L’ospitalità negata e il disfacimento di una società: i casi emblematici di Lot a Sodoma in Gn 19 e del crimine di Gabaa in Gdc 19

Abstract

Hospitality is a widespread practice in the ancient Near East, also regulated by written legislation. Biblical legislation protects the orphan, the widow and the foreigner; but there is also an opposite tendency of not being able to accept the presence of pagan populations in the land of the fathers. The protocol of hospitality is a practice in the biblical world which never reached the form of written legislation, and which is presented as aset of literary motifs disseminated in numerous texts, without configuring atrue and proper literary genre. The stories of Gen 19:1–29 and of Judg 19:11–30 are influenced by the dialectic between the two tendencies of the biblical world; what emerges from their comparison is the warning that the violation of the protocol of hospitality is an indication of the unravelling of the society. A canonical reading of the two biblical stories proposes as an example the behaviour of Abraham, who practices unconditional hospitality without limits.