In 1581 Bünting, a North German professor and theologian, published his "Itinerary of Holy Scripture," and in this the Dead Sea and Lot legends continue to increase. He tells us that the water of the sea "changes three times every day"; that it "spits forth fire"; that it throws up "on high" great foul masses which "burn like pitch" and "swim about like huge oxen"; that the statue of Lot's wife is still there, and that it shines like salt.
In 1590 Christian Adrichom, a Dutch theologian, published his famous work on sacred geography. He does not insist upon the Dead Sea legends generally, but declares that the statue of Lot's wife is still in existence, and on his map he gives a picture of her standing at Usdum.
Nor was it altogether safe to dissent from such beliefs. Just as, under the papal sway, men of science had been severely punished for wrong views of the physical geography of the earth in general, so, when Calvin decided to burn Servetus, he included in his indictment for heresy a charge that Servetus, in his edition of "Ptolemy," had made unorthodox statements regarding the physical geography of Palestine.[1]
So, too, Protestants and Catholics vied with each other in the making of new myths. Thus, in his "Most Devout Journey," published in 1608, Jean Zvallart, Mayor of Ath in Hainault, confesses himself troubled by conflicting stories about the salt statue, but declares himself sound in the faith that "some vestige of it still remains," and makes up for his bit of freethinking by adding a new mythical horror to the region—"crocodiles," which, with the serpents and the "foul odor of the sea," prevented his visit to the salt mountains.
In 1615 Father Jean Boucher publishes the first of many editions of his "Sacred Bouquet of the Holy Land." He depicts the horrors of the Dead Sea in a number of striking antitheses, and among these is the statement that it is made of mud rather than of water, that it soils whatever is put into it, and so corrupts the land about it that not a blade of grass grows in all that region.
In the same spirit thirteen years later, the Protestant Christopher Heidmann publishes his "Palæstina," in which he speaks of
- ↑ For biblical engravings of Lot's wife transformed into a salt statue, etc., see Luther's Bible, 1534, p. xi; also the pictorial "Electoral Bible"; also Merian's "Icones Biblicæ" of 1625; also the frontispiece of the Luther Bible published at Nuremberg in 1708; also Scheuchzer's "Kupfer Bibel," Augsburg, 1731, Tab. lxxx. For the account of the Dead Sea serpent "Tyrus," etc., see "Le Grand Voyage de Hierusalem," Paris (1517?), p. xxi. For De Salignac's assertion regarding the salt pillar and suggestion regarding the absorption of the Jordan before reaching the Dead Sea, see his "Itinerarium Sacræ Scripturæ," Magdeburg, 1593, 34 and 35. For Bünting, see his "Itinerarium Sacræ Scripturæ," Magdeburg, 1589, pp. 78, 79. For Adrichom's picture of the salt statue, see map, p. 38, and text, p. 205, of his "Theatrum Terræ Sanctæ," 1613. For Calvin and Servetus, see Willis, "Servetus and Calvin," pp. 96 and 307; also the Servetus edition of Ptolemy.
