Famously deceptive & specious apples of (the vine of) Sodom turn up in a
line of texts from Josephus, Tacitus and Solinus to Tertullian, Augustine,
Fulgentius, Peter Comestor, Mandeville, Spenser (via A Theatre for
voluptuous worldlings) and Milton.* And it is possible to associate these
apples with avarice and greed (Tantalus, Fulgentius, Mammon's Cave in
Spenser). But I don't know that this is very closely related to Sodomite
inhospitality, though of course the apples punish it symbolically. (One
should check consult James Kugel, The Bible as It Was, for the possibility
of legends attaching to the dealings of the cities of the plain.)
There is one other more or less purely scriptural possibility, though I
can't really see how it works, and it would require reading Gomorrah for its
partner-city Sodom, and believing that Abra[ha]m felt the cities might be
planning to re-possess his potentially dubious winnings or due through some
kind of sharp practice. Re:
On Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:01:40 +0100
Colin Burrow <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> It looks as though Bale associated Gomorrha with general
>untrustworthiness:
> OED cites sub Gomorrhean another passage from Bale's Apology :
> {dag}Gomorreal a.
>
> 1550 <http://dictionary.oed.com/help/bib/oed2-b.html#bale> BALE Apol. 59
> But where are thy scriptures, to prove a perpetuyte in thy Gomorreal
>vowes?
It has to do with warfare, spoils or booty, provisions or food, accounting,
and vows (but the vows are not made by Sodom or Gomorrah, but by their ally
Abra[ha]m.. In the battle between the four and five kings in the very old
story in Genesis 14, Abraham comes to the aid of the losing four kings
(including those of Sodom and Gomorray) to rescue his nephew Lot (the first
of the two times he does so). When the day is saved (by Abram, the future
Abraham), "the king of Sodom said unto Abram, Give me the persons, and take
the goods to thyself. And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lift[ed]
up mine hand unto the Lord, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and
earth, [sworn an oath to God] That I will not take from a thread even to a
shoelatchet, and that I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou
shouldest say, I have made Abram rich: Save only that which the young men
have eaten, and the portion of the men which went with me, Aner, Eshchol and
Mamre; let them take their portion." (Vss. 21-24)
---
* "vine of Sodom" --Deuteronomy 32:32; cf. Wisdom 10:7
Augustine, in the City of God, from earlier citations found in Josephus
(Hist. 4.7.4) and Latin historians (Tacitus, Hist. 5.6; Solinlus, Polyhistor
47; Justinus, Hist. 36.6: cf. Pliny, Nat. Hist. 5.15.71-73):
The land of Sodom was not always as it now is; but once it had the
appearance of other lands, and enjoyed equal if not richer fertility; for,
in the divine narrative, it was compared to the paradise of God. But after
it was touched by fire from heaven, as even pagan history testifies, and as
is now witnessed by those who visit the spot, it became unnaturally and
horribly sooty in appearance; and its apples, under a deceitful appearance
of ripeness, contain ashes within. Here is a thing which was of one kind,
and [now] is of another. You see how its nature was converted into so very
disgusting a diversity--an alteration which after so long a time took place,
and after so long a time still continues. (DCD XXI.viii, tr. Dods)
Jan van der Noot’s A Theatre for Voluptuous Worldings (fol. 4): Tertullian
says that "riches resemble and are much lyke vnto the Apples of Sodome and
Gomoree, which seemed goodly and faire to the eye, but being once touched,
fell and straightway turned to dust and ashes" (cf. Tertullian, Apology xl,
which reports the apples, but not the riches).
Sir John Mandeville, Mandeville’s Travels,12, from his description of the
Dead Sea:
By the side of this sea grow trees that bear apples of fine color and
delightful to look at [cp. Genesis 3:6]; but when they are broken or cut,
only ashes and dust and cinders are found inside, as a token of the
vengeance that God took on those five cities and the country thereabout,
burning them with the fires of Hell. On the right side of this sea Lot’s
wife was turned into a block of salt because she looked behind her against
the orders of the angel at the time when God destroyed the cities.
[The older and more literal translation of the Travels says the cinders are
found inside the apples "in token that by wrath of God the cities and land
were burnt and sunken into Hell."]
Fulgentius, describing the illusory ‘gardens of Tantalus’ hanging before the
condemned criminal’s eyes: "They say that in the lower world [inferno]
Tantalus was stood in a pool, the deceiving water of which tickles his lips
with a fleeting touch, and fruits appear before him hanging down to his
face, but at his fleeting touch turning into ashes." -- from Mythology,
II.15, tr. L.G. Whitbread, p. 80
... fruitage fair to sight, like that which grew
Near that bituminous lake where Sodom flamed;
This more delusive, not the touch, but taste
Deceived; they fondly thinking to ally
Their appetite with gust, instead of fruit
Chew bitter ashes, which the offended taste
With spattering noise rejected: oft they assayed
Hunger and thirst constraining, drugged as oft,
With hatefulest disrelish writhed their jaws
With soot and cinders filled; so oft thy fell
Into the same illusion, not as man
Whom they triumphed once lapsed. --the opidianized devils’ punishment, in
PL X.561ff.
