Sodom and Gomorrah found?

[Quid est Veritas?]

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

”We present evidence that in ~ 1650 BCE (~ 3600 years ago), a cosmic airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, a Middle-Bronze-Age city in the southern Jordan Valley northeast of the Dead Sea. The proposed airburst was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, where a ~ 50-m-wide bolide detonated with ~ 1000× more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. A city-wide ~ 1.5-m-thick carbon-and-ash-rich destruction layer contains peak concentrations of shocked quartz (~ 5–10 GPa); melted pottery and mudbricks; diamond-like carbon; soot; Fe- and Si-rich spherules; CaCO3 spherules from melted plaster; and melted platinum, iridium, nickel, gold, silver, zircon, chromite, and quartz. Heating experiments indicate temperatures exceeded 2000 °C. Amid city-side devastation, the airburst demolished 12+ m of the 4-to-5-story palace complex and the massive 4-m-thick mudbrick rampart, while causing extreme disarticulation and skeletal fragmentation in nearby humans. An airburst-related influx of salt (~ 4 wt.%) produced hypersalinity, inhibited agriculture, and caused a ~ 300–600-year-long abandonment of ~ 120 regional settlements within a > 25-km radius. Tall el-Hammam may be the second oldest city/town destroyed by a cosmic airburst/impact, after Abu Hureyra, Syria, and possibly the earliest site with an oral tradition that was written down (Genesis). Tunguska-scale airbursts can devastate entire cities/regions and thus, pose a severe modern-day hazard."

 

[lsume]

Interesting

 

[A_JAY]

also see:
Sodom and Gomorrah - Wikipedia

 

[Semper-Fi]

Jordan’s Tall el-Hammam is a possible location of biblical Sodom.
Sodom and Gomorrah are two of the five "cities of the plain"

The destruction—in location, time and description—directly
matches the biblical event.

 

[Mosheli]

Middle Bronze Age and "1600s" bc is too late for Abraham who was ca 2000s in Massoretic. EVen more so too late when we consider that the conventional Egyptian/Palestinian/Mesopotamian dynasties/strata dates are too long/old by a few centuries and the true dates will be lower.
Tell el-Hammam is not demonstrated to have name Sodom or Gomorrah associated with it in any sources?
Sodom is more likely in the Lishan or Bab ed Dra or under the larger northern half of the sea or in the south coasts rather than north coasts, or the west coasts or south-east coast. Compare the position of Tiahuanaco (Atlantis city) in relation to lake Titicaca (which is inverse to position of Eridu to Persian gulf).

 

[Semper-Fi]

first-century historian Josephus wrote:

“It was of old a most happy land, both
for the fruits it bore and the riches of its
cities, although it be now all burnt up”
(Wars,iv, 8, 4).

 

[Mark Quayle]

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

”We present evidence that in ~ 1650 BCE (~ 3600 years ago), a cosmic airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, a Middle-Bronze-Age city in the southern Jordan Valley northeast of the Dead Sea. The proposed airburst was larger than the 1908 explosion over Tunguska, Russia, where a ~ 50-m-wide bolide detonated with ~ 1000× more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb. A city-wide ~ 1.5-m-thick carbon-and-ash-rich destruction layer contains peak concentrations of shocked quartz (~ 5–10 GPa); melted pottery and mudbricks; diamond-like carbon; soot; Fe- and Si-rich spherules; CaCO3 spherules from melted plaster; and melted platinum, iridium, nickel, gold, silver, zircon, chromite, and quartz. Heating experiments indicate temperatures exceeded 2000 °C. Amid city-side devastation, the airburst demolished 12+ m of the 4-to-5-story palace complex and the massive 4-m-thick mudbrick rampart, while causing extreme disarticulation and skeletal fragmentation in nearby humans. An airburst-related influx of salt (~ 4 wt.%) produced hypersalinity, inhibited agriculture, and caused a ~ 300–600-year-long abandonment of ~ 120 regional settlements within a > 25-km radius. Tall el-Hammam may be the second oldest city/town destroyed by a cosmic airburst/impact, after Abu Hureyra, Syria, and possibly the earliest site with an oral tradition that was written down (Genesis). Tunguska-scale airbursts can devastate entire cities/regions and thus, pose a severe modern-day hazard."

