Archaeology and Sodom/Gomorroah 2021

[PruePhillip]

This is like finding the Ark of the Covenant.
It's been in the news for three days.
IMO this provides the first date for Abraham. I thought Abraham was about 2000 BC but the destruction of the Sodom/Gomorrah cities of the plain, spelled out in Genesis 17,18 happened 1650 BC. With 400 years in Egypt that means the time from Moses to the first Isreali king was only 200 years.

Nature Scientific Reports 20th September 2021 A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea | Scientific Reports

An article refers to excavations in the Jordan Valley at a location known by the Arab name Tall el Hammon. It was revealed that a conflagration destroyed a city of about 8,000 inhabitants. The temperature at the site had reached 3600 degrees Fahrenheit and a shock blast of 1,000 kph. The evidence of 'shocked quartz' and trace elements points to a comet or meteor air blast over the city. So great was the impact that buried salt was melted and spread over a 25 km wide radius, making that area uninhabitable for as long as 600 years. The ejector of molten salt might have explained the Genesis account of how Lot's wife 'turned to a pillar of salt.'


Smithsonian.
The researchers concluded that warfare, a fire, a volcanic eruption or an earthquake were unlikely culprits, as these events couldn’t have produced heat intense enough to cause the melting recorded at the scene. That left a space rock as the most likely cause.

Because experts failed to find a crater at the site, they attributed the damage to an airburst created when a meteor or comet traveled through the atmosphere at high speed. It would have exploded about 2.5 miles above the city in a blast 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima, writes study co-author Christopher R. Moore, an archaeologist at the University of South Carolina, for the Conversation.

 

[The Hammer]

I wouldn't call it that significant.

They've known this was roughly the same geographic range as Sodom/Gommoroah for decades.

 

[PruePhillip]

I wouldn't call it that significant.

They've known this was roughly the same geographic range as Sodom/Gommoroah for decades.

Sure, but people were looking for fire ravage ruins - this was something totally different: a city
destroyed by a comet or meteor wth 50,000 dead.

 

[mangalavara]

The temperature at the site had reached 3600 degrees Fahrenheit and a shock blast of 1,000 kph.

It would have exploded about 2.5 miles above the city in a blast 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima

I am in absolute awe...

 

[Harel13]

I thought Abraham was about 2000 BC

Why? Per the Bible, he was born circa the early 18th or late 19th century BCE and lived until sometime around the 17th century.

 

[exchemist]

This is like finding the Ark of the Covenant.
It's been in the news for three days.
IMO this provides the first date for Abraham. I thought Abraham was about 2000 BC but the destruction of the Sodom/Gomorrah cities of the plain, spelled out in Genesis 17,18 happened 1650 BC. With 400 years in Egypt that means the time from Moses to the first Isreali king was only 200 years.

Nature Scientific Reports 20th September 2021 A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea | Scientific Reports

An article refers to excavations in the Jordan Valley at a location known by the Arab name Tall el Hammon. It was revealed that a conflagration destroyed a city of about 8,000 inhabitants. The temperature at the site had reached 3600 degrees Fahrenheit and a shock blast of 1,000 kph. The evidence of 'shocked quartz' and trace elements points to a comet or meteor air blast over the city. So great was the impact that buried salt was melted and spread over a 25 km wide radius, making that area uninhabitable for as long as 600 years. The ejector of molten salt might have explained the Genesis account of how Lot's wife 'turned to a pillar of salt.'


Smithsonian.
The researchers concluded that warfare, a fire, a volcanic eruption or an earthquake were unlikely culprits, as these events couldn’t have produced heat intense enough to cause the melting recorded at the scene. That left a space rock as the most likely cause.

Because experts failed to find a crater at the site, they attributed the damage to an airburst created when a meteor or comet traveled through the atmosphere at high speed. It would have exploded about 2.5 miles above the city in a blast 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima, writes study co-author Christopher R. Moore, an archaeologist at the University of South Carolina, for the Conversation.

The paper is really interesting and very thorough. Thanks for posting.

It says little or nothing about whether or not Tell al-Hammon can be identified with Sodom or Gomorrah, since that was not the object of this research. However the melted salt etc is somewhat suggestive, certainly. And the idea of a Tunguska-type meteor airburst is fascinating.

That area around the Dead Sea is weird. I went there once to visit a mineral extraction plant on the shore. The pillar of salt idea could have come from a variety of phenomena.

 

[PruePhillip]

The paper is really interesting and very thorough. Thanks for posting.

