The Bible contains a lot of finger wagging, not surprisingly given that it is a control manual more than anything else. In it, we read that the people of Sodom were decadent and ungodly, so they needed to be destroyed (a common Old Testament theme - God makes an awful lot of mistakes for an omniscient, omnipotent being).
Good old Lot and his family, being righteous and reverent, were spared, but only on the condition that they didn't watch the destruction of their former home. Lot's wife (Ado, Idit, or Ildith, according to your source) couldn't resist a last glance so, for her disobedience, was turned instantly into a pillar of salt.
There is some evidence of a 'cosmic airburst event' in the southern Jordan Valley around 1650 BCE. This violent and sudden explosion devastated the ancient city of Tall el-Hammam and made that area largely uninhabitable for over 500 years. Theories include (in order of wackiness) the Tunguska-style airborne detonation of a meteoroid, a nuclear explosion following a spaceship crash, and alien invasion. Any of these could, apparently, have turned a human being into a column of minerals (I can't say I'm convinced, but this sort of extrapolation is interesting in what it says about the human obsession with sense making).
Whatever the cause, whatever the outcome, the Bible uses this garbled and unknowable story to reinforce its own underlying message, especially when it comes to wives: do what you are told. No wonder it's such a popular book with bigots. We'll come back to this tale, I have a thing for it.
Screenshots taken from John Huston's 1966 epic The Bible: In The Beginning, which takes three hours and a cast of thousands to recount the first 22 chapters of the good book to half-brilliant, half-boring effect.
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