Interesting evidence of an ancient Middle East Meteor Cataclysm...Jericho? Sodom?

RDKirk

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If it was Jericho, it seems like it would hurt Rahab and the Israelites, too...
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When soldiers cross a bridge, they march out of step to prevent resonance from destroying it.

The walls of Jericho were brought down by soldiers marching around the city, followed by the loud noise of trumpets and shouting. Which could mean resonance played a role in bringing down the walls of Jericho.

This is something Nikola Tesla also alluded to when he claimed to have built a resonance machine capable of destroying buildings in cities.
 
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partinobodycular

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There is compelling evidence that a significant meteor strike (about 15 megatons) in the northern Levant absolutely obliterated one major city and leveled the walls of Jericho around 1650 BC. That would be close to the time scripture tells of Jericho's destruction by the Israelites.
Which would simply be further evidence that ancient societies took perfectly natural events and wove them into their cultural folklore.

It's not surprising, it's exactly what one expects to find in ancient texts. Thus, even if correct, it's simply further evidence that the bible is history embellished with folklore.
 
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If it was Jericho, it seems like it would hurt Rahab and the Israelites, too...
full
Also after the walls fell, the Israelites put (almost) everybody to the sword.
(That would have been redundant if they were already smooshed by a meteor...)
 
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timewerx

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There is compelling evidence that a significant meteor strike (about 15 megatons) in the northern Levant absolutely obliterated one major city and leveled the walls of Jericho around 1650 BC. That would be close to the time scripture tells of Jericho's destruction by the Israelites.

https://phys.org/news/2021-09-evidence-cosmic-impact-ancient-city.html

https://phys.org/news/2021-09-evidence-cosmic-impact-ancient-city.html

With unusually high (relatively unsafe) levels of "natural" radioactivity in the water and soil in the same area....

God might have used nuclear weapons.....:mmh:(meteor impacts doesn't make a place radioactive, only nuclear weapons could)

giphy.gif
 
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With unusually high (relatively unsafe) levels of "natural" radioactivity in the water and soil in the same area....

God might have used nuclear weapons.....:mmh:(meteor impacts doesn't make a place radioactive, only nuclear weapons could)

giphy.gif

There are volcanic rocks in the area. They tend to contain radioactive elements, like Uranium.
 
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Petros2015

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(about 15 megatons)

Hiroshima was 15 kilotons

So... about 1,500x Hiroshima
That... would be pretty significant

Castle Bravo was the most powerful nuclear weapon the US ever tested, it was 15 megatons.
Accidentally, apparently. Oops!

Castle Bravo - Wikipedia

"The yield of 15 megatons was triple that of the 5 Mt predicted by its designers
...
The unexpectedly high yield of the device severely damaged many of the permanent buildings on the control site island on the far side of the atoll. Little of the desired diagnostic data on the shot was collected; many instruments designed to transmit their data back before being destroyed by the blast were instead vaporized instantly, while most of the instruments that were expected to be recovered for data retrieval were destroyed by the blast.
...
In an additional unexpected event, albeit one of far less consequence, X-rays traveling through line-of-sight (LOS) pipes caused a small second fireball at Station 1200 with a yield of 1 kiloton of TNT (4.2 TJ)."

Surprise!
 
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timewerx

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There are volcanic rocks in the area. They tend to contain radioactive elements, like Uranium.

Volcanic rocks only have very low, safe level of radiation.

The ground water radiation level in the Levant area is much higher and is of health concern, could not have have come from volcanic rocks.

Ancient Jordanian wells radioactive, study finds

I actually drank that radioactive water when I was working in the Middle East and tasted exactly like pure alkaline water. It did taste great.
 
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RDKirk

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Also after the walls fell, the Israelites put (almost) everybody to the sword.
(That would have been redundant if they were already smooshed by a meteor...)

All they can tell about Jericho is that the walls were sheared, not that everyone was killed.
 
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RDKirk

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Which would simply be further evidence that ancient societies took perfectly natural events and wove them into their cultural folklore.

