Revisiting the lot of the first incestuous family: the biblical origins of shifting the blame on to female family members.

Incest that involves the sexual abuse of a child by an adult family member is sadly far from rare. Exact figures elude researchers, but studies suggest that the incidence of incestuous child abuse is far too common in Western societies. “It is incest itself—and not the absence of incest—that has been universal . . . in most places at most times.” Perhaps the first report of father-daughter incest appears in the Bible in the book of Genesis 19. The seducer this time, however, is not the father, Lot, whose wife had crystallised into a pillar of salt, but rather the daughters, who conspire to extract their father’s seed. Their unconventional manoeuvre, today it would be labelled “drug rape,” is implicitly and partially excused by the Bible by their desire to fulfil the first divine/evolutionary decree, procreation: “Our father is old and there is no man to lie with us as is the way all over the earth” (Genesis 19, 31). Capitalising on his fondness for wine, “they got their father to drink wine on that night, and the elder one came, and lay with her father, and he knew nothing of her lying down or her rising up.” The following night the scene repeats itself, this time with the younger sister, while Lot remains in his inebriated ignorant stupor. Both liaisons resulted in pregnancies. “And the older one gave birth to a boy, and she named him Moab, he is the father of the Moabites of this day. And the younger also gave birth to a boy, and she named him Ben Ami, he is the father of the Ammonites of this day” (Genesis 19, 37-38). According to Deuteronomy (23, 4-7) the Israelites were banned from contact with these two nations: “A Moabite and an Ammonite shall not join the community of God, even a tenth generation removed shall not join the community of God forever more.” I propose that it is this ban that explains the incorporation of the myth of Lot and his incestuous daughters in the Hebrew Bible. According to biblical research, the myths about Lot in Genesis and the Book of Deuteronomywere written after 600 bc, long after the events to which they refer (Lot, before 1700 bc, and Deuteronomy, before 1250 bc). The Israelite monotheistic biblical writers were concerned with the threat from the idol-worshipping neighbours, the Moabites and Ammonites, who were the Israelites’ closest kin by intermarriage and language. I suggest that these writers incorporated the myth of Lot into the Biblical text to discredit the idol worshippers. Through this carefully crafted plot, the biblical narrators confirmed the ethnic proximity of these nations to the people of Israel but at the same time cast an ancient blot of shame on their origins. While the biblical role of the story of Lot has a plausible explanation, what explains the assignment of roles within the incest myth? How is it that father-daughter incest is universally perpetrated by the father, while in Genesis the roles are reversed? In my view, some painters, such as Dürer (1555), Francesco (1600-46), and most strikingly Goltzius (1558-1617), suggest that the roles were not reversed, and that it was Lot who abused his daughters. In Goltzius’ painting, the naked Lot is not in a deep alcoholic daze but is fully coherent and cunningly sizing up his prey, a far cry from “and he knew nothing of her lying down or her rising up” repeated after each daughter lies with him. In this painting, alcohol is not dulling his senses but probably disinhibiting his frontal lobes, which is precisely what happens to many abusive fathers when they drink.