A NATURAL seep of bitumen ignited to burn a bush for Moses. Lot’s wife may
have glanced back at Sodom and Gomorrah, but the pillar of salt mourned by her
husband was just an extruded body of the mineral halite. Geology pops up again
and again in the Bible, but to discover that these seemingly miraculous events
were actually the fault of flowing rocks, you’ll have to turn to the
textbooks.
Let’s begin with Lot’s wife and the world of salt. John Warren’s
Evaporites, Their Evolution and Economics is illuminating. Common salt, or
halite, is a most unusual material. It…
