Sodom dan Gomorrah

Menurut Genesis, Sodom (bahasa Arab: سدوم Sadūm,Bahasa Ibrani: סְדוֹם, Piawai Sədom Tiberias Səḏôm, Bahasa Yunani Σόδομα) dan Gomorrah (bahasa Arab: عمورة ʿAmūrah, Bahasa Ibrani: עֲמוֹרָה, Piawai ʿAmora Tiberias Ġəmôrāh / ʿĂmôrāh, bahasa Yunani Γόμορρα) adalah dua bandar yang dimusnahkan oleh Tuhan dalam Kitab Bible.
Oleh kerana dosa-dosa penduduk Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, dan Zeboim telah dibinasakan oleh "brimstone dan api dari Tuhan dari syurga" (). Dalam agama Kristian dan Islam, nama-nama mereka menjadi bersinonim dengan dosa impenitent, dan mereka jatuh dengan suatu penyataan seperti peribahasa kemarahan Tuhan (, Qur'an ).
Sodom dan Gomorrah telah digunakan sebagai metafor untuk kedosaan dan penyelewengan seksual. Ceritanya oleh itu memberikan kenaikan ke kata-kata dalam pelbagai bahasa, termasuk perkataan bahasa Melayu "sodomi", suatu istilah kini digunakan secara berpengaruh dalam undang-undang (berasal dari kegunaan Kristian tradisional) untuk menjelaskan hubungan seks bukan-faraj, dan juga bestiality.

Teks Bible

Sodom adalah salah suatu kumpulan lima bandar, Pentapolis (): Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, dan Bela -- juga digelar Zoar (). Daerah Pentapolis juga secara berkumpulan dirujuk sebagai "Bandar-bandar Plain" () sejak mereka semua terletak di plain Sungai Jordan, dalam suatu kawasan yang mendirikan had tanah Bani Kanaan (). Nabi Luth, seorang anak buah lelaki Nabi Ibrahim memilih untuk tinggal di Sodom, oleh kerana proximity of good grazing for his flocks ().
Dalam , Tuhan memberitahu Nabi Ibrahim bahawa dia merancang untuk membinasakan bandar Sodom oleh kerana kejahatannya. Nabi Ibrahim merayu dengan Tuhan untuk tidak membinasakan Sodom, dan Tuhan bersetuju bahawa Dia tidak akan membinasakan bandar tersebut jika adanya 50 orang alim dalamnya, kemudian 45, kemudian 30, kemudian 20, atau juga sepuluh orang alim. Dua malaikat Tuhan hanya mendapati seorang yang alim yang tinggal di Sodom, anak buah Nabi Ibrahim Nabi Luth. Berikutnya itu, malangnya, Tuhan membinasakan bandar itu.
Dalam versi Tanach, Genesis19:4-5, episod terakhir dalam cerita Sodom dijelaskan ketika para malaikat melawat Nabi Luth untuk memberinya amaran untuk melarikan diri:
Ketika mereka belum lagi pencen, dan rakyat bandar itu, rakyat Sodom, mengelilingi rumah, di kalangan yang tua dan muda, dari keseluruhan penduduk dari setiap sudut [bandar]. Dan mereka memanggilkan Nabi Luth dan berkata kepadanya, "Di mana lelaki yang tiba ke kamu malam ini? Bawa mereka ke kami, dan biar kami punya hubungan seks dengan mereka."
Nabi Luth menolak untuk memberikan para pelawat malaikat ke penduduk Sodom. Dia selain itu memberikan mereka kedua anak perempuan, tetapi rakyat menolak. Lelaki itu disembar dengan kebutaan, membenarkan Nabi Luth dan keluarga, yang kemudian diarah untuk meninggal bandar, untuk melarikan diri. Meskipun ketika Sodom dan Gomorrah dibinasa dengan api dan brimstone oleh Tuhan, isteri Luth menoleh ke belakang, masih ingin merasa kembali ke bandar, dan dengan secara pintas dia ditukar menjadi setiang garam.
Dalam  Tuhan membandingkan Jerusalem dengan Sodom, mengatakan "Sodom tidak pernah membuat apa yang kamu dan anak perempuan kamu telah lakukan." Dia menjelaskan bahawa dosa Sodom adalah bahawa "Dia dan anak perempuannya adalah bongkak, sangat banyak diberi makan dan tidak membimbangkan; mereka tidak membantu yang miskin dan yang perlukan bantuan. Mereka adalah tidak berakhlak dan menolak benda-benda sebelum."

