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Have archaeologists discovered the biblical city of Sodom?
Hotair ^ | 10/14/2015 | Jazz Shaw

Posted on 10/14/2015 7:31:27 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

This is a non-political story (but a very cool one nonetheless) which I was first alerted to by John Hawkins at Right Wing News. Archaeologists who have been busily digging into a massive mound in southern Jordan for the last ten years are growing increasingly convinced that they have located the city of Sodom, famously known in the Bible for having been struck down by God due to the sinful ways of its residents. While there aren’t any postcards with “Welcome to Sodom” emblazoned in neon, the ruins are definitely the remains of a massive city-state which thrived from 3500 to 1540 B.C. before suddenly being abandoned with a large layer of ash over it.

So does this provide scientific proof of one of the tales straight out of the Old Testament? The leader of the dig, Steven Collins of Trinity Southwest University, thinks it’s a pretty good bet. (Popular Archaeology)

Indeed, according to Collins, when comparing it with the remains of other nearby ancient cities, along with its prime location and dates of occupation, it emerges today as the best candidate for the lost city of Sodom—the infamous city that, based on the Biblical account, was destroyed by God in a fiery cataclysm because of its iniquity.

“Tall el-Hammam seemed to match every Sodom criterion demanded by the text,” he says. “Theorizing, on the basis of the Sodom texts, that Sodom was the largest of the Kikkar (the Jordan ‘Disk’, or ‘well-watered plain’ in the biblical text) cities east of the Jordan, I concluded that if one wanted to find Sodom, then one should look for the largest city on the eastern Kikkar that existed during the Middle Bronze Age, the time of Abraham and Lot. When we explored the area, the choice of Tall el-Hammam as the site of Sodom was virtually a no-brainer since it was at least five to ten times larger than all the other Bronze Age sites in the entire region, even beyond the Kikkar of the Jordan.”

Scholars will no doubt be debating this one for a long time to come unless they can come up with something that definitively labels the city as Sodom, but it certainly looks like a good candidate. But even then there will be arguments over how the city came to be destroyed. (Earthquake triggering a massive fire?) Of course, it’s not the first time that we’ve unearthed things which backed up people and places from the Bible as being history rather than parables and allegory. Scientists previously uncovered a stone marker bearing the name of Pontius Pilate dating back to the correct period and other supporting evidence exists.

Of course, every new discovery leads to more questions than answers. Some of our assumptions about the early history of man are being challenged in big ways as we do more and more digging. The time of Sodom was in the middle of the bronze age and was fairly early on in the period of written history. They built the walls and most of the structures in this city out of mud bricks, and there supposedly wasn’t much in the way of major, iconic construction going on except for the great pyramid in Egypt. (Which dates to roughly the same time period, estimated at 2500 B.C.) If you wind the clock back a few thousand years earlier, the vast majority of humanity was allegedly comprised of hunter gatherers. But how then do we account for Gobekli Tepe? Located in modern day Turkey, somebody erected a city there with massive, intricately carved stone columns weighing up to ten tons and they did it 11,000 years ago. (Smithsonian)

Gobekli Tepe was first examined—and dismissed—by University of Chicago and Istanbul University anthropologists in the 1960s. As part of a sweeping survey of the region, they visited the hill, saw some broken slabs of limestone and assumed the mound was nothing more than an abandoned medieval cemetery. In 1994, Schmidt was working on his own survey of prehistoric sites in the region. After reading a brief mention of the stone-littered hilltop in the University of Chicago researchers’ report, he decided to go there himself. From the moment he first saw it, he knew the place was extraordinary.

I think the rule of thumb is that we should never rule out anything. The past is at least as interesting as dwelling on the future and there’s always more to learn. Finding out that the Bible is historically accurate in many ways may prove to be an annoyance to some atheists, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t remarkable.


TOPICS: History; Religion; Science; Society
KEYWORDS: alreadyposted; archeology; babedhdhra; catastrophism; citiesoftheplain; curseofagade; deadsea; godsgravesglyphs; gomorrah; greatriftvalley; israel; jerusalem; jordan; letshavejerusalem; sodom; sodomandgomorrah; stevencollins; tallelhammam; tellelhammam; valleyofsiddim

1 posted on 10/14/2015 7:31:28 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

MORE CAN BE READ ABOUT HERE:

http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/fall-2015/article/possible-site-of-ancient-sodom-yields-more-finds


2 posted on 10/14/2015 7:32:06 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
Have archaeologists discovered the biblical city of Sodom?

Maybe. Did a group of them recently visit San Francisco?

3 posted on 10/14/2015 7:44:37 AM PDT by WayneS (Yeah, it's probably sarcasm...)
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To: SeekAndFind
Bill Clinton wants to know if they discovered any partially persevered remains, preferably female.

 photo Mummy Juanita - Bill Clinton 00_zpsyhaukcjt.jpg

 photo Bill Clinton 03_zps9beoxlew.jpg

4 posted on 10/14/2015 7:55:13 AM PDT by ETL (Ted Cruz 2016!! -- For a better and safer America)
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To: WayneS

You beat me to it. I was going to say it’s on the west coast and Gomorrah is at the Mississippi River delta.


5 posted on 10/14/2015 7:57:32 AM PDT by Pining_4_TX (All those who were appointed to eternal life believed. Acts 13:48)
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To: SeekAndFind

It is under Hollywood and Vine.


6 posted on 10/14/2015 8:20:50 AM PDT by minnesota_bound
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To: ETL

For the life of me, I do not understand the attraction women had/have for that man. He makes my skin crawl.


7 posted on 10/14/2015 8:26:27 AM PDT by ponygirl (An Appeal to Heaven.)
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To: ponygirl

He is tall, 6’6”, aggressive, domineering and a womanizer. Some women are intimidated, some others are seduced by this type of personality. Jennifer has always been in love with him.


8 posted on 10/14/2015 10:19:27 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell (This is a wake up call. Join the Sultan Knish ping list.)
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To: SunkenCiv; SeekAndFind

PING for your list, Civ. . .


9 posted on 10/14/2015 11:00:06 AM PDT by Swordmaker ( This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users continue...)
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To: SeekAndFind

Does the sewer plumbing all run backwards?


10 posted on 10/14/2015 11:02:47 AM PDT by tacticalogic ("Oh bother!" said Pooh, as he chambered his last round.)
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To: Swordmaker

Thanks Swordmaker.


11 posted on 10/14/2015 1:54:21 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Here's to the day the forensics people scrape what's left of Putin off the ceiling of his limo.)
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12 posted on 10/14/2015 1:54:29 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Here's to the day the forensics people scrape what's left of Putin off the ceiling of his limo.)
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13 posted on 10/14/2015 1:55:16 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Here's to the day the forensics people scrape what's left of Putin off the ceiling of his limo.)
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To: Louis Foxwell

He’s 6’2”, and I think they’re giving him about 3/4” on that. But I know...I once worked with a woman from Arkansas whose mother had worked for Clinton and had been one of his many conquests. She said the affair broke up her parents marriage and ruined her mother’s life, and that the really sick part was that if he had crooked his finger at her, she would have gone running to him in a split second, even 15 years later. Lewinsky would do the same thing.


14 posted on 10/14/2015 6:02:17 PM PDT by ponygirl (An Appeal to Heaven.)
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