earliest known reference to the existence of Moab as a territory occurs in an
Egyptian inscription dating to the reign of Ramesses II (thirteenth century B.C.). As
to the Ammonites, the evidence of their existence in the time of Lot is even sparser.
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