Wow. So are there any written accounts of this event? I mean, this is momentous! If there are none, why should we expect the Bible to corroborated by written extraBiblical accounts, in order to believe the Bible is true?

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Wow. So are there any written accounts of this event? I mean, this is momentous! If there are none, why should we expect the Bible to corroborated by written extraBiblical accounts, in order to believe the Bible is true?

There are many written accounts of lost cities in the area of the Dead sea, from Strabo to the Quran. The issue though is these cannot be shown to be independant of the Biblical narrative. The cities of the plain may be listed independantly at Ebla, but that is not clearly so; nor would we expect much record from surrounding people that aren't directly involved (especially as most records are monumental inscriptions in Egypt, for instance). There is a lot of evidence, just not clearly able to be untangled from the potential of a Biblical source.

This though, is clear evidence of cities destroyed in the area, with land rendered uninhabitable, from geology and archaeology. The chance that this is independant of the Sodom and Gomorrah narrative is almost nil to my mind. The story goes that cities were destroyed by fire raining from the sky in the Jordan plain, and here we have a city destroyed by fire raining from the sky in the Jordan plain. It is the equivalent to how they found Pompeii and Herculaneum and connecting it to the Roman accounts.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

Middle Bronze Age and "1600s" bc is too late for Abraham who was ca 2000s in Massoretic. EVen more so too late when we consider that the conventional Egyptian/Palestinian/Mesopotamian dynasties/strata dates are too long/old by a few centuries and the true dates will be lower.
Tell el-Hammam is not demonstrated to have name Sodom or Gomorrah associated with it in any sources?
Sodom is more likely in the Lishan or Bab ed Dra or under the larger northern half of the sea or in the south coasts rather than north coasts, or the west coasts or south-east coast. Compare the position of Tiahuanaco (Atlantis city) in relation to lake Titicaca (which is inverse to position of Eridu to Persian gulf).

So the dates don't bother me much. The dating of the Levant chronologies prior to about the 500's BC are terrible. There are legion inconsistencies. In the last 150 years the fall of Nineveh has been redated 4 times for instance. Essentially Champollion's Egyptian connecting of Shesonq with Shisaq of the Bible and choosing a specific rising of Sirius is then connected to the Biblical chronology of the later Kingdoms and tacked onto the Greco-Roman timeline. It is certainly not clear at all, and most sites are dated by pottery - which is very dodgy, as it is based on nested assumptions.

With this site, they carbon dated it, but I am not sure how accurate that can really be. What evidence of accuracy do we have for a high-pressure firestorm as to carbon dating? So I am taking the date with a pinch of salt personally, but am willing to accept it provisionally. As a consequence, I would date Abraham to be roughly contemporary to this, even if a specific reading of the Masoretic text or Ussherian chronology might disagree.

The Tell does not have a name associated with it at all, but the chance that a site was vapourised by fire from the sky and is not one of the cities of the plain seems far-fetched to me.

 

[Mosheli]

I agree that dating is unreliable but usually the dates are too long/old not too low/short/late. So this site is pretty certainly long after Abraham's date in the bible. Shishak definitely doesn't match Sosenq I, he likely matches Ramses II, which means the dates are too long/old not too short/low. Sirius dating is accepted as being unreliable. Carbon dating is usually too long/old not too short/low.

I'm not so sure it was destroyed by fire from the sky, and even if it was there were other similar instances like Elijah at Mt Carmel.

It seems strange that there is no evidence of the fire and brimstone at Jericho if Sodom was at the northern end of the Dead Sea.

No one seems to consider the meanings of the names.

Sodom/Sedom "consuming, burning" / "scorch, burnt, volcanic, bituminous" / "fasten, fortify, strengthen" / "secret, mystery, hidden" (Hebrew).

Or
Su-edin(-ki)/Subartu/'Sumasti /Su-rum "good Edin (city/land)" (Sumerian/Akkadian).
Shu-edin-hum/S(h)iri-hum / Shu-rum-hum? /Siru-hum? /Edin-hum? / Rum-hum? "garden Edin fruitful" (Sumerian/Akkadian).
Edin "steppe(land), plain" (Sumerian/Akkadian).

