Sodom And Gomorrah Revisited

I’ve searched high and low for all the different links I could find pertaining to the discovery of the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and ferretting out the truth is about as easy as, ironically, finding the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Not that my previous post called The Last Days Of Sodom And Gomorrah is innaccurate, far from it. A perusal of various different links reveals the facts of the discoveries. Where it seems to get tricky is in the matter of the interpretation. But this is easily explained.

By far the best site I have found so far is to be found at the web-site listed for the Bblical Archaeology Society. The only problem with it is that the article about it was written in-get this now-1980.

In a sense, that is almost ancient history itself. Still, because it is the best site, and because it is an excruciatingly long link, and because the little link box in Bloggers post editor can’t be pasted into from copied links, or mine can’t anyway, I have supplied this link as a title to this post title. Just click onto the title of this post and it will take you there.

Another good site, which contains a link to the Smitsonian, is to be found here at Bibleandscience.com.

Other links, such as here, verify the discovery, while pointing out that this is proof that the ancient cities were real, and, unbelievably, that the discoveries verify the Biblical account. Well, this is an easy enough claim to make, all you have to do is ignore, i.e. not mention, any of the evidence to the contrary.

Still others likwise verify the authenticity of the discovery, but also from a Christian perspective, in a negative way. These sites could not be the sites of the ancient cities because-get this, now-the timeline is improper. The cities were destroyed two hundred years before the Biblical cities, so Bab edh Dhra and Numeira can’t be Sodom and Gomorrah. As though the Biblical writers would never dream of playing around with the facts, or heaven forbid actually make shit up to suit their own purposes.

This one here describes the sites, but gives as the site of Sodom an entire different place in an entirely different area adjacent to the Dead Sea. Again, the writer of this article as well seems overly dependent, even addicted, to the Biblical account.

I guess by now you get the message. The only thing for which there seems to be any kind of agreement is that five different places were discovered that were at one time ancient cities, that they were destroyed around roughly 2300 BC, and that is pretty much it.

I will stick to my thesis, as shown in the original post on the subject, for the following reasons.

1. There were five of them, the exact same number given in the Biblical account.

2. Bab edh Dhra (Sodom) and Numeira (Gomorrah) at least were totally destroyed by an intense fire which was obviously profound in it’s intensity. (the others so far as I have been able to determine had not been excavated).

3. It fits the story as well as could be hoped for, in fact, better than any scholar would have dared to hope for.

So why is this story so little known? Well, let’s see now. Because it doesn’t fit the Biblical story, perhaps? Sure, I know I said it did, just now. But there are parts that don’t fit.

The largest of the cities, Bab edh Dhra (Sodom) had at most a population of a thousand, and maybe as little as four hundred people. Yet, this was the largest and most important, according to the Bible. It is also seemingly the largest of the discovered ruins.

Yet, this was a city that, along with the other four, according to the Bible, engaged in an armed rebellion against their overlord Cherdolaomer, the King of Babylon, and his allies, so it must have been huge, right?

Well, if you believe the Bible is the infallible word of God, you’d damned well better, by golly.

What seems to have actually happenned is as I said, at the time the stories were circulated a mythology was created to explain the barely visible ruins. To put it in laymans language, they made the shit up. There was a purpose to it, of course, but you have to wonder just how authentic it can be or how well it was believed by the perpetrators of the myth when they didn’t even bother to make up names for the places that would make sense as being descriptive of their founding, nature, character, or environment.

No one would found a city and call it Sodom, which means “Burndt”, or Gomorrah, which means “A Ruined Heap”.

And in the midst of researching these links I made another discovery, one that is just as unlikely. And that is, if I were the King of Sodom, and discovered that my name, Bera, meant “Son Of Evil”, I think I’d be a little like the “Boy Named Sue” of Johnny Cash hit song fame, I’d be wanting to kick my old mans ass. Unlike old Sue, I’d change my name.

So what happenned obviously is that the ancient Israelites took the old story of the destroyed cities and made a myth out of it in which, of course, their founding ancestors and their God played a vital, pivotal role. Nothing at all mysterious about it. It was slander on a grand scale, no doubt, of the true cities inhabitants. On the other hand, you have to look at all this in perspective. By the time these stories were circulated amongst the Israelites, the destruction of the cities, would have occurred-take a deep breath now-

No less than seven hundred years, at least, before the stories were told. Think about that. That would be like me finding the ruins of an old Indian settlement in Kentucky that had been destroyed in the year 1300 AD and, not having the slightest knowledge of the history of the settlement, the true nature of it’s destruction, or the character and culture of the people, to say nothing of having limited at best knowledge of archaeology or anthropology, etc, I devised a story to explain the catastrophe.

How acurrate could I possibly be? Therefore, how accurrate could the original purveyors of the myth of Sodom and Gomorrah have been?

So there you have what is in my opinion the answer to the question as to why this discovery isn’t so well known. These ruins affirm the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Then, they turn right around and demolish it.

Therefore, you have people that get excited over the discovery of a rock formation on a mountain in Iran that looks vaquely like a ship and are all too ready to gleefully jump the gun and declare the discovery of “Noah’s Arc” as proof of the literal truth of the Bible. But, as embarrassing as this is when the truth comes out, hey, it still doesn’t disprove the Bible, it just proves this particular find was a false alarm.

This, however, is not a false alarm. This, my friends, is a five alarm fire, and it burns to ashes any legtimacy as to claims for the literalist interpretation of the Bible. And that is all too appropriate in this case especially.

It is valid, historical proof, not of the Biblical accounts or their accurracy, but rather is proof of something more substantial-the cities of Bab edh Dhra and Numeira are one irrefutable snapshot in time, and are proof of the historical evolution of mythology and religion.

True scientists and archaeologists-people that actually love and revere the truth, in other words-can be forgiven for taking the opportunity to conduct their work in private, in peace, and away from the controversy of the glaring lights and accussations born of religious fanaticism. The religous fanatics, for their part, will be all too happy in this case to allow them to do so.