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Endpaper 359 Yahweh, with lasting effects and indelible memories, was the upheavaling of Sodom and Gomorrah. The event, as we have shown in great detail in The Wars of Gods and Men, was described and recalled in Mesopotamian texts, making possi- ble a comparison of the deities involved. In the biblical version Sodom (where Abram's nephew and his family lived) and Gomorrah, cities in the verdant plain south of the Sea of Salt, were sinful. Yahweh "comes down" and, accompanied by two Angels, visits Abram and his wife Sarai in their encampment near Hebron. After Yahweh pre- dicts that the aged couple would have a son, the two Angels depart for Sodom to verify the extent of the cities' "sinning." Yahweh then reveais to Abram that if the sins would be confirmed, the cities and their residents would be destroyed. Abram pleads with Yahweh to spare Sodom if fifty just men be found there, and Yahweh agrees (the number was _bar- gained by Abram down to ten) and departs. The Angels, having verified the cities' evil, warn Lot to take his family and escape. He asks for time to reach the mountains, and they agree to delay the destruction. Finally, the cities' doom begins as "Yahweh rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulfu- rous fire, coming from Yahweh from the skies; and He uphea- valed those cities and the whole plain and all the inhabitants thereof, and all that which grew upon the ground ... And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before Yahweh, and gazed in the direction of Sodom and Gomorrah, toward the land of the Plain, and he beheld vapor arising from the earth as the smoke of a fur- nace" (Genesis chapter 19). The same event is well documented in Mesopotamian an- nals as the culmination of Marduk's struggle to attain suprem- acy on Earth. Living in exile, Marduk gave his son Nabu the assignment of converting people in western Asia to become followers of Marduk. After a series of skirmishes, Nabu's forces were strong enough to invade Mesopotamia and enable Marduk to return to Babylon, where he declared his intention to make it the Gateway of the Gods (what its name, Bab- Ili, implied). Alarmed, the Council of the Anunnaki met in emergency sessions chaired by Enlil. Ninurta, and an _alien- ated son of Enki called Nergal (from the south African do-