Looking Back at Lot's Wife A Reception-Critical Character Study

The story of Lot's wife in Genesis is exceptionally brief: six words
narrate the whole (Gen 19:26), with only a few other, passing references
to her (Gen 19:15-17). Yet, later interpreters recall her story
frequently--and in widely varying ways. Taking a documentary approach, I
compare a selection of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic interpretations
from antiquity to the Middle Ages and consider how the literary and
historical context of each helps account for the differences among them.
To aid such comparisons, I organize interpretations chronologically and
by religious tradition. After an introductory chapter that outlines my
theoretical and methodological approach to reception criticism, I
consider interpretations of Lot's wife according to the following
chapter divisions: Genesis, Second Temple, early rabbinic, early
Christian, Islamic, and medieval Jewish. Within each chapter, I identify
both the diversity of interpretations that existed within the given
period and the distinctive features that recur. For example, even though
significant diversity exists among early Christian and early rabbinic
interpreters, I also identify a common pattern, where Christian
interpreters tend to vilify Lot's wife for her look back, while early
rabbinic interpreters tend to vilify her for varying acts of in
hospitality. I then consider how the contexts of each interpreter led to
these divergent ways of reading. This study makes a dual contribution
to the field of biblical reception. First, through its comprehensive
analysis of the diversity of interpretations about Lot's wife in
antiquity, this study brings attention to a character that is often
overlooked in biblical scholarship and provides a window into the
interpretive diversity that existed in antiquity. Second, this study
makes the case that investigating the historical and literary contexts
of each interpretation is essential to the work of reception criticism,
both to understand how interpreters…