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Asteroid Annihilated City Thought to be Biblical Sodom

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
My bias for stories in the Bible that describe events is that they're likely real events that have been mythologized. If this finding is accurate and accurately reported, then believers will find proof of God's handiwork and atheists will find random chance which believers turned into divine punishment.

Personally to me this is one more example of a story in scripture which appears to have had a real origin. A search shows this was mentioned in a thread a couple of years ago but without a link to the study which includes the physical evidence.

Asteroid Annihilated City Thought to be Biblical Sodom


New research suggests that fire from the sky in the form of a small asteroid annihilated an ancient city near the Dead Sea now called Tall el-Hammam in the biblical city of Sodom located in the Jordan Valley 3,600 years ago.
...
About a minute later, 14 miles (22 km) to the west of Tall el-Hammam, winds from the blast hit the biblical city of Jericho. Jericho’s walls came tumbling down and the city burned to the ground.
...
How do we know that all of this actually happened near the Dead Sea in Jordan millennia ago?

Getting answers required nearly fifteen years of painstaking excavations by hundreds of people. It also involved detailed analyses of excavated material by more than two dozen scientists in ten states in the U.S., as well as Canada and the Czech Republic. When our group finally published the evidence recently in the journal Scientific Reports, the 21 co-authors included archaeologists, geologists, geochemists, geomorphologists, mineralogists, paleobotanists, sedimentologists, cosmic-impact experts, and medical doctors.
...
It’s possible that an oral description of the city’s destruction may have been handed down for generations until it was recorded as the story of the Biblical Sodom. The Bible describes the devastation of an urban center near the Dead Sea in Jordan: stones and fire fell from the sky, more than one city was destroyed, thick smoke rose from the fires, and city inhabitants were killed.


Could this be an ancient eyewitness account?
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
My bias for stories in the Bible that describe events is that they're likely real events that have been mythologized. If this finding is accurate and accurately reported, then believers will find proof of God's handiwork and atheists will find random chance which believers turned into divine punishment.

Personally to me this is one more example of a story in scripture which appears to have had a real origin. A search shows this was mentioned in a thread a couple of years ago but without a link to the study which includes the physical evidence.

Asteroid Annihilated City Thought to be Biblical Sodom


New research suggests that fire from the sky in the form of a small asteroid annihilated an ancient city near the Dead Sea now called Tall el-Hammam in the biblical city of Sodom located in the Jordan Valley 3,600 years ago.
...
About a minute later, 14 miles (22 km) to the west of Tall el-Hammam, winds from the blast hit the biblical city of Jericho. Jericho’s walls came tumbling down and the city burned to the ground.
...
How do we know that all of this actually happened near the Dead Sea in Jordan millennia ago?

Getting answers required nearly fifteen years of painstaking excavations by hundreds of people. It also involved detailed analyses of excavated material by more than two dozen scientists in ten states in the U.S., as well as Canada and the Czech Republic. When our group finally published the evidence recently in the journal Scientific Reports, the 21 co-authors included archaeologists, geologists, geochemists, geomorphologists, mineralogists, paleobotanists, sedimentologists, cosmic-impact experts, and medical doctors.
...
It’s possible that an oral description of the city’s destruction may have been handed down for generations until it was recorded as the story of the Biblical Sodom. The Bible describes the devastation of an urban center near the Dead Sea in Jordan: stones and fire fell from the sky, more than one city was destroyed, thick smoke rose from the fires, and city inhabitants were killed.


Could this be an ancient eyewitness account?
Yes I remember this cropping up a year ago on the forum. It's a very interesting finding. It seems to be just the sort of inexplicable and terrifying event that would get incorporated into national oral history and mythology.
 

Brickjectivity

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Could this be an ancient eyewitness account?
It need not have taken place near the Jordan. They are looking in that location hoping to find something related to the story, but whether they find it or not we know that there are meteors, volcanoes, oil and gas underground, forests and tornadoes. The point in the story is not the location but how the location is described and the people are doing wrong and what happens. The destruction could be ash fall from a volcano. It could be detritus from a great forest fire or a blown oil well or meteors. The story could be taking elements from all of these kinds of disasters. If its a natural event then it doesn't have to be something in that location and may not be just one kind of natural disaster.

But yes it could be an eye witness event. In that case, however, I vote 'Volcano' not 'Meteor'. That would explain how someone turned to a pillar of salt. My second choice is a burning oil spout or natural gas.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Yes I remember this cropping up a year ago on the forum. It's a very interesting finding. It seems to be just the sort of inexplicable and terrifying event that would get incorporated into national oral history and mythology.
And the last I heard it had been largely refuted. I do not think that the story appears in any well respected journals. The last I checked it was in Bible journals only.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
And the last I heard it had been largely refuted. I do not think that the story appears in any well respected journals. The last I checked it was in Bible journals only.

I'm trying to track that down. But this is hardly a Bible journal report Ancient City's Destruction by Exploding Space Rock May Have Inspired Biblical Story of Sodom

A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea - Scientific Reports has a note a further update coming.

So for now, the science-answer is "we'll see" and that is fair.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
I'm trying to track that down. But this is hardly a Bible journal report Ancient City's Destruction by Exploding Space Rock May Have Inspired Biblical Story of Sodom

A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea - Scientific Reports has a note a further update coming.

