Destruction by fire… location and evidence?

[Thomas Donlon]

The cities of the Plain… the salting of the Jordon River Valley and the seeming disappearance of Sodom and its neighbors.

[Thomas Donlon]

A six page article by Marcus Laudien, seems to have covered all the points that took me some time to figure out. Here is the link to his article.

Sodom_And_The_Dead_Sea

There are more recent articles that deal with blast evidence that focus north of the Dead Sea.

Some of the more modern controversy was just discussed on another HFS page.

Towards_the_bottom_of_the_Page

I think in the next several years, this topic will be much more explored in academic circles… the topic is getting traction.

[Steven Law]

Thomas, the link you share to the Marcus Laudien article does not seem to be working. Any other information about where to find it?

[Thomas Donlon]

Hi Steve. The website link may work later… the NewChronology website seems to flit in an out of operation. Because I like the material on that website, I went through the trouble of downloading all the articles on one of the days it was working. I have the article somewhere on my computer. If you want to connect with me I can email it to you. Or you can email me. my full name with no spaces and then my domain is reagan.com

If you’d like I can email the PDF to you. Or you can wait a few weeks or a few months and keep trying and the link will eventually work again.

[Steven Law]

Thanks Thomas, I sent you an email.

[Thomas Donlon]

Comet entering solar system from Oort cloud. It is when this type of thing breaks up into smaller comets and huge dispersed debri fields that earth gets hammered. Barring the unlikely event this hits some piece of space debri and changes course, this won’t get any closer to the sun than Saturn. But how many others (if any) are on their way?

[Thomas Donlon]

Does anyone have any knowledgeable thoughts to add to what this scripture might mean for the location of Sodom?

And the territory of the Canaanites extended from Sidon in the direction of Gerar as far as Gaza, and in the direction of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha. (Gen. 10:19 ESV) 

Looking up Lasha online puts it at the North East side of the Dead Sea. In order for these cities to be a boundary for the Canaanite territory, most of these cities would have to be on the west side of the Dead Sea. Sodom perhaps somewhere near Ein Gedi and then the others along the west side of the Dead Sea then curving around the north side of the Dead Sea towards a purported Lasha location. To me, it wouldn’t make a huge amount of sense to put a boundary on the opposite side of the Dead Sea … since no one lives in the Dead Sea. But if these cities hugged the west side of the Dead Sea then it would make sense to list them as a territorial indicator for Canaanite territory.

[Thomas Donlon]

Major paper in Nature Scientific Reports has come out.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3

I read the 64 pages and the 20 other pages of supplementary material. It isn’t easy reading, but it might be easy browsing.

Main takeaways (for me anyways… my interpretations):

• The blast evidence is hard to argue against. This wasn’t a military conquest.
• Though not part of the study, this blast event was widespread and probably was the event that Kathleen Kenyon was excavating that she thought was too early to be the destruction of Jericho by Joshua and the Israelites. I’m assuming that later built, smaller fortifications on top of the major Jericho city that was destroyed was a result of Joshua’s conquest.
• The size of the blast and the overlay with a similar blast in Tunguska, Russia (Siberia) in the early 1900’s was overlaid on a map of the region, showing the blast may have taken out areas of the Dead Sea surrounding settlements. [My Interpretation only: The overlay also fits well with the Biblical Evidence that the City of Sodom was a half-day walking distance from the Mamre/Hebron area where the angels left Abraham after a meal he made for them in the heat of the day. The city excavated and seen in the report was not Sodom, but the blast area encompassed Sodom and Tall el-Hammam isn’t big enough to be Sodom. The King of Elam had Sodom paying tribute… and it was worth marching his entire army out to get their treasure.]
• Salt was disturbed and redistributed from the Dead Sea or its area to kill off growth and agriculture for hundreds of years.
• This will create sizeable scientific interest in the area and many will try to find correlations and evidence for the blast as other regions in the area.
• Some geographical evidence from the area might get reinterpreted to fit with a blast scenario from the “bolide” (which means either asteroid or comet or fragment thereof that impacts the earth or its atmosphere).

I might move on from this topic to other areas of interest, but for those that want to doubt the scientific hypothesis that this particular act of destruction at Tall el-Hammam was the result of a cosmic impact or atmospheric explosion, the evidence is very strong.

Additionally the many scientists who participated in the study weren’t trying to prove the Bible. The paper isn’t taking a stand or arguing for Lot and his wife or angels or the existence of great wickedness in the city. They are comfortable believing and concluding that this event must have been the inspiration for the destruction of Sodom as relayed in the Bible.

If anyone wants to discuss aspects of this paper… I suppose we can discuss this. Nothing changes for me after this paper came out. I read an earlier paper and was aware this article was in publication. I didn’t know how solid the scientific evidence was going to be. I’m expecting other archaeologists are going to start reinterpreting some findings. From a Bible standpoint now we have to relook at the higher levels of Jericho’s walls to search for another wall that fell. Yeah this blast is calculated to been some thousand or so times stronger than the nuclear weapon that destroyed Hiroshima Japan. It will embarrassing to look at the destruction of Tall el-Hammam and argue the Assyrians or Arameans did that. (Now there is some later destruction layers that Steven Collins and crew have excavated that do match later military activity. But that wasn’t the focus of this scientific paper.

