Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/464

448 into which Lot's wife was transformed was still existing. In the fourth the continuance of the statue was vouched for by St. Silvia, who visited the place: though she could not see it, she was told by the Bishop of Segor that it had 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 agreed in this belief and statement; hence it was, doubtless, that the Hebrew word which is translated in the authorized English version "pillar," was translated in the Vulgate, which the vast majority of Christians believe divinely inspired, by the word "statue"; we shall find this fact insisted upon by theologians arguing in behalf of the statue, as a result and monument of the miracle, for over fourteen hundred years afterward.

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 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 resurrection. In the seventh century, too, Bishop Arculf traveled to the Dead Sea, and his work was added to the treasures of the Church. He develops the legend, and especially that part of it given by Josephus, greatly. 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 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 statements of Arculf and his predecessors, binds them together in his work on "The Holy Places," and gives the whole mass of myths and legends an enormous impulse.

In the tenth century new force is given to it by the pious