It says little or nothing about whether or not Tell al-Hammon can be identified with Sodom or Gomorrah, since that was not the object of this research. However the melted salt etc is somewhat suggestive, certainly. And the idea of a Tunguska-type meteor airburst is fascinating.

That area around the Dead Sea is weird. I went there once to visit a mineral extraction plant on the shore. The pillar of salt idea could have come from a variety of phenomena.

There were 8,000 dead in the unknown city excavated. A total of 50,000 were estimated
to have died in the valley. Many of these were outside the immediate heat and blast zone
and would have become 'pillars of salt' or at least, mounds of salt - killed and coated with
salt, maybe molten salt, Pompey style.

 

[exchemist]

There were 8,000 dead in the unknown city excavated. A total of 50,000 were estimated
to have died in the valley. Many of these were outside the immediate heat and blast zone
and would have become 'pillars of salt' or at least, mounds of salt - killed and coated with
salt, maybe molten salt, Pompey style.

Yes, it's an idea that seems to stand up, certainly.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

So, can we say that the morals of a city and people people, can influence where God makes meteor airburst to occur.
Was that not what Sodom/Gommoroah is supposed to be about.
not all this scientific rubbish?

 

[exchemist]

So, can we say that the morals of a city and people people, can influence where God makes meteor airburst to occur.
Was that not what Sodom/Gommoroah is supposed to be about.
not all this scientific rubbish?

Er, not any more than we really think God created a worldwide flood to drown everyone but Noah and his family.

Stories such as these have a salutary message for the people that hear them, regardless of their literal truth or otherwise. And it is interesting to realise they may well have had their roots in real events, even though the interpretation of them by the people of the time was understandably more inclined to ascribe them to acts of God than we would nowadays. A meteor airburst would have been inexplicable and bloody terrifying, especially as it actually did come from the heavens!

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Er, not any more than we really think God created a worldwide flood to drown everyone but Noah and his family.

Stories such as these have a salutary message for the people that hear them, regardless of their literal truth or otherwise. And it is interesting to realise they may well have had their roots in real events, even though the interpretation of them by the people of the time was understandably more inclined to ascribe them to acts of God than we would nowadays. A meteor airburst would have been inexplicable and bloody terrifying, especially as it actually did come from the heavens!

It would suggest most Bible stories are embroidered around real catastrophic events. even perhaps the pestilence stories leading to the Jews coming out of Egypt. Though it is hard to imagine what caused the parting of the waters during their escape. Though earthquakes can cause waters to recede before a tsunami.
Though such ways of thinking are tough on those who take Bible stories literally.

 

[PruePhillip]

So, can we say that the morals of a city and people people, can influence where God makes meteor airburst to occur.
Was that not what Sodom/Gommoroah is supposed to be about.
not all this scientific rubbish?

No, for me the Big Issue was that they couldn't find these cities.
It's one thing to not find the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail,
it another to not find a whole group of cities.
And you need irrecontroversial evidence, not like the walls of
Jericho which have fallen many times. Well, whatever these
cities were, on the 'well watered plains' of the Jordan valley, they
have been found. And a landscape smothered in salt. I used to
think the idea of Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt because she
'looked back' is also resolved - she would have been one of many
in the blast zone whose bodies were entombed in salt, Pompei
style.

 

[joelr]

Historians understand Genesis to be using Mes

It would suggest most Bible stories are embroidered around real catastrophic events. even perhaps the pestilence stories leading to the Jews coming out of Egypt. Though it is hard to imagine what caused the parting of the waters during their escape. Though earthquakes can cause waters to recede before a tsunami.
Though such ways of thinking are tough on those who take Bible stories literally.

Historians understand Genesis to be using Egyptian and Mesopotamian myths and the Exodus is definitely a foundation myth. The Mesopotamian flood story and 2 creation stories mirror the Genesis tales. The flood stories may be based on local floods.
The meteor impact in the article probably had myths in all surrounding cultures about it, every "one true God" in every religion caused the destruction. The Canaanites surely said their God was doing the destruction along with all others making myths about their National God.
Back then each nation had a God, the OT also mentions these Gods and Yahweh was just the Israelite God but later their theology changed.



"Tradition credits Moses as the author of Genesis, as well as the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and most of Deuteronomy, but modern scholars, especially from the 19th century onward, see them as being written hundreds of years after Moses is supposed to have lived, in the 6th and 5th centuries BC.[8][9] Based on scientific interpretation of archaeological, genetic, and linguistic evidence, most scholars consider Genesis to be primarily mythological rather than historical."

