f
St. Peter--coupled with a passage in the book of the Wisdom of Solomon,
which to this day, by a majority in the Christian Church, is believed to
be inspired, and from which are specially cited the words, "A standing
pillar of salt is a monument of an unbelieving soul."(429)

(429) For the usual biblical citations, see Genesis xix, 26; St. Luke
xvii, 32; II Peter ii, 6. For the citation from Wisdom, see chap. x,
v. 7. For the account of the transformation of Lot's wife put into
its proper relations with the Jehovistic and Elohistic documents, see
Lenormant's La Genese, Paris, 1883, pp. 53, 199, and 317, 318.

Never was chain of belief more continuous. In the first century of the
Christian era Josephus refers to the miracle, and declares regarding
the statue, "I have seen it, and it remains at this day"; and Clement,
Bishop of Rome, one of the most revered fathers of the Church, noted
for the moderation of his statements, expresses a similar certainty,
declaring the miraculous statue to be still standing.

In the second century that great father of the Church, bishop and
martyr, Irenaeus, not only vouched for it, but gave his approval to the
belief that the soul of Lot's wife still lingered in the statue, giving
it a sort of organic life: thus virtually began in the Church that
amazing development of the legend which we shall see taking various
forms through the Middle Ages--the story that the salt statue exercised
certain physical functions which in these more delicate days can not be
alluded to save under cover of a dead language.

This addition to the legend, which in these signs of life, as in other
things, is developed almost exactly on the same lines with the legend
of the Niobe statue in the rock of Mount Sipylos and with the legends of
human beings transformed into boulders in various mythologies, was for
centuries regarded as an additional confirmation of revealed truth.

In the third century the myth burst into still richer bloom in a
poem long ascribed to Tertullian. In this poem more miraculous
characteristics of the statue are revealed. It could not be washed away
by rains; it could not be overthrown by winds; any wound made upon it
was miraculously healed; and the earlier statements as to its physical
functions were amplified in sonorous Latin verse.

With this appeared a new legend regarding the Dead Sea; it became
universally believed, and we find it repeated throughout the whole
medieval