The timeline and location doesn’t agree with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (approx.21st century BC).So we can all stop with the heated debates over whether or not Tall el-hamman was Sodom or Gomorrah.

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Originally posted by wcb6092:

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Originally posted by Gustofer:

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Originally posted by CQB60:
Before it was named Tall el-Hammam, it was called Sodom.

Most experts agree that Sodom and Gomorrah were much further south near the southern end of the Dead Sea. That is, if memory serves, a good 40-50 miles away.

Something that happened 3600 years ago and it is within 40-50 miles. Yeah that is big miss. No way it can be that. Jeesh

In that area, now and at that time, it actually is a big miss. It wasn't close 3600 years ago and it's not close today. If one was comparing it to the distance from say Jerusalem to Nazareth (60ish miles as the crow flies) would you say that was a "big miss"? Two entirely different cities a long ways away from each other. But, none of this was the point of your snarky post now was it?

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And why don't you show some links to the experts you quote?

I didn't quote any experts, but if you'd like, you could Google "Where was Sodom and Gomorrah". You might learn something.

You made the statement ,you provide the links. Your the expert of experts I guess. Anyone can make a statement like most experts agree about a subject and just pull it out of their rear end.

Most people on this forum that make claims back it up.

Gustopher I took your advise and googled the location. No consensus on the location, by the experts. Of course if you come through with your claim, post some verification and I will be glad to read it,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodom_and_Gomorrah


Possible sites

Archibald Sayce translated an Akkadian poem describing cities that were destroyed in a rain of fire, written from the view of a person who escaped the destruction but the names of the cities are not given.[47] Sayce later mentions that the story more closely resembles the doom of Sennacherib's host.[48]

The ancient Greek historiographer Strabo states that locals living near Moasada (as opposed to Masada) say that "there were once thirteen inhabited cities in that region of which Sodom was the metropolis".[49] Strabo identifies a limestone and salt hill at the southwestern tip of the Dead Sea, and Kharbet Usdum (Hebrew: הר סדום, Har Sedom or Arabic: جبل السدوم, Jabal(u) 'ssudūm) ruins nearby as the site of biblical Sodom.[50]

The Jewish historian Josephus identifies the Dead Sea in geographic proximity to the ancient biblical city of Sodom. He refers to the lake by its Greek name, Asphaltites.[51]

In 1973, Walter E. Rast and R. Thomas Schaub discovered or visited a number of possible sites of the cities, including Bab edh-Dhra, which was originally excavated in 1965 by archaeologist Paul Lapp, and later finished by Rast and Schaub following Lapp's death. Other possibilities include Numeira, al-Safi, Feifa (or Fifa, Feifah), and Khirbet al-Khanazir, which were also visited by Schaub and Rast.[citation needed] According to Schaub, Numeira was destroyed in 2600 BCE at a different time period than Bab edh-Dhra (2350–2067 BCE).[52]

In 1993 Nancy Lapp, from the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, reported that Feifa had no Bronze Age occupation and merely an Early Bronze Age cemetery with Iron Age walls. She reports:

In the final season of the present series of excavations of the Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain (1990–1991), the walled site of Feifa was investigated and the EB cemetery that stretched to its east was excavated. The most recent surveys suggested that the visible structures of the walled site belonged to the Iron Age or Roman period.[53]

At Khirbet al-Khanazir, the walls which Rast and Schaub had identified in 1973 as houses were in reality rectangular charnel houses marking EB IV shaft tombs and not occupational structures.[54][55][56]

In 1976, Giovanni Pettinato claimed that a cuneiform tablet that had been found in the newly discovered library at Ebla contained the names of all five of the cities of the plain (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Bela), listed in the same order as in Genesis. The names si-da-mu [TM.76.G.524] and ì-ma-ar [TM.75.G.1570 and TM.75.G.2233] were identified as representing Sodom and Gomorrah, which gained some acceptance at the time.[57] However, Alfonso Archi states that, judging from the surrounding city names in the cuneiform list, si-da-mu lies in northern Syria and not near the Dead Sea, and ì-ma-ar is a variant of ì-mar, known to represent Emar, an ancient city located near Ebla.[58] Today, the scholarly consensus is that "Ebla has no bearing on ... Sodom and Gomorra."[5