Various scholars might need to tweak their chronologies. I am not standing by the accuracy of the date they have from Radio-carbon dating… though I believe the actual date of the destruction could be as much as a few hundred years older… because radio-carbon dating in this area can be off from what I’ve understood. I say “could be” off not IS off. If this IS the Sodom era destruction, (of course it is) then this totally wrecks Doug Petrovich’s long duration Egyptian sojourn layered on the early Exodus. David Rohl’s chronology will fare much better, but he may need to re-calibrate some details of his thinking.

Let God be proved true…

[Thomas Donlon]

I just put this comment up at a Rumble website of Eric Mataxas’s Radio Program where he interviewed Steven Collins (archaeologist who searched for the site of Sodom and found Tall el-Hammam and excavated it and saw the destruction… amazing archaeologist).

I’ll share my comment that I made there here as well. I hope the format doesn’t get too mixed up.

Dr. Collins has made a fantastic discovery using the Bible. However (and
this is really good news) though Tall el-Hammam is the largest city
discovered in the area, Sodom likely has yet to be discovered.

4 Strong
Biblical reasons.

First) Ezekiel 16:1-46 Shows Sodom was to the South of
Jerusalem.

Second) Genesis 18:1 through Genesis 19:1 shows the angels
and the Lord stopped off to see Abraham in the heat of the day and
picked up some “fast food” and then went on their way walking and
arrived at Sodom late in the evening. Tall el-Hammam is not a half day
walk from Mamre/Hebron area. Places on the West side of the Dead Sea
are. And this is extremely plausible for a city in this area to be taken
out in the same blast that took out Tall el-Hammam. Nature’s report
overlays the Tunguska blast onto the Dead Sea area and the blast radius
covers this area too.

Third biblical Reason) is that city of Sodom was a
major financial hub which warranted being under tribute to Kedorlaomer
King of Elam. If the city was merely of Tall el-Hammam size they would
have just once taken its treasure. However Sodom was big enough to be a
gift that keeps on giving. It was big enough to warrant sending a major
army all the way from Elam when the kings stopped paying tribute.

Fourth
reason(s)) deal with itinerary of the battle. Genesis 14:7 has the
attacking army at Hazezon Tamar (which is Ein Gedi (2 Chronicles 20:2) )
and then after getting the goods from Sodom (no siege required… bad
walls unlike Tall el-Hammam) they just continued going North and Abraham
overtook them around Damascus, whereas I think TeH is closer to the
King’s Highway a more direct route back. Josephus put Sodom west of the
Dead Sea, I recollect. However now that the power of the destructive
blast that took out TeH (the acronym for Tall el-Hammam used in the
Nature Scientific Report) we can be confident that the affects of the
blast could reach this area without even postulating the bolide split up
extending the range..

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[The H Family]

Did a Space Rock Destroy Sodom and Gomorrah?

https://answersingenesis.org/archaeology/did-space-rock-destroy-sodom-gomorrah/

[Thomas Donlon]

Dear H Family, there seems to be a split in observations of this matter among the Answers in Genesis staff. “God could use something like that.“

The man with the shinier head almost seems clearly irritated with Brody or with the dismissal of All the evidence that was in the Nature Scientific Report. Some sections of the Answers TV episode in the link the H Family provided has worthwhile information. Also the female among the presenters said (from memory… maybe I have a word wrong) “Something clearly happened.”

The blast that took out Tall el-Hammam is calculated to be similar to many of the larger Hydrogen bombs that were tested by the US and Soviets. These destroy entire metropolitan areas.

Good marketers often have a great ability to simplify complex matters. But sometimes simplicity causes important details to be overlooked. Ken Ham with the assistance of his research staff wrote this.

Well, headlines are certainly proclaiming
that “a giant space rock” smashing down over Tall el-Hamman in the
Middle East 3,600 years ago may have “inspire[ed] the biblical story of
Sodom.” Based on their analysis, they argue the asteroid sped towards
the city at 38,000 mph, exploded into a blinding fireball 2.5 miles
above ground in a blast “around 1,000 times more powerful than the
Hiroshima atomic bomb,” immediately encasing the city in flames and
sending a destructively powerful shockwave through the city. Everyone
and everything in the city were instantly killed.

My problem is with the word “over” and “sped towards the city.” This might be a “picky” detail but it is important. Tall el-Hammam was NOT the epicenter. The center of the blast originated rather over or close to the area of the northern part of the Dead Sea. That is why the shiny head guy on the Answers TV (not an insult my head is shiny too) also made the remark that “If the timing is wrong…great!” He like me, doesn’t have a great deal of trust in Carbon 14 dating in all circumstances. Tim Mahoney and staff have written about research done showing how carbon-14 dating, in the middle east especially, is causing all kinds of headaches for those who try to apply to ancient times. The problems are complex and there may even be problems with C-14 dating HFS and the Thinker updates haven’t covered yet.

The shiny head guy on the answers TV panel therefore hasn’t shut the door on this being the same destruction that took out Sodom… as Ken Ham has done.

The Historical Faith Society has been fortunate to have David Barrett join as a thinker. He is the proprietor and developer of https://biblemapper.com/ I’m excited about that in part, because I love maps and that he has a good map showing several ancient routes leading to Ein Gedi, which some ancient sources locate as close to Sodom. But I’m out-of-time. Run off to work I will. But lest, I forget the overlay of the comparison of the destruction of Tunguska (in the Nature Report … now accessed over 300,000 times) with this blast purported to take out Sodom, DOES extend to the Ein Gedi region and therefore WOULD be a good match for Sodom being on the cusp of the destruction region allowing Lot and daughters enough time to RUN to Zoar.