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314 One by one the cities "which had outraged the Lord" were up- heavaled, and each time Lot was allowed to escape: the gods de remembered devastated the the gods remembered — Abrah: out of the upheavaling of the cities. Abraham, and Lot sent away And Lot, as instructed, went on "to dwell in the moun- tain... and dwelt in a cave, he and his two daughters with him." Having witnessed the fiery destruction of all life in the Jordan plain and the unseen hand of death which vaporized their mother, what were Lot and his daughters to think? They thought, we learn from the biblical narrative, that they had witnessed the end of man- kind upon the Earth, that the three of them were the sole survivors of the human race; and therefore, the only way to preserve man- kind was to commit incest and have the daughters conceive chil- aed So Boa dren by their own father. . . . "And the elder said unto the younger: "Our father is old. and there is not a man on Earth to squire us in the manner of all on Earth; come, let us make our father drink wine, then lie down with him. so that we shall preserve the seed of life from our fa- ther.’ "And having done so, both became pregnant and bore chil- Ann dren. The night before the holocaust must have been a night of anxiety and sleeplessness for Abraham, of wondering whether enough Righteous Ones were found in Sodom to have the cities spared, of concern about the fate of Lot and his family. "And Abraham got up early in the morning to the place where he had stood facing Yah- weh, and he looked in the direction of Sodom and Gomorrah and connection it is noteworthy that in Ugaritic texts, such as the Ca- naanite tale of Aqhat (with its many similarities to the tales of Abra- ham) the death of a mortal by the hand of a god was described as the "escape of his soul as vapor, like smoke from his nostrils." Indeed, in the Erra Epos which, we believe, was the Sumerian record of the nuclear upheaval, the death of the people was de- scribed by the god thus: The people I will make vanish, their souls shall turn to vapor. It was the misfortune of Lot's wife to be among those who were "turned to vapor." THE WARS OF CODS AND MEN For when the the cities of the plain,