Here is an expert for you Gustofer


Archaeologists Claim to have Discovered the Location of the Biblical City of Sodom

https://www.ancient-origins.ne...al-city-sodom-004148

After a dozen years excavating, an archaeological team led by Steven Collins claims to have discovered a city that matches the Bible’s Sodom, the city destroyed, along with Gomorrah, by the wrath of God:

“As the sun rose over the earth, Lot arrived in Zoar; and the Lord rained down burning asphalt from the skies onto Sodom and Gomorrah. The Lord destroyed these cities, the entire valley, everyone who lived in the cities, and all of the fertile land’s vegetation.” (Genesis 19: 23-25)

“Abraham set out early for the place where he had stood with the Lord , and looked out over Sodom and Gomorrah and over all the land of the valley. He saw the smoke from the land rise like the smoke from a kiln. When God destroyed the cities in the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot away from the disaster that overtook the cities in which Lot had lived.” (Genesis 19: 27-29)

Steven Collins of Trinity Southwest University of New Mexico and his team have spent more than ten years digging for the biblical Sodom. ( Likev World News )

The newspaper ABC reports that the city is said to be located in the southern Jordan River Valley.

Collins, of the Trinity Southwest University of New Mexico , has been directing the excavations being carried out on the mound of Tall el-Hammam , in Jordan near the Israel border. He reported to Popular Archaeology :

"We know very little about the Bronze Age in the south of the Jordan River Valley. Most archaeological maps of the area were blank. But what we have found is an important city-state , which was unknown before our project began. Tall el-Hammam matches the description of the area where Sodom was located according to the Bible. It was said to be the largest city east of Kikkar. So, I came to the conclusion that if one wanted to find Sodom, one should seek the largest city that existed in this area during the Bronze Age, in the time of Abraham. When we explored the region, Tall el-Hammam was an obvious choice, as it was five to ten times larger than the other Bronze Age cities throughout the region, even those found beyond Jordan."

Collins and the rest of his research team compared the objects discovered in Tall el-Hammam with those found in nearby cities and, based on the artifacts and the excellent location, they have no doubt that Tall el-Hammam was the ancient city of Sodom.

More at link

Here is another expert for you Gustofer.


Where Is Sodom?

https://www.biblicalarchaeolog...ites/where-is-sodom/

Where Is Sodom?
Genesis 13, archaeology and Biblical geography provide clues

Biblical Archaeology Society Staff June 05, 2022 48 Comments 95110 views Share
According to the Bible, “the men of Sodom were wicked” (Genesis 13, verse 13). For its many sins, God destroyed Sodom and all the inhabitants of the “cities of the plain” in an intense conflagration, but not before allowing Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family to flee to safety.

The stories of Sodom and its destruction, whether historical or not, were clearly understood to have occurred near the Dead Sea, among the so-called “cities of the plain” mentioned in Genesis 13, verse 12. But where exactly was this plain, and was a particular site associated with Sodom? In the article “Where Is Sodom?” in the March/April 2013 issue of BAR, archaeologist Steven Collins combines clues from Biblical geography with archaeological evidence from the site of Tall el-Hammam in Jordan to suggest that the author of Genesis 13 located Sodom in a fertile area northeast of the Dead Sea.

So where is Sodom, according to the Biblical geography of Genesis 13? Sodom and its sister cities are located in the large oval-shaped, fertile plain just north of the Dead Sea called simply ha-kikkar, or “the Disk” (Genesis 13, verse 13). In Biblical geography, this well-watered disk-shaped plain, said to have been located east of the highland towns of Bethel and Ai, was an area “like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt” where Lot moved his family after his quarrel with Abraham (Genesis 13, verse 10). It is also the place where the Biblical writers set their dramatic tale of Sodom’s wickedness and destruction (Genesis 19).

Seeking to answer the question “Where is Sodom?” and using the Biblical geography of Genesis 13 as a guide, Collins decided to excavate Tall el-Hammam, an extensive and heavily fortified site located in modern Jordan at the eastern edge of the kikkar. First inhabited during the Chalcolithic period (4600–3600 B.C.E.), the site attained its maximum size during the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000–1600 B.C.E.) and became one of the largest cities in Canaan. But unlike other Canaanite cities that continued to flourish in the Late Bronze Age (1550-1200 B.C.E.), Tall el-Hammam was destroyed by fire at the end of the Middle Bronze Age and remained uninhabited for centuries.

