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311 against them being grievous," the Lord said he had decided to "come down and verify; if it is as the outcry reaching me, they will destroy completely; and if not, I wish to know." The ensuing destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah has become one of the most frequently depicted and preached-about biblical episodes. The orthodox and the Fundamentalists never doubled that the Lord God had literally poured fire and brimstone from the skies to wipe the sinful cities off the face of the earth. The scholarly and sophisticated have as tenaciously sought to find "natural" ex- planations for the biblical story: an earthquake; a volcanic erup- tion; some other natural phenomenon which (they grant) might have been interpreted as an act of God. a punishment befitting the sin. But so far as the biblical narrative is concerned—and until now it has been the only source for all the interpretations—the event was most definitely not a natural calamity. It is described as a premedi- tated event: the Lord discloses to Abraham ahead of time what is about to happen and why. It is an avoidable event, not a calamity caused by irreversible natural forces: The calamity shall come to pass only if the "outcry" against Sodom and Gomorrah will be confirmed. And thirdly (as we shall soon discover) it was also a postponable event, one whose occurrence could be made to happen earlier or later, at will. Realizing the avoidability of the calamity, Abraham embarked upon a tactic of argumentative attrition: "Perhaps there be fifty Righteous Ones inside the city," he said. "Wilt thou destroy and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty Righteous Ones within it?" Then he quickly added: "Far be it from you to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the guilty! Far be it from you. the Judge of All the Earth, not to do justice!" A mortal preaching to his Deity! And the plea is for calling off the destruction—the premeditated and avoidable destruction—if there be fifty Righteous Ones in the city. But no sooner had the Lord agreed to spare the city if there be found such fifty persons than Abraham, who might have chosen the number fifty knowing that it would strike a special chord, wondered out loud if the Lord shall destroy if the number were five short. When the Lord agreed to call off the destruction if only forty-five be found Righteous. Abraham continued to bargain the number down to forty, then thirty, then twenty, then ten. "And the Lord said: 'I shall not de- stroy if there be ten’; and he departed as he finished speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place." The Nuclear Holocaust