Hello,
I've written and posted part 2, which attempts to clear up some loose ends as to why such a mischaracterization could occur:
http://awgue.weebly.com/article--pt-2-revisiting-sodom-was-lot-supposed-to-be-viewed-as-a-righteous-man.html
Eden, that's an interesting observation about Paul not including Lot as a 'righteous man'. Could it be that Paul, like Jesus, was a Jew who was raised studying the Torah and KNEW that Lot was always intended to be interpreted as a reprehensible character? Lot's wife was the only unrighteous one in the story who is destroyed as a result of disobeying a direct angelic order, where the lesson is that the unrighteous shouldn't push their luck, as they're already treading on very thin ice.
Dewandellar, the thing to keep in mind is that 50% of the Torah is laws: it's basically a book of criminal and civil code book-ended on both sides by stories and examples that illustrate why certains laws are needed, and to provide a geneological background that explains how they came to be where they were. That's a common trait of many other ancient historical documents (eg code of hammaurabi also intertwines laws with a story explaining how the kings came to be given authority by the Gods).
So the accounts in the Torah were written to be heard by a Jewish audience in 500BC who WERE subject to the Law of Moses and facing the threat of diaspora, and the authors tried to blend their mythology and legends into the tale that also explained their geneology.
However, that approach potentially introduces HUGE continuity errors into the storyline, the most obvious example being how murder/manslaughter (blood-shed) supposedly wasn't prohibited by YHWH until AFTER the Flood, with Divine authority granted to Noah to enforce the new "no murder allowed" law (in the Noahide Covenant, found in Genesis 9). So God seemingly forgot to prohibit murder AFTER Adam's fall, and even AFTER the Cain and Abel bloodshed incident? YHWH didn't have Divine Foreknowledge to the see that such a rule might be a good idea. It also implies that the pre-flood World existed in a state of anarchy, since someone forgot to delegate authority for men to create a system of self-rule (whoopsie-daisy)!
But looking at it from a legalistic standpoint, the Noahide covenant is broadly interpreted to cover those who came after the Flood: that would include Abram and Lot.
I'll write a future article on that topic, as it's a point that is widely overlooked (as are other discrepancies found in the Flood account, the Garden of Eden, and so on).
mP, I'll be writing the next article on that very point, looking for another explanation underlying Lot's offer to hand his daughters over to the mob (and it's not to rape them, or even to offer them up for sacrifice to their pagan Gods (which some have suggested as a possible motive: that would be REALLY despicable!), but instead, for their safe-keeping. While it doesn't exactly exonerate Lot from his seedy depiction throughout, it might plausibly explain his eyebrow-raising behavior in the episode, and let him partly off the hook. It still doesn't make him righteous, though: in my latest article, I offer the answer offered in the Bible that tells us exactly why Lot was saved.
I'll be writing a sociological interpretation of the Sodom and Gomorrah account, relying on known physiological phenomena which might help explain the superstitious beliefs found in the Bible that might explain why the account mentions ALL the town's males (young and old) trying to rape male strangers (which begs the question, why would all the males in town be homosexual?). You'd almost think the legends were correct: there MAY have been a law forcing them to do so, as if it were their civic duty. ;)
Adam
