A team of archaeologists and other scientists have concluded that recent finds at a dig at Tall el-Hammam, located just northeast of the Dead Sea in Jordan, fit the biblical description of the sudden, fiery destruction of Sodom around 4000 years ago.
As reported this week in the Times of Israel, a multi-disciplinary team of scientists has a new theory for why a flourishing civilization abruptly ended on the fertile banks of the Dead Sea some four millennia ago. According to their analysis of the archaeological evidence, the disaster of biblical proportions can be explained by a massive explosion, similar to a meteor strike which occurred near Tunguska, Russia over 100 years ago.
[See: “Evidence of Sodom? Meteor blast cause of biblical destruction, say scientists”; BY Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel (22 November 2018)], available at: https://www.timesofisrael.com/evidence-of-sodom-meteor-blast-cause-of-biblical-destruction-say-scientists/ ]
As with the Tunguska explosion, the Tell el-Hammam finds indicate that a rich agricultural area was suddenly rendered non-arable by fall-out from a massive, heat-packed meteorite explosion. The evidence shows that the “plain of the Jordan” – as Genesis repeatedly describes the area just north of the Dead Sea – had very fertile soil and was a well-watered region dominated by a thriving, heavily-fortified city-state. The ruins of the major city being uncovered at the site include outer walls up to 17 feet thick and 50 feet high, and the city dominated the surrounding plain where fields and orchards yielded up to three crops per year in the unique subtropical climate. But a sudden disaster involving great heat stripped the nutrients from the soil and left a covering of briny salts from the Dead Sea. Meanwhile, the city was left uninhabited for the next 700 years. Pottery shards dating from that time have a glaze apparently produced by temperatures high enough to transform them into glass.
Could this have been the biblical destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, described in Genesis chapter 19? The finds at Tell el-Hammam indeed indicate so!
[To visit their website, go to: https://tallelhammam.com ]
MY COMMENT: In my book Floodgates, I explain how Jesus, Peter and Jude all pair or twin the great Flood in the “Days of Noah” with the fiery destruction of Sodom in the “Days of Lot.” Both Peter and Jude then say that what happened to Sodom on a local scale is set forth as an “example” of the fiery judgment to come upon the whole earth at the end of the age. And indeed, the recurring theme of divine judgment in the Book Revelation is one of fire, fire and more fire, both falling from heaven, rising up from below, and even man’s fierce hostility to man. So once again, science and archaeology are proving the Bible right, and thus the firm warnings in the New Testament about the end-of-days being like the “Days of Noah” and “Days of Lot” should give us great cause for concern. Find out more in Floodgates!