During the autumn various newspapers reported the archaeological discovery of Sodom.
It was a Daily Mail and an Express headline in October. The Independent ran the story under the heading ‘Biblical City of Sodom Found in Jordan’. Faithful en readers may remember we covered this in June 2013. So it is delightful to see other media sources catching up with us! The story is compelling and it is encouraging to see it gaining prominence in mainstream media.
A sudden end
Steven Collins has been site director at Tall el-Hammam in Jordan since 2005. Over ten seasons of excavations, his teams have revealed a city much larger than anything else in the surrounding area. In existence from c.3500 – c.1540 BC, it was a thriving Bronze Age city on a busy trade route during the time of the Patriarchs. Collins has uncovered mud brick walls, ten metres high and over five metres wide; evidence of a prosperous and powerful centre.
According to one magazine article the city came to ‘a sudden, inexplicable end toward the end of the Middle Bronze Age – and the ancient city became a relative wasteland for 700 years’ (Popular Archaeology Magazine, Fall 2015). There was some rebuilding and reoc-cupation after these 700 years, but nothing on the scale of what had been there previously. Given that Jericho, from the same region, has been continuously occupied from ancient times, the disappearance of Sodom demands explanation.
Melted pottery
The discovery of melted pottery sherds are in keeping with an intense fiery destruction. Collins believes these could be explained by some kind of air burst meteorite. This would leave no crater but would explain the localised destruction. It would fit the biblical story of the destruction of Sodom by fire and brimstone (Genesis 19.24). Each year a short season of excavation yields more finds and there is increasing support for Collins’s identification of the city with Sodom.
Biblical guidance
Another interesting feature of the discovery is the way that details in the biblical text led archaeologists to this location. Many older maps of Bible lands locate Sodom and Gomorrah somewhere on the south-eastern edge of the Dead Sea. However, there are no likely candidates there, despite the imaginative claims some have made regarding natural rock formations.
The biblical text points to a location to the north of the Dead Sea. Sodom is described as on the east of the Jordan plain, opposite the central hill country (Genesis 13.10–11). The Hebrew word for ‘plain’, on which Sodom is located, actually means disc or circle. It is an accurate description of the circular plain on the northern edge of the Dead Sea, with Jericho to the west and Tall el-Hammam to the east. Abraham was able to see the destruction of Sodom from a vantage point near Bethel. This would be impossible if Sodom were located to the south east of the Dead Sea.
Defence of the faith
The mounting archaeological evidence suggests that Collins may well have found biblical Sodom. This is still a work in progress, but there is good reason to think that the evidence is in place. It can only help our defence of the faith that this evidence is being given wider coverage in the national news.
