Today, whilst bored in a waiting room, I picked up a book of children’s bible stories. Eventually, after peering through copious amounts of sanitized versions of various Biblical tales, I came upon the story of Lot and Sodom. The chapter concluded with stating something to the effect of, “Today, the scorched ruins of Sodom can still be seen at the bottom of the Red Sea.”
Huh? I’ve never heard this before. I was under the impression Sodom’s location was unknown. And scorched remains? Are they lying to these kids, or am I misinformed?
Sounds like a great big lie to me. I think the BBC (or another UK network TV company) made a series of documentries called ‘Ancient Apocalypse’ which looked at the destruction of Sodom and Goraah (spelling?). Though if IRRC correctly they did find some evidence of the Red sea rising, most of the program was conjecture not really backed up with any evidence.
I still doubt this can be called Sodom or Gommorah. How would they know? There must’ve been thousands of ancient cities in that area over a course of a few thousand years. It could be anything down there.
Heh. One of the sites actually is convinced that a large pillar in the shape of a woman near the Dead Sea must be Lot’s wife. (I doubt it ist, since it’s made of rock and not salt and everything).
No one knows where Sodom or Gomorrah are. There is a place along the shores of the Dead Sea that is traditionally called S’dom, but there isn’t any super evidence that proves this. There are archaeological ruins all around the Dead Sea, which shouldn’t surprise anyone - Jericho, the oldest city in the world, is also right next to the Dead Sea. Human civilization has been in this area for 10,000 years, and there is a lot of evidence of it. There are, however, no visible ruins in the Dead Sea. I am not a chemist, but I doubt anything could last that long in Dead Sea water. Swimming in the Dead Sea is painful. That isn’t regular water there.
There are submerged sites visible in the Mediterranean. Caesarea, which was one of the two major cities of ancient Judea, is now partially under water.
Splanky’s second link is the closest to what I thought of on reading this: a year or so back, Channel 4 here ran a documentary about a fellow called Michael Sanders who was looking for Sodom on the bed of the Dead Sea. By virtually any measure, this was one of the worst factual programmes I’ve ever seen screened on British television. His basic argument amounted to the fact that he’d come across a 17th century map of the Holy Land in which Sodom was depicted disappearing into the middle of the Dead Sea. Without seemingly pausing to ask why an early modern mapmaker far removed from the location in question might be privy to any special knowledge of the matter, he assumed that this was valid evidence for the city being beneath the lake. He than faffed around with inconclusive satellite images (see his web page above) and identified “anomalies” in the Sea. The final step was to hire a submarine to examine these and declare that they were “strange” formations and worthy of further research. The fact that the Isreali military were conducting exercises in the area - never! - also seemed to convince him that there was some coverup going on. To the skeptical viewer with no preconceptions about what the bottom of the Dead Sea might look like, this all seemed, well, inconclusive.
Perhaps not quite as bad as Ron Wyatt, but that ain’t saying much.
I’ve read (sorry, can’t dig it up) that many of the biblical stories, including this one, are better understood as occurring in Ur or thereabouts. There’s an older flood story in Gilgamesh, for example, and better archeological/geological evidence that flooding occured in that region. Since that’s where Abraham was from, it would make sense that some of these accounts are transposed from their point of origin to the place where the oral history was written and redacted.
