Sodom, Gomorrah and the rain of fire

Some 5,000 years ago, God's wrath at the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah was such that it could only be appeased by destruction of the towns and all the residents, except one just man, Lot. God calls Lot and tells him to take his family and flee to the hills to avoid certain destruction. Lot pleads with God that there must be 50 good men living in the two towns. God replies that if Lot can find 50 good men, He will spare the towns. Lot argues God down to 10 men, and sets out to find 10 just residents in the towns. While Lot is still seeking, God sends an angel to Lot"s town in the form of a young stranger. Jewish courtesy required that the stranger be treated better than one's own family, so Lot invites the stranger to stay in his home.
That evening, the men of the towns come to Lot's door to demand that he present the stranger so that they may know him. Lot responds from his doorway that he cannot do that, but the men may have his virgin daughters to know in his place. The men demand the stranger and not the girls. I don't remember how the story ends, but the stranger and Lot's daughters are spared. Lot finally accepts that this situaltion cannot be allowed to go on. He has searched diligently and found not one other just man in the two towns. He takes his family and flees to the hills as fire rains down and Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed. The story is strange and very disturbing. It is hard to imagine a place so vicious that the entire male population would band together to violate a visitor in the home of a resident merely because he was there.
Archeologists have recently discovered two towns in close proximity that seem to be of the right age and in the right place . The site is very ancient, and the towns were destroyed by fire from the sky. They were buried in a volcanic eruption.
I have been reading the ancient Hebrew stories in literary translation by Robert Alter because I am interested in very ancient civilizations and cultures. I came to the brillian insight that the Jewish Bible is full of ancient stories that can legitimately read as stories of a culture that claims to go back 5,000 years. And the stories are right there in the Bible on one's shelf. The one with the family tree. No one knows how old these stories are because they were transmitted orally in prehistory. I need to say here that History is commonly definend as written history. Homer's stories, Gilgamesh and stories from all over the world have been told to and memorized by one generation of people after another before they are written down. Details of the stories change over generations, and morals have been added. Stories have passed from one culture to another so that stories that have been taken as literal truth or morality tales turn out to have almost exact paralells in say Assyrian or Babylonian culture. Many people, including me, think that these stories contain factual truth disguised and buried under primitive science and cultural influence.
I am going to add a note here about science. The human brain has not changed much in millions of years. The same mind that figured out black holes and string theory was applied to volacnic eruptions in prehistory. Those minds had a real interest in knowing why fire rained from the sky ,and mountains exploded with rock, ash, and fire. They actually had a real interest in why rain rained from the sky. However, they did not have much information and a man might very well live his entire life within five miles of the place in which he was born. Some of those people were authors and made stories to explain why home was now a pile of rubble, and these stories were passed down by old men to young men in school and over the fire at night. Eventually, Homer told his stories to a scribe and we have The Odyssey. We also have this very strange story about towns so evil that the men of the town demand the body of a stranger because he is a stranger.
In the first place, it really was Jewish custom to treat the stranger with extreme courtesy, so these men were violating and important cultural law. In the second place, a town where the male population was preoccupied with the rape of male visitors would probably not have lasted very long. Life was hard, and people for the most part were preoccupied with keeping God happy to avoid certain destruction and providing for the needs of themselves and their families. I was lying on the couch staring at the ceiling wondering about this story for some reason when a solution came to me. The towns absolutely existed and were fairly prosperous. Fire did rain from the sky obliterating the towns and the people. This horror was so terrible that it could only have been caused by a very angry God. If God is that angry, then the people deserved to die in this horrific way. What could they possibly have done to deserve such a fate? So the story. Ancient Hebrew literature is full of stories of people who find out they have grievously offended God when he smites them, and they are always very sorry. The ancient Hebrew God is loving, angry, unpredictable, and unfair. He exists complete in himself, and man exists to please him. The story is part of an ancient cultural tradition that makes it clear that God does not tolerate inhumane treatment of the stranger. Now I'm waiting for Dr. Alter to translate Job.