More at link

My aren't we being childish tonight.

Look Sparky, CQB posted that Tall el-Hammam was, in fact, Sodom. I simply replied that that is not the case.

You seem to have taken that personally. Let it go...and, perhaps, grow up a little.

You stated "Most experts agree that Sodom and Gomorrah were much further south near the southern end of the Dead Sea. That is, if memory serves, a good 40-50 miles away."

Now you can not back up your words. Stop trying to deflect.

So we can all agree that no one really knows anything for sure about it but there are plenty of theories that we can choose to believe or not. Got it.

I just started reading the book Discovering the City of Sodom by Collins and Scott. I’ve been interested in the hypothesis since I heard about it and a full scale book will obviously (hopefully?) have much more detail than a journal article, but on the other hand the book was copyrighted in 2013, much earlier than the article. I expected the book to have been published more recently (should have checked rather than assuming).

There were also more recent author corrections to the journal article, such as here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-35266-6

In any event, this sort of thing fascinates me for a number of reasons, not least for what they tell us about the origins of ancient traditions. So thanks again to wcb6092 for starting this thread and starting me on an interesting path.

Para's comet: the warm-ups before the game starts.

Oh, goodie. Another religious argument. Just what we needed.

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Originally posted by CQB60:
Before it was named Tall el-Hammam, it was called Sodom.

The compact layer of debris gave rise to another name: HandaGod el-Flattedit.

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Originally posted by V-Tail:
Oh, goodie. Another religious argument. Just what we needed.

You betcha! I know I look forward to religious belief being interjected into discussions as much as possible almost as much as politics......

The abstract is fascinating though. Melted roofing materials, carbonized wooden beams, charred grains and bones. Pottery turned to glass and bubbling. Interesting stuff. The section about human bones in the destruction layer in particular. Did anyone else read that? Charcoal bits found all around the bones, toes hyper-flexed (consistent with exposure to high temps). And another city Tell es-Sultan (proposed site of ancient Jericho) located 22km east was burned at the same time as Tall el-Hammam.

If you do a bit of digging, you'll find that the conclusions in that paper have come into question; a matter of researchers finding what they wanted to find. I'm inclined towards the skepticism and I am not talking about the place being either Sodom or Gommorah.

I just finished Discovering the City of Sodom by Steven Collins, the archeologist who originally identified Tall el-Hammam as the possible site of the city of Sodom described in the Old Testament. I read the book in hopes that it would provide more details about the evidence referred to by the Nature science journal article that the ancient city there had been destroyed by a cataclysmic Tunguska-type airburst. Unfortunately, though, that was not true.

I believe the author made compelling arguments that the geography of the site was the best match in the area for the biblical description of Sodom’s location. As he pointed out, although it’s quite possible that the writers of the Old Testament invented fanciful stories or explanations about events, it’s likely that when they included descriptions of geographical features, they would have used those with which they were actually familiar.

As I noted before, the book was published about 10 years ago, though, and there wasn’t much discussion of possible high temperature blast effects at the site. One minor exception was the discovery of a piece of pottery that had one vitrified surface, evidently due to short exposure to very high heat. The other evidence presented in the Nature article was not mentioned in the book. One thing I noted about the Nature article was that Collins was not listed among its contributors.

As a description of archeology in the Middle East, including how the author’s claims were analyzed and critiqued by other authorities, the book was however interesting and added to my knowledge of things of which I was largely ignorant. So, for anyone else interested in the possibility that Tall el-Hammam was destroyed by a Tunguska-type event and that it therefore became the basis for the Sodom and Gomorrah tale in the Old Testament, the book does provide some useful background and arguments.

There are probably many other recent sources about the subject, but I just ran across these two videos. The commentator in the first doesn’t seem to be very well informed about some things, but the video is significantly shorter. As for the second, I got much more about half way through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDiYb20iAsM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkATIhRxxaE