Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

228 DEAD SEA LEGENDS TO COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY.
been there some time before, and she concluded that it had
been temporarily covered by the sea. In both the fourth
and fifth centuries such great doctors in the Church as St.
Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Cyril of Jerusalem
it was, doubtless,
agreed in this belief and statement hence ;
that the Hebrew word which is translated in the authorized
English version " pillar," was translated in the Vulgate, which
the majority of Christians
word
believe virtually inspired, by the
" statue " we shall ; find this fact insisted upon by
theologians arguing in behalf of the statue, as a result and
monument of
afterward.*
the miracle, for over fourteen hundred years
About the middle of the sixth century Antoninus Martyr
visited the Dead Sea region and described it, but curiously
reversed a simple truth in
"
these words : Nor do sticks or
straws float there, nor can a man swim, but whatever is cast I
into it sinks to the bottom." As to the statue of Lot's wife,
he threw doubt upon its miraculous renewal, but testified
that it was still standing.
In the seventh century the Targum of Jerusalem not only
testified that the salt pillar at Usdum was once Lot's wife, ;
but declared that she must retain that form until the general f
resurrection. In the seventh century, too. Bishop Arculf
travelled to the Dead Sea, and his work was added to the
treasures of the Church. He greatly develops the legend, j
and especially that part of it given by Josephus. The bitumen
that floats upon the sea " resembles gold and the form
of a bull or camel " " "
birds can not live near it ;
; and " the f
very beautiful apples " which grow there, when plucked,
" burn and are reduced to ashes, and smoke as if they were
still burning."
In the eighth century the Venerable Bede takes these
* See Josephus, Antiquities, book i, chap, xi ; Clement, Epist. /; Cyril Hieros,
Catech., xjx ; Chrysostom, Horn. XVIII, XLIV, in Genes. ; Irenaeus, lib. iv, c. xxxi,
of his Heresies, edition Oxon., 1702. For St. Silvia, see S. Silvia Aquitana Pere-
grinatio ad Loca Sancta, Romse, 1887, p. 55 ; also edition of 18S5, p. 25. For recent
translation, see Pilgrimage of St. Silvia, p. 28, in publications of Palestine Text So*
ciety for 1891. For legends of signs of continued life in boulders and stones into
which human beings have been transformed for sin, see Karl Bartsch, Sagen, etc-
Tol. ii, pp. 420 et seq.