Archeological evidence for the ancient Sodom and Gomorrah

Discussion in 'Church History' started by anglican74, Sep 23, 2021.

  1. anglican74

    anglican74 Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Did places like this exist in a way that archeology can verify? not that it overly matters, since I know that almost no cities from ancient history have precise arheological traces... It is just a curiosity matter in my conversations with my non-christian friends

    Anyway this Smithsonian article actually seems to claim archeological evidence for Sodom:


    Ancient City’s Destruction by Exploding Space Rock May Have Inspired Biblical Story of Sodom
    Around 1650 B.C.E., the Bronze Age city of Tall el-Hammam was wiped out by a blast 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...e-inspired-biblical-story-of-sodom-180978734/


    Is this authoritative, being just on some website? Then again it is the Smithsonian...
     
  2. Invictus

    Invictus Well-Known Member

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    Interesting. My understanding is that no consensus has yet emerged regarding the location of Sodom. I’m often suspicious of stories like this (or older accounts that attributed the destruction of those cities to volcanic activity), simply because the biblical account as we have it is presented as something supernatural. To assign the cause to a merely natural event seems to miss part of the point of the story.
     
  3. PDL

    PDL Well-Known Member Anglican

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    This is, I believe, 'authorative'; although, it's not precise what you mean by that term. The story to which you refer is derived from an article in a scientific journal. The article can be read here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3

    They know the name of the city whose ruins are being excavated. I don't think they're saying this is the city of Sodom. They're merely speculating that this may have inspired the story of Sodom in the Bible.
     
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  4. Rexlion

    Rexlion Well-Known Member

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    What you see is modern atheism finding reasons to 'explain away' a Biblical account. Suddenly the Bible story about God destroying those cities and their inhabitants is cast into doubt by 'science-based' assumptions. If they can show that the destruction of a city by such a 'natural' calamity is likely to have happened, it then becomes much easier for ungodly people to assume that the region of Sodom & Gomorrah fell victim to a similar calamity of nature and that that the Bible's record of a divine intervention to halt the spread of a pernicious, heinous sin (sodomy) is little more than superstitious nonsense.

    The father of lies uses ungodly men to chip away, little by little, at the reliability of the word of God, in the hope of deceiving those of weak (or no) faith. As Christians, we should stand for the proposition that the Bible is inspired by God, and that when the Bible says God did 'thus and such,' we accept it as truth.
     
  5. Invictus

    Invictus Well-Known Member

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    This is basically what I was saying above, albeit from a different vantage point. The Genesis account talks about fire falling from the sky. It was either miraculous or it was legendary.
     
  6. Rhys

    Rhys Member

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    “All the observations stated in Genesis are consistent with a cosmic airburst,” says Kennett in the statement, “but there’s no scientific proof that this destroyed city is indeed the Sodom of the Old Testament.”

    It's entirely plausible that the airburst inspired the Biblical story. After all, volcanic eruptions in Central America in the 530s and 540s A.D. may have inspired Norse mythology, but that doesn't mean Asgard is in El Salvador.
     
  7. PDL

    PDL Well-Known Member Anglican

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    What seems to be missing from the discussion is another alternative. The city may have been destroyed by some meteor falling on it. However, it may be possible that the meteor was the way in which God chose to deal with Sodom and Gomorrah. It is possible the archaeologists are correct in describing how the city was destroyed but that cause may have literally been an act of God.
     
  8. Invictus

    Invictus Well-Known Member

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    I’m no expert, but I would think if there had been a meteor impact in the area, evidence for it would have been uncovered a long time, unless it exploded in midair (like the 1908 Tunguska event).
     
  9. Rexlion

    Rexlion Well-Known Member

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    We have to be careful here. Because the Bible narrative tells us that angels visited the city, were imposed upon by randy residents, and led Lot's family out just prior to the destruction. There is really no way the airburst could have inspired those details, and the details stamp the event as being an act of God's wrath and judgment rather than a cosmic happenstance. When people suggest that a happenstance event led to the Bible narrative we possess, they're implying (either knowingly or unknowingly) that the Bible narrative is an embellishment and that the details and principles taught within the narrative are falsehoods.
     
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  10. Rexlion

    Rexlion Well-Known Member

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    Ron Wyatt claimed to have located the area of the destroyed cities. I saw a video some time back. Here is an article by another person, Chuck Anderson, who traveled there and poked around a bit. It seems possible that this was the place.
     
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  11. Ananias

    Ananias Well-Known Member Anglican

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    Not necessarily. Not until after World War II did we come to understand how often we get hit by space debris. It was Luis Alvarez (a Trinity project alum) who helped to advance the idea that a huge impact event might have contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs -- it was the so-called "iridium layer" distributed fairly evenly across geographical layers in widely varied places across the earth that lent evidence to the theory. It's only been recently, with the aid of satellite topographical imaging, that we discovered what we think is the actual impact point: the Chicxulub crater near the Yucatan peninsula. The Earth's highly dynamic weather and geology tends to erase craters that are more than a few thousand years old.

    In the years since, as satellite and radar coverage have expanded, we now understand that we are under pretty much constant bombardment from space. Most of the junk burns up harmlessly in the atmosphere, but occasionally a big rock gets through. Less often, a really big one gets through. The asteroid that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona was probably about 50 meters across.

    A bigger problem is our susceptibility to large solar events (like the Carrington event) that could take out the global power grid. This is a far larger threat to global civilizations than a (far less probable) meteor strike. I'm always a little shocked at how little world governments are doing to harden our electrical grids, given the danger.
     
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  12. PDL

    PDL Well-Known Member Anglican

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    It would really depend on the size of the meteor, how much of it burnt up in the atmosphere or exploded, and how much physical material struck the earth. It seems certainly to have created sufficient heat to melt things and cause widespread fires.
     
  13. PDL

    PDL Well-Known Member Anglican

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    It doesn't surprise me at all. Politicians think in the short term. Their principal aim is to win the next election, which in most cases is no more than five yaers away.
     
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  14. anglican74

    anglican74 Well-Known Member Anglican

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    When God rained down hail and brimstone on Sodom, why couldn't it have been from an explosion or a cataclysm like this?.. do we really think that he materialized brimstone from nothing in the upper atmosphere, before hurling it down? a volcano or cataclysmic event would seem like a more plausible chain of events, no?
     
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  15. Rexlion

    Rexlion Well-Known Member

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    I think you're absolutely right, He could have. God is perfectly capable of having done it either way. It would be just as easy for Him, using His foreknowledge, to time the collision of a comet with the target area as it would be for Him to materialize brimstone.

    Personally, I don't find supernatural occurrences (miracles!) the least bit implausible in situations wherein God wants something to happen. God created this complex universe and made it subject to certain "laws of nature" (motion, gravity, matter and energy, etc.), yet He is perfectly able to flout those "laws of nature" since He created them; He can make water pour out of solid rock, bring dead flesh back to life, float up into the clouds, and make bread and fish materialize to feed thousands.
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2021
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  16. Rhys

    Rhys Member

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    Not if one takes a nuanced definition of myth.
     
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