Book of Genesis - Wikipedia

Meteor impacts are not rare, in 1905 a much bigger explosion happened in Russia.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Er, not any more than we really think God created a worldwide flood to drown everyone but Noah and his family.

Stories such as these have a salutary message for the people that hear them, regardless of their literal truth or otherwise. And it is interesting to realise they may well have had their roots in real events, even though the interpretation of them by the people of the time was understandably more inclined to ascribe them to acts of God than we would nowadays. A meteor airburst would have been inexplicable and bloody terrifying, especially as it actually did come from the heavens!

Yes, myths and legends are often born of such events.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

With no science, what else could they attribute these happenings to except a vengeful God.
Their life was swathed in magic and gods.

Today Politicians, and publicists take the part of soothsayers and prophets of old.

 

[exchemist]

No, for me the Big Issue was that they couldn't find these cities.
It's one thing to not find the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail,
it another to not find a whole group of cities.
And you need irrecontroversial evidence, not like the walls of
Jericho which have fallen many times. Well, whatever these
cities were, on the 'well watered plains' of the Jordan valley, they
have been found. And a landscape smothered in salt. I used to
think the idea of Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt because she
'looked back' is also resolved - she would have been one of many
in the blast zone whose bodies were entombed in salt, Pompei
style.

Well we don't know we've found them now. The paper you cited says nothing about whether Tell-al-Hammam is such a city or not. It is concerned with explaining the strange melted debris at the site. But it could be that the biblical story of these cities originated with this meteor event, rather in the way that Noah's Flood and the Epic of Gilgamesh may have come from some historical flood event in the Middle East. Both events may have been dimly remembered in folklore and then pressed into service for religious purposes far later.

By the way it is Tell-el-Hammam, not Hammon, as your para in italics in the OP says. Hammam is Arabic for bath, or bath house. There was a Roman bath complex excavated there some years ago, hence the name, presumably. The site seems to have successively occupied many times, over thousands of years. A bit like Troy.

 

[PruePhillip]

It would suggest most Bible stories are embroidered around real catastrophic events. even perhaps the pestilence stories leading to the Jews coming out of Egypt. Though it is hard to imagine what caused the parting of the waters during their escape. Though earthquakes can cause waters to recede before a tsunami.
Though such ways of thinking are tough on those who take Bible stories literally.

Well I too found it tough in taking Sodom and Gomorah literally. I mean, how can you hide
whole cities? And how can someone turn into a pillar of salt? Well there's one more thing
that turned out to be literal. I call this 'Skeptics of the gaps.'
Next I would like to see someone (other than Indiana Jones) find the Ark of the Covenant.

 

[PruePhillip]

With no science, what else could they attribute these happenings to except a vengeful God.
Their life was swathed in magic and gods.

Today Politicians, and publicists take the part of soothsayers and prophets of old.

Here's a vengeful God for you - all through the Old Testament it was prophecised that the
Jewish nation would end and the Jews would be scattered all over the world. This was often
associated with the coming Messiah in whom the Gentiles would believe. And until the Gentiles
'time was fulfilled' the Jews would remain in nations that persecuted them. Don't know how you
can shoehorn events not yet happening into make-believe narratives.

 

[exchemist]

Well I too found it tough in taking Sodom and Gomorah literally. I mean, how can you hide
whole cities? And how can someone turn into a pillar of salt? Well there's one more thing
that turned out to be literal. I call this 'Skeptics of the gaps.'
Next I would like to see someone (other than Indiana Jones) find the Ark of the Covenant.

There is no suggestion anyone turned into a pillar of salt. There are a lot of salty deposits and landforms round the Dead Sea, which might have inspired the legend. That's all one can say.

Amusingly, I see this paper is already causing consternation among the biblical inerrantist community, some of whom actually did part of the archaeology. The dates are all wrong, apparently, if you take OT chronology as literal. Well surprise, surprise.

 

[PruePhillip]

There is no suggestion anyone turned into a pillar of salt. There are a lot of salty deposits and landforms round the Dead Sea, which might have inspired the legend. That's all one can say.

Amusingly, I see this paper is already causing consternation among the biblical inerrantist community, some of whom actually did part of the archaeology. The dates are all wrong, apparently, if you take OT chronology as literal. Well surprise, surprise.

Methinks many people were turned into 'pillars of salt' but they weren't standing up
when they were coated with salt. I don't know why some people have issues with
chronology - up to now I suppose no-one had a date for Abraham.
As I see it - Abraham was 100 yo ca 1650BC. There was 400 years in Egypt and
about 200 years before the first Jewish monarchy. However, I keep an open mind.