Pandangan Yahudi

Teks-teks klasik Yahudi tidak menekankan pada aspek homoseksual pada sifat penduduk Sodom sebanyak mana kekejaman dan kekurangan peramahan mereka terhadap "orang yang tidak dikenali." (Lihat Jewish Encyclopedia pada kepentingan peramahan.) Kaum Sodom dilihat sebagai bersalah pada banyak dosa-dosa besar yang lain. Tulisan Rabai mengeraskan bahawa kaum Sodom juga melakukan jenayah ekonomi, blasphemy dan tumpah darah. Salah satu yang terdahsyat adalah memberi wang atau ingot emas ke para pengemis, tetapi dengan membubuh nama mereka padanya, dan kemudian berikutnya menolak untuk menjual mereka makanan. Orang yang tidak kenal yang tidak berdaya akan akhirnya berada dalam kelaparan dan selepas kematiannya, kaum itu yang memberinya wang akan mendakwanya kembali.
Menurut suatu adat rabai, dijelaskan dalam Mishnah, postulates bahawa dosa Sodom berkait dengan harta: kaum Sodom mempercayai bahawa "apa yang aku milik adalah hak aku, dan apa yang kau milik adalah hak kau" (Abot), yang diterjemahkan sebagai kekurangan compassion. Suatu lagi adat rabai adalah bahawa kedua-dua bandar kaya ini melayan para pelawat mereka dengan cara yang sadis. Satu jenayah utama pada para pelawat adalah hampir sama dengan Procrustes dalam mitologi Greek. Ini adalah cerita "katil" bahawa para pelawat dipaksa untuk tidur: jika mereka terlalu kecil mereka akan ditarik untuk memuatnya, dan jika mereka terlalu tinggi, mereka dipotong.
Suatu lagi peristiwa, Eliezer, pembantu Nabi Ibrahim, pergi melawat Nabi Luth di Sodom dan berada dalam satu pertengkaran dengan seorang Sodom ke atas seorang pengemis, dan dipukul pada dahi dengan batu, membuatnya cedera parah. Orang Sodom itu memahukan Eliezer untuk membayarnya pada perkhidmatan bloodletting, dan seorang hakim Sodom menyebelah dengan orang Sodom itu. Eliezer kemudian melontar batu ke kepala hakim dan meminta hakim itu untuk membayar orang Sodom.
The Talmud and the book of Jasher also recount two incidents of a young girl (one involved Lot's daughter Paltith) who gave some bread to a poor man who had entered the city. When the townspeople discovered their acts of kindness, they burned Paltith and smeared the other girl's body with honey and hung her from the city wall until she was eaten by bees. (Sanhedrin 109a) It is this gruesome event, and her scream in particular, the Talmud concludes, that are alluded to in the verse that heralds the city’s destruction: "So Hashem said, 'Because the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah has become great, and because their sin has been very grave, I will descend and see...'" ().

Pandangan Josephus

Flavius Josephus, seorang sejarawan Rom-Yahudi, menulis sesuatu di sepanjang barisan:
Now, about this time the Sodomites, overwhelmingly proud of their numbers and the extent of their wealth, showed themselves insolent to men and impious to the divinity, insomuch that they no more remembered the benefits that they had received from him, hated foreigners and avoided any contact with others. Indignant at this conduct, God accordingly resolved to chastise them for their arrogance, and not only to uproot their city, but to blast their land so completely that it should yield neither plant nor fruit whatsoever from that time forward.
—Jewish Antiquities 1:194-195
and Josephus recounts that when angels came to Sodom to find good men they were instead greeted by rapists:
And the angels came to the city of the Sodomites...when the Sodomites beheld the young men, who were outstanding in beauty of appearance and who had been received into Lots’s house, they set about to do violence and outrage to their youthful beauty....Therefore, God, indignant at their bold acts, struck them with blindness, so that they were unable to find the entrance into the house, and condemned the Sodomites to destruction of the whole population.
—Jewish Antiquities 1:199-202
He says how beautiful it was before everything was burned up, and how rich the towns were in the area. Josephus described what had happened:
Now this country is then so sadly burnt up, that nobody cares to come to it... It was of old a most happy land, both for the fruits it bore and the riches of its cities, although it be now all burnt up. It is related how for the impiety of its inhabitants, it was burnt by lightning; in consequence of which there are still the remainders of that divine fire; and the shadows of the five cities are still to be seen, as well as the ashes growing in their fruits, which fruits have a colour as if they were fit to be eaten: but if you pluck them with your hands, they will dissolve into smoke and ashes
—The Wars of the Jews, book 4, chapter 8.

