Sodom: An Interesting Development

Reposted from YHWH's Janitor, 11/27/18.

I've been following the archaeologist Steven Collins for a long time.  He first grabbed my attention when he was studying which Pharaoh was the Pharaoh of the Exodus (Thutmose IV of the 18th Dynasty is his contention).  But the last decade of his focus has been on the Tall el-Hammam, which he believes is the site of the real Sodom from the Bible.

There are many scholars, Biblical and otherwise, who disagree.  This article by Todd Bolen, a writer for Bible History Daily, gives several rebuttals against Dr. Collin's work, and they're good arguments.  Personally, Dr. Collins' arguments resonate with me more at the moment.

Well, on November 20th, 2018, Science News reported a study on the site that indicates that there... from a meteor that wiped out the whole civilization in the "disc" North of the Dead Sea about 3,700 years ago.  It sounds surprisingly like the biblical account of the destruction of the "cities on the plain" from Genesis 18:23-25:

²³ By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. ²⁴ Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. ²⁵ Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land.

Also, with some quick math acrobatics using Ken Johnson's timeline resources, I noticed that the date given by the carbon dating (2018-3700 = around 1682 BC) and the range for the events of Sodom's destruction given between when Lot and Abraham moved to Canaan and when Isaac was born (1902 - 1877 BC) are quite close considering the reliability of radiocarbon dating past a couple thousand years.

Anyway, just thought you other Bible nerds out there might think that was nifty.  Thanks!