So for now, the science-answer is "we'll see" and that is fair.
The Smithsonian is a popular science site. It is not an example of the primary literature. As to that journal I do not know how well respected it is. There are a lot of sources that are pretty much pay to publish these days.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
The Smithsonian is a popular science site. It is not an example of the primary literature. As to that journal I do not know how well respected it is. There are a lot of sources that are pretty much pay to publish these days.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
If anyone cares, there is a correction to that paper Author Correction: A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea - Scientific Reports which personally raises my expectation that the science will hold up.
Thanks for the info . Don't be so quick. It helped me to find this:


"Boslough pointed out “my model of asteroid airbursts is cited as the mechanism by which God smote this evil city.” He then noted that the senior author of the study was Phillip Silvia, an “engineer, theologian, archaeologist” and the director of publications at Trinity Southwest University, an apparently unaccredited evangelical school located in a strip mall in Albuquerque, whose motto is “Flexible Adult Higher Education Upholding Biblical Authority.” (Silvia earned his PhD from Trinity Southwest in 2015.)"


A more serious scientific article that tears it up quote badly:

 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Yes, pro-science, but they can be fooled. Ultimately science is done through the primary literature and criticisms of those articles. Check out my previous post. The bottom link goes over the scientific errors in that article. It looks like the journal was pay to publish. It should not have passed peer review with those errors in it.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Yes, pro-science, but they can be fooled.
Is there anyone who can't be fooled?
Ultimately science is done through the primary literature and criticisms of those articles. Check out my previous post. The bottom link goes over the scientific errors in that article. It looks like the journal was pay to publish. It should not have passed peer review with those errors in it.
You can use primary works.
But I prefer publications dumbed
down to a level I can understand.
BTW, peer review allows errors too.
Ain't nuthin perfect.
But time tends to weed out the chaff.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Is there anyone who can't be fooled?

You can use primary works.
But I prefer publications dumbed
down to a level I can understand.
BTW, peer review allows errors too.
Ain't nuthin perfect.
But time tends to weed out the chaff.
That is why not only are the articles important. but the criticisms of them as well. That is how fake articles are found. For examples the "shocked quartz" was not even moderately surprised:

"
  1. Bunch et al (2021) Fig. 28 caption reads “Shocked quartz from known airbursts. (a) SEM image of 140-µm-wide shocked quartz grain from Tunguska airburst,” but does not attribute the source. However, this is not an image of shocked quartz. This is not what shocked quartz looks like. On Sept. 22, 2021, I tweeted the following questions about Figure 28(a): “Who collected the sample? Where, exactly, did it come from in the Tunguska airburst area? Who sponsored and led the expedition to collect it? Was it float or from an outcrop? Who prepared it in the lab? And what is the basis for classifying this as shocked quartz?” Can you please answer these questions? Publishing claims without evidence, as was done here, does not satisfy the requirements for peer review."
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
The Smithsonian is a popular science site. It is not an example of the primary literature. As to that journal I do not know how well respected it is. There are a lot of sources that are pretty much pay to publish these days.
That was not the primary site but it's far from a Christian apologist site that was mentioned earlier in the thread. That linked back to "Scientific Reports" which is a "Nature" journal. I kept going. There's a lot of web sites about some ranking factors I don't know. About Scientific Reports | Scientific Reports claims it's a really good journal.

But of course, not all research stands up. When I studied chemistry decades ago, there was a paper about "polywater" which I read and which was the subject of a lot of controversy back in the day and was disproven Polywater - Wikipedia (the findings were the result of contamination).

Scientific papers should be criticized where appropriate. And in this case the authors revised part of their paper.

Based on what I've read since the OP post, I say that from a scientific perspective the jury is still out.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
That was not the primary site but it's far from a Christian apologist site that was mentioned earlier in the thread. That linked back to "Scientific Reports" which is a "Nature" journal. I kept going. There's a lot of web sites about some ranking factors I don't know. About Scientific Reports | Scientific Reports claims it's a really good journal.

But of course, not all research stands up. When I studied chemistry decades ago, there was a paper about "polywater" which I read and which was the subject of a lot of controversy back in the day and was disproven Polywater - Wikipedia (the findings were the result of contamination).

Scientific papers should be criticized where appropriate. And in this case the authors revised part of their paper.

Based on what I've read since the OP post, I say that from a scientific perspective the jury is still out.
Did they revise their statements about shocked quartz? And it is not a good sign when one of the detractors is the scientist that they based most of their work on. Did you check out the site with professional rebuttals? Some of their mistakes were so gross that it was the opinion of some that it should never have passed peer review.

Peer review is the last chance to iron out those kinks before publishing.

As to your link about Scientific Reports that is not where you go to learn about them. You should have gone to a neutral source. Wikipedia has an article about them and they have quite the history of retractions. A retraction is a big thing in the sciences. It seems to have a very high retraction rate. It lists controversial articles that have not been retracted yet, and this was the very first one. I would say that you ight now want to bet on it very heavily:

 

exchemist

Veteran Member
Thanks for the info . Don't be so quick. It helped me to find this:


"Boslough pointed out “my model of asteroid airbursts is cited as the mechanism by which God smote this evil city.” He then noted that the senior author of the study was Phillip Silvia, an “engineer, theologian, archaeologist” and the director of publications at Trinity Southwest University, an apparently unaccredited evangelical school located in a strip mall in Albuquerque, whose motto is “Flexible Adult Higher Education Upholding Biblical Authority.” (Silvia earned his PhD from Trinity Southwest in 2015.)"


A more serious scientific article that tears it up quote badly:

Hmm. It begins to look pretty bogus. The description of the “university” in Wiki is damning - and it appears the institution has had a bee in its bonnet about Tell el Hammam for almost 20 years: Trinity Southwest University - Wikipedia

So, good catch! :thumbsup:
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
Well, Trinity University is certain to have some bees in their bonnet, nothing surprising about that.
But I blame Nature to have published this article. I had more faith in Nature, now it is a bit less.
 
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