Genesis 19. 8 Why should he protect strangers above protect his daughters? Possible Duplicate:
  Why was Lot &ldquo;let off the hook&rdquo; for offering his daughters to be raped?  




I was interested in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, cause I remembered at it as I heard it in my youth. 

There is a part where Lot said that the people who wanted to have the strangers could have his two virgin daughters instead.


  Genesis 19:
      8 Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof. [KJV]


What is the reason behind this behavior? He protects two strangers (he doesn’t know at this moment that they are angels) before protecting his own daughters?

As I'm an atheist and a reasonable person, I would preferring protecting my own daughters before some strangers, if I had just one choice. So I can’t answer my question by myself.
Remember that in that context Lot would have considered his daughters (and they would have regarded themselves) as his possessions. The Romans later had an idea - a law really - that the ownership of parents, particularly fathers, extended to the right at any time, even after adulthood, of the father to kill his children. It was perfectly legal and understood to be his right as a father to mete out that punishment if he saw fit to do so. One can imagine however, much more responsibility was typically imputed to fathers because of this, so a father could easily be held responsible for even the errors of an adult child.

Given this, we must consider that Lot was so extreme in his practice of hospitality that he would rather sacrifice his most valuable possessions (his daughters) than have his guests - 'the stranger and the alien' the scripture will later say - be treated wrongly. Since in our context we do not consider our children possessions, his expression could not be parsed properly in our context. Thus his actions are entirely consistent with the tradition regarding the way one treats the poor, the stranger and the alien, the weak, the sick, abd so forth.

If Lot had not considered his daughters possessions, there would be a completely different meaning to his statement. It was not until fairly recently, IIRC, that children were no longer regarded as possessions.

Then again, just to throw a wrench in the works, seeing the stunt his daughters pull later on, maybe his action was somewhat prescient.