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“Lot — Likened Unto Noah”

“Lot — Likened Unto Noah”

Last updated on: July 22, 2026 at 3:47 pm by Dan Peterson

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“Lot — Likened Unto Noah” 2026-07-22T15:47:01-06:00 Dan Peterson

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“The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah,” by John Martin (1852) (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Posted today on the essentially comatose website of the Interpreter Foundation: Reprint: “Lot — Likened Unto Noah,” written by Roseann Benson:

Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in Abraham and His Family in Scripture, History, and Tradition, edited by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, John S. Thompson, Matthew L. Bowen, and David R. Seely. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/abraham-and-his-family.

“The story of Lot as found in Genesis 11:26–13:18 and also Genesis 19 describes a complex and seemingly contradictory character. Readers are left with many unanswered questions about the nephew of Abraham and about how to interpret the narratives associated with him. On the one hand, Lot chose to move to the cities of the plain, which included Sodom, a city known throughout scripture for its wickedness. First, he pitched his tent facing the city and then moved his family into the city, buying or building a home. According to the Genesis account, he offered his virgin daughters to save the lives of the guests who were under the protection of his hospitality when all the men of the city mobbed his home seeking “to know” his guests, he procrastinated leaving the city when warned of impending destruction, and later in his drunkenness he unknowingly impregnated his daughters. Some scholars view these points as illustrating literary forms of poetic justice and irony. On the other hand, the narrative also relates that Lot accompanied Abraham, “father of the faithful,” out of their native land of Haran and through Canaan to Egypt. He was blessed with riches, was miraculously rescued by his uncle from foreign servitude, offered hospitality to godly messengers, and then was preserved by them from the destruction that devastated Sodom and Gomorrah.”

The “key art” poster for our ongoing Becoming Brigham mini-documentary series

I cannot think of a more appropriate thing to do in connection with Friday’s celebration of “Pioneer Day” or the “Pioneer Day” weekend than to watch two or three or four (or twenty-six) installments of Becoming Brigham, and to call the series to the attention of others who have a connection of any kind to the holiday.

And please don’t fail to make use of the opportunity that we’re making available to you over the next four weeks, to watch Witnesses at no charge. Watch it with your family. Make a night of it with neighbors and friends and ward members and popcorn and apple pie and ice cream. Enjoy!

“Scuttle,” a local Salish Sea humpback whale, as seen from our boat earlier this week

My wife and I watched The Sheep Detectives the other night. I enjoyed it considerably more than I had expected to do. There were moments of real wit in the film.

And, the other day, with two other couples (one from my wife’s family and one from among out friends), we went whale-watching out on the Salish Sea. On our earliest visits to Victoria, we saw many orcas here, but whale-watching boats are. no longer allowed to hang around the resident pod, which is apparently going through a period of some distress. We saw only one individual humpback whale, named “Scuttle,” but he seemed happy to hang around our boat and we had good views of him for much of our time out on the water. We also had beautiful weather.

“Scuttle,” a male humpback who is recognizable (as are other humpback whales) by the distinctive markings on his tail or fluke, is thought to be exceptionally friendly to boats. Why? Because — or so the hypothesis goes — when he was a young calf, he took refuge among some local boats from an Orca attack. (The marks on his fluke were made by Orca teeth.). Both this photograph and the previous one were taken by a crew member on our Orca Spirit whale-watching boat, not very far out from Victoria Harbour

In my blog entry for yesterday, I called attention to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune about a new book by Elise Boxer, Mormon Settler Colonialism: Inventing the Lamanites. Zander Sturgill, who is of Navajo heritage and who is also a believing Latter-day Saint (he’s cited in the Tribune article) and a content producer, host, and studio manager at the Ancient America Foundation, has responded to the article online in a forty-minute video that’s entitled “My Reaction to This Article About the Lamanites.” I haven’t yet watched Zander’s response, but I intend to do so.

The entrance to the Hawaii campus of Brigham Young University in Laie, Oahu
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Here’s an article that I should have mentioned here nearly two weeks ago. It comes from the student newspaper at Brigham Young University’s campus in Laie, on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, and it refers to a conference on the Small. Plates of Nephi that was recently convened on BYU’s campus in Provo, Utah, under the leadership of the long-dead and completely invisible Interpreter Foundation: “BYU–Hawaii students present at Small Plates of Nephi Conference: Student researchers connect scripture to real-world issues and disciplines.”

I think that I can speak for many of those who were there, and for the leadership of the Interpreter Foundation, in saying that we were absolutely delighted to have such a large Hawaiian contingent participating in the conference.

Joseph Smith received his grand First Vision — and this dispensation of the fulness of times opened — because of his having read and pondered James 1:5. (LDS Media Library image)

A few days ago in this space, I mentioned a thought-provoking Deseret News column from Jacob Hess and the wise counsel that he offered in it: “Learning to read (again) as a way to reclaim and deepen faith: If plummeting reading rates are playing a role in diminishing faith, could reawakening our love of books spark a deeper connection with God?”

Here’s an interesting and somewhat related article, written by Rose Horowitch for The Atlantic, that you might find of interest (if you’re able to access it): “The End of Reading is Here: Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history.”

Posted from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

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