Don’t Hotwire ™ S’dom Hotels

Oh for the love of God and everything holy, when will it stop, still another guest post by the Bbbbbbbbray of Fundie

When the Gemara in Sanhedrin 109B recounts the corruption, cruelty of S’dom society they include this little tidbit:

”and they had a bed. They’d ask wayfarers to ‘climb in’. If the guest was too long (i.e. tall) they would (surgically) shorten him.(decapitate him or amputatehis feet) if the guest was too short they would (surgically) lengthen him.(stretch him on a rack until his bones broke).

Before the cultural diffusionists have a cow…yes I’m aware that the Greeks have a cognate to this.

In Greek mythology, Procrustes (the stretcher), also known as Damastes (subduer) and Polypemon (harming much), was a bandit from Attica. He had his stronghold in the hills outside Eleusis. There, he had an iron bed into which he invited every passerby to lie down. If the guest proved too tall, he would amputate the excess length; if the victim was found too short, he was then stretched out on the rack until he fit -DB

Whether the Talmudic sages “got it” from the Greeks or vice versa is inconsequential. Our sages including this on S’doms cultural rap sheet imparts a simple lesson. Brutally forcing people to conform, a one size fits all approach, is cruel and tyrannical.