"mortal taste" --of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, in PL I.2
Sallust DuBartas, Divine Weeks:
"The pleasant Soyl" of the cities of the plain,
in Joshua Sylvester’s translation:
Now scarr’d, and collow’d, with his face and head
Cover’d with ashes[,] is all dry’d and dead;
Voyd of all force, vitall, or vegetive;
Upon whose brest nothing can live or thirve:
For, nought it bears save an abortive suit
Of seeming-fair, false, vain and fain’d fruit:
A fruit that feeds the eye, and fills the hand,
But to the stomack in no stead doth stand;
For, even before it touch the tender lips,
Or Ivorie teeth, in empty smoak it slips,
So vanishing: onely the nose receives
A noysome savour, that (behinde) it leaves. --II.iii.1, "The Vocation:
ll. 1352ff.
On Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:01:40 +0100
Colin Burrow <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> It looks as though Bale associated Gomorrha with general
>untrustworthiness:
> OED cites sub Gomorrhean another passage from Bale's Apology :
> {dag}Gomorreal a.
>
> 1550 <http://dictionary.oed.com/help/bib/oed2-b.html#bale> BALE Apol. 59
> But where are thy scriptures, to prove a perpetuyte in thy Gomorreal
>vowes?
>
>
>
>
>
> Colin Burrow
>
> Senior Research Fellow
>
> All Souls College
>
> High Street
>
> Oxford OX1 4AL
>
> 01865 279341 (direct) 01865 279379 (Lodge)
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
> _____
>
>From: Sidney-Spenser Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of Sean Gordon Henry
> Sent: 17 June 2008 17:49
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Gomorrha
>
>
>
> Hi, Roger,
>
> That is a funny turn of phrase, isn't it? I just spent part of my lunch
> break looking over EEBO and found this in John Bale's The apology of Iohan
> Bale (1550; STC 1275), which seems to link Gomorrha with false vows:
>
> "These vowes for one tyme and vpon a condicyon, he craftelye bryngeth in,
> confirmynge them by examples of scripture, to shaddowe hys perpetuall
>vowes
> of Gomorra with. O crafty face of the serpent, how longe wylte thu deceyne
> the symple with that frute of falshed?" (H4r)
>
> Bale certainly links G with more than inhospitality here. I wonder whether
> Sidney means the victuallers promised more than they every gave in
>supplies
> or timeliness? Fat government contracts! Brown bear bait indeed?
>
> Sean.
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>From: Roger Kuin <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tuesday, June 17, 2008 8:52 am
> Subject: Gomorrha
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
>> I have come up against an odd statement by Sidney in a letter
>> to
>> Walsingham, from Middelburg in Zeeland, of 14 December 1585, as
>> S.
>> was settling into his governorship of Flushing. He is discussing
>> the
>> condition of the garrison and the arrangements made for them,
>> and
>> complains of the victuallers, one Brown(e) and one Bruin (I
>> know, it
>> sounds parodic, but they did exist). These last, he says, "do
>> but
>> badly satisfy the soldiers, and in my opinion they are
>> merely
>> hurtful, after a Gomorrha fashion by means of friendship of
>> the
>> officers forcing the poor men to take it [the victualling]
>> dearer
>> than here they might provide for themselves."
>>
>> It is clear that Brown and Bruin (who was "commissary for
>> the
>> victualling" and wrote to Walsingham about his
>> difficulties)
>> initially had a monopoly, and that Sidney thought they were
>> using
>> their cozy relationship with the captains to maintain this, to
>> the
>> soldiers' disadvantage.
>>
>> What puzzles me is the expression "after a Gomorrha fashion".
>> Various
>> checks show that Gomorrha's sin was variously described as
>> either
>> homosexuality or (the Jewish tradition) inhospitality. Neither
>> really
>> seems to fit, though the second might be closer, esp. if Thomas
>> Bruin
>> was Dutch or Flemish. A bit of a stretch, though.
>>
>> If anyone has come across a similar phrase (preferably without
>> Sodom)
>> or has any ideas that might help, I'd be grateful.
>>
>> Roger Kuin
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> Sean Henry
> Doctoral Candidate, Department of English
> The University of Western Ontario
> London, Ont., Canada
>
> "I've half a mind to shake myself
>Free just for once from London,
> To set my work upon the shelf
> And leave it done or undone."
>
> ("A Farm Walk," Christina Rossetti)
>
>
>
>
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James Nohrnberg
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