ones.

Luther's great pictorial Bible, so powerful in fixing the ideas of the
German people, showed by very striking engravings all three of these
earlier myths--the destruction of the cities by fire from heaven, the
transformation of Lot's wife, and the vile origin of the hated Moabites
and Ammonites; and we find the salt statue, especially, in this and
other pictorial Bibles, during generation after generation.

Catholic peoples also held their own in this display of faith. About
1517 Francois Regnault published at Paris a compilation on Palestine
enriched with woodcuts: in this the old Dead Sea legend of the "serpent
Tyrus" reappears embellished, and with it various other new versions
of old stories. Five years later Bartholomew de Salignac travels in the
Holy Land, vouches for the continued existence of the Lot's wife statue,
and gives new life to an old marvel by insisting that the sacred waters
of the Jordan are not really poured into the infernal basin of the Dead
Sea, but that they are miraculously absorbed by the earth.

These ideas were not confined to the people at large; we trace them
among scholars.

In 1581, Bunting, 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 were 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.(436)

(436) For biblical engravings showing 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 Biblicae