Kesejarahan

The historical existence of Sodom and Gomorrah is still in dispute by archaeologists. The Bible indicates they were located near the Dead Sea (, , ).
Strabo states that locals living near Moasada (as opposed to Masada) say that "there were once thirteen inhabited cities in that region of which Sodom was the metropolis". Strabo identifies a limestone and salt hill at the southwestern tip of the Dead Sea, and Kharbet Usdum ruins nearby as the site of biblical Sodom.
Archibald Sayce translated an Akkadian poem describing cities that were destroyed in a rain of fire, written from the view of a person who escaped the destruction, however the names of the cities are not given. However, Sayce later mentions that the story more closely resembles the doom of Sennacherib's host.
The name “Sodom” is probably related to the Arabic sadama meaning 'fasten,' 'fortify,' 'strengthen' and Gomorrah is based on the root gh m r which means 'be deep,' 'copious (water)'.
In 1976 Giovanni Pettinato claimed that a cuneiform tablet that had been found in the newly discovered library at Ebla contained the names of all five of the Cities of the Plain (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Bela), listed in the same order as in Genesis. The names si-da-mu [TM.76.G.524] and ì-ma-ar [TM.75.G.1570 and TM.75.G.2233] were identified as representing Sodom and Gomorrah, which gained some acceptance at the time. However, Alfonso Archi states that, judging from the surrounding city names in the cuneiform list, si-da-mu lies in northern Syria and not near the Dead Sea, and ì-ma-ar is a variant of ì-mar, known to represent Emar, an ancient city located near Ebla. William Shea points out in 1983 that on the 'Eblaite Geographical Atlas' [TM.75.G.2231], ad-mu-ut and sa-dam are good readings by Pettinato and correspond to Admah and Sodom, and they are contained in a list of cities that traces a route along the shores of, or quite possibly within the Dead Sea, whose position may have since shifted along its fault. Today, the scientific consensus is reported as being that "Ebla has no bearing on ... Sodom and Gomorra"

The cities may have been destroyed as the result of a natural cataclysm. Geologists have confirmed that no volcanic activity occurred within the last 4000 years, but it is possible that the towns were destroyed by an earthquake in the region, especially if the towns lie along a major fault, the Jordan Rift Valley, the northernmost extension of the Great Rift Valley of the Red Sea and East Africa.
Possible candidates for Sodom or Gomorrah are the sites discovered or visited by Walter E. Rast and R. Thomas Schaub in 1973, including Bab edh-Dhra, which was originally excavated in 1965 by archaeologist Paul Lapp, only to have his work continued by Rast and Schaub following his death by accidental drowning in the waters off of Cyprus in 1970. Other possibilities also include Numeira, es-Safi, Feifeh and Khanazir, which were also visited by Schaub and Rast. All sites were located near the Dead Sea, with evidence of burning and traces of sulfur  on many of the stones and a sudden stop of inhabitation towards the end of the Early Bronze Age. Archaeological remains excavated from Bab edh-Dhra are currently displayed in Karak Archaeological Museum (Karak Castle) and Amman Citadel Museum.

Sodom Moden

Tapak ininya Karya Laut Mati, suatu operasi besar untuk pencabutan mineral Laut Mati, digelar "Sdom" (סדום) menurut nama adat Arabnya, Khirbet as-sudūm (lihat di atas Kesejarahan). Berhampiran adalah Gunung Sdom (הר סדום) yang unik, atau Jabal alsudūm dalam bahasa Bahasa Arab, terdiri dari kebanyakannya garam. Di Plain Sdom (מישור סדום) ke selatan adalah sedikit mata air dan dua kampung pertanian.