Gomorrah/Ghamorah/Amorah "heap" or "submersion, be deep, copious (water)" or "a pile of ruins" or "(corn) sheaf".

Ad(a)mah "fort" / "earthy".

Zeboiim/Zeboyim "deer (plural), goats, gazelles, roes" or "hyenas".

Bela "destroying, destruction".

Zoar/Segor "little, smallness" / "window/sky-light, enlightenment from above".

Lasha "cleft, fissure, break", "spring".

Siddim "pitted vale" / "the plains, flats".

Shaveh (Kiriathaim) "plain".

Emeq ha-Melek "King's Dale/Valley".

 

[Semper-Fi]

I'm not so sure it was destroyed by fire from the sky,
and even if it was there were other similar instances
like Elijah at Mt Carmel.

Several places in the bible God sends fire, like at Mt Carmel.
But Here He sends fire and brimstone and destroys several cities.

The Dead Sea zone was once home to a thriving civilization.
Excavations revealed utter destruction and an instantaneous
end of civilization, of 40,000 to 65,000 people killed instantly.

A dramatic fireball, a superheated air blast, and a fallout that
wiped out the region below. Scientists have estimated that a
10-megaton airburst yield in the atmosphere would have been
sufficient to cause the destruction evidenced on the ground.

Superheating to temperatures perhaps as hot as the surface of the
sun. A “tidal wave” of boiling hot salt had swept over the land.
The scene of devastation they say was caused by an exploding meteor.

“Then the Lord rained down fire and burning sulfur from the sky on
Sodom and Gomorrah. He utterly destroyed them, along with the other
cities and villages of the plain, wiping out all the people and
every bit of vegetation.
-

Before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Genesis 13:10 describes the location as a veritable
“garden of the Lord,” “well watered every where.”

Abraham and his descendants chose Canaan as their homeland.
Lot had first pick and chose the Jordan Valley.
The entire valley was like Eden, the garden of God.

The Salt Sea (Dead Sea), the world’s deepest hypersaline lake—
10 times saltier than the ocean. The Bible associates salt with total
destruction. To this day it is utterly saline and quite literally dead.

Sodom and “her daughters”- “They were haughty and
practiced abominable deeds” (Ezekiel 16:49-50)

Several scriptures make clear Sodom and Gomorrah were
glutted with sexual sin—especially homosexual sin.

Isaiah 3:8-9, like Today people who proudly “declare their
sin as Sodom, they hide it not.” Never in history has
sodomy been so openly celebrated.

-
Another “fire and brimstone” event soon—this time worldwide.
The coming calamity is going to be “greater than the
punishment of the sin of Sodom” (Lamentations 4:6).

Jesus prophesied, “But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom
it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.
Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed”
(Luke 17:29-30). The ashes from Sodom and Gomorrah served as
a warning to the ungodly (2 Peter 2:6-7).

-
But God says He will restore again life and abundance to this
millennia-old, uninhabitable, barren wasteland we see today.

The Prophet Ezekiel wrote of a coming time, when a river
will flow out of God’s new headquarters in Jerusalem,
heading east into the Jordan Valley.

That pure river will heal the contaminated waters of
the Dead Sea, making them fresh and pure.

Fishermen will line the shores of the once infamous sea,
filling their nets with fish. Fruit trees of every kind will
grow along the riverbanks, producing fruit every month.

 

[Mosheli]

I'm not disputing most of what you say. But the fact remains that Hammam can not be Sodom or any of the other 4 cities because the date is too late, and the location has problems.

Sodom's sin was not just homosexuality, but because of "lies/lying, they were arrogant, pride, haughty, unconcerned, didn’t care about the poor/needy", etc (Ezek 16:49, Rev 11:8).

 

[ha-adamah]

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 happened around 1970 BC, give or take.

The war of 5 kings against 4 in Genesis 14 could only have happened in a very small window of opportunity between 2000 and 1950 BC when there were no impediments for the four kings to invade as far as the Dead Sea. Before 2000 BC, the Sumerians ruled that land, and after 1950 the Assyrians then the Babylonians under Hamurrabi.

The nations of Genesis 14 included Elamites and Amoriates (Goyyim), both hated by everyone.