'909.] AND THE ORIGIN OF JUDAISM. 363 



pedestal, some 50 feet above the level of the sea. A picture of it is 

 given in Lynch's Narrative of the U. S. Expedition to the River 

 Jordan and the Dead Sea (Philadelphia, 1850) page 308.^^ Canon 

 Driver, of Christ Church, Oxford, says (in Hastings's Dic- 

 tionary of the Bible) : It is probable that some such pillar, conspicu- 

 ous in antiquity, gave rise to the story of Lot's wife. The late 

 Professor Edward Robinson, of Union Theological Seminary, 

 New York, remarked in his Biblical Researches (vol. ii., page 108) 

 that during the rainy season such pillars were constantly in the 

 process of formation and destruction. 



The other day my little girl, who is but 12 years old, was read- 

 ing some of the numerous clippings which denounced my allusion to 

 the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and raised the question 

 how I could explain the Pillar of Salt.^- She said. How could Lot 

 see that his wife became a pillar of salt? If he had looked back, 

 he would have become a pillar of salt. The meaning of the original 

 text in Genesis, xix., 26 is undoubtedly that as soon as Lot's wife 

 looked back, she became a pillar of salt. In a Philadelphia paper a 

 correspondent stated, I had overlooked the comma. There were no 

 commas in the original text. The majority of the readers of the 

 Bible do not realize that the title-page of the Authorized Version 

 contains the statement translated out of the original tongues and 

 with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by His 

 Majesty's special command. 



In Exodus, xxiv., 17 we read: The sight of the glory of Jhvh 

 was like devouring fire^^ on the top of the mount in the eyes of the 

 Israelites. According to Exodus, xiii., 21, Jhvh was before them 

 by day in a pillar of a cloud, and by night in a pillar of fire.^* 

 The modification that this pillar of smoke or fire preceded them on 

 their march in the wilderness is a later embellishment suggested by 



*' Compare my paper on Jonah's Whale in the Proceedings of the Amer- 

 ican Philosophical Society, vol. xlvi., page 162, note 3. 



^ I alluded to it in a paper on the location of Mount Sinai, which I 

 read at the annual meeting of the American Oriental Society, New York, 

 April 16, 1909. 



^'Compare also Deuteronomy, iv., 24. 2^; ix., 3; Psalm, xcvii., 3; 

 Hebrews, xii., 29. 



'* Compare Genesis, xv., 17. 