It's not surprising, it's exactly what one expects to find in ancient texts. Thus, even if correct, it's simply further evidence that the bible is history embellished with folklore.

I suspect many of those incidents are explainable as natural occurrences. I've seen evidence that every single one of the plagues upon Egypt in Exodus could have been the result of a single underwater volcanic eruption in the Mediterranean off the coast of Egypt...including the death of the firstborn.

But when naturally explainable events occur by prediction or at specifically auspicious moments...they're not merely natural events.

And the instance of the death of the firstborn in Exodus is interesting. An underwater volcanic eruption can produce a toxic cloud that is heavier than air and hugs the ground (one was recorded in southern Africa after such an eruption in a large lake) only a meter or so high. A person who is awake, up and active would not be in danger, but a person covered by the cloud and asleep would likely not wake up.

The custom in the days of Exodus was that the first-born had the honor of sleeping on a pallet at ground level. Younger-born would have to sleep on the roof or at some other elevated level. Thus, such a toxic cloud would have killed mostly the first born.

More interesting, however, are the specific instructions given to the Israelites to escape the death: To be awake, standing up, and eating bitter herbs....the prefect instructions for avoiding a low-level toxic cloud.
 
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RDKirk

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For Christians, does news like this challenge Bible faith by possibly demystifying certain events? Or strengthen it by corroborating them?

Doesn't bother me.

I see scripture as the result of men who had authentic experiences with God, but recorded them while wearing the goggles of their own culture and understanding.
 
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Mark Quayle

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Doesn't bother me.

I see scripture as the result of men who had authentic experiences with God, but recorded them while wearing the goggles of their own culture and understanding.
Lol, yeah, I remember years ago speculations on natural causes for the Children of Israel to be able to walk across the bottom of the Red Sea, such as the wind blowing back the water on a shallow point, during an extra low tide or something. And every one of them missed the point that it "just happened to happen" just when the Israelites got to that place, and it stopped just as the Egyptians tried to follow them across.
 
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Petros2015

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For Christians, does news like this challenge Bible faith by possibly demystifying certain events? Or strengthen it by corroborating them?

Personally, I don't think there would be anything left of Jericho or the Israelites if a 15 megaton explosion occurred anywhere near, regardless of cause. And I think they would have recorded something different if it had been far enough away to drop the walls, they would have recorded something about an earthquake, fiery cloud, brighter than the sun, etc.

20 When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. 21 They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.

Moo?

What is recorded was that the Lord God would go ahead of them and fight their battles. Sometimes "using the honeybee" to drive out the Caananites. But maybe the Caananites had their civilization's back broken by a meteor strike as well while Israel was out wandering safe'ish through the desert for 40 years.

It might have been good they didn't enter 40 years earlier!
 
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Petros2015

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More interesting, however, are the specific instructions given to the Israelites to escape the death: To be awake, standing up, and eating bitter herbs....the prefect instructions for avoiding a low-level toxic cloud

Well, something definitely happened. You don't institute a custom like that which was kept all that time, up to and then beyond the point of Christ. And I feel like it would be hard to 'make it up' during the time in the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt, because wouldn't everyone be like "dude - we were there; it didn't go down like that at all!". So... if it didn't happen how it says it happened, then when and why did people start pretending that it happened like it says it happened? And, I can't really come up to an answer for that question, because I think the answer is "something definitely happened".
 
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There is compelling evidence that a significant meteor strike (about 15 megatons) in the northern Levant absolutely obliterated one major city and leveled the walls of Jericho around 1650 BC. That would be close to the time scripture tells of Jericho's destruction by the Israelites.

https://phys.org/news/2021-09-evidence-cosmic-impact-ancient-city.html

https://phys.org/news/2021-09-evidence-cosmic-impact-ancient-city.html

""We saw evidence for temperatures greater than 2,000 degrees Celsius,"

That's rather warm. And, the evidence of an extreme shockwave is interesting.

" "anomalously high concentrations of salt" -- I thought the hypothesis about dead sea water scattered around was interesting.
 
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