Archeology appears to confirm biblical account of Sodom’s destruction?

Archaeologists have discovered evidence that appears to prove the destruction of the city of Sodom as described in the Bible.Show more

The discussion about the historicity of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was recently reignited when an interview with a biblical scholar went viral, and CBN published an article titled “Experts Confirm Genesis 19, Biblical City Destroyed by Explosion 1,000 Times Larger Than Atomic Bomb.”

In a video that has been viewed over 1.4 million times, biblical scholar Dr. John Bergsma explained why archaeologists think they discovered the remains of the destroyed city of Sodom.

n a video that has been viewed over 1.4 million times, biblical scholar Dr. John Bergsma explained why archaeologists think they discovered the remains of the destroyed city of Sodom.

Bergsma told Catholic podcast host Matt Fradd that he could not believe the story of Sodom and Gomorra in Genesis 19 was historical when he was growing up.

“It was a challenge to my faith,” he admitted.

However, around 15 years ago, Bergsma attended a talk by researchers who made archeological discoveries at Tall el-Hammam in Jordan.

“As I’m listening to this presentation for about 45 minutes, near the end of it, I began to realize, oh my gosh, these people presenting think that they have found the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Bergsma explained that the research team of Steven Collins of Trinity Southwest University believed that the remains of the ancient city found at the archeological site prove it was destroyed by a massive explosion akin to an atomic bomb.

The pottery found by the researchers was glazed with trinitite, a glassy residue that was created by the setting of a nuclear bomb in the desert.

“Trinitite is that glass layer that you get when you basically set off an atomic bomb in the desert, and it melts the glass, and you get a kind of crystalline formation that’s called trinitite, so this pottery was raised to over 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit for a brief moment of time,” Bergsma said.

According to the researchers, the human remains found at Tall el-Hammam point toward a massive blast from above that devastated the city.

“They find human skeletons that are complete up until about halfway up the backbone, and then there’s just a scorch mark, and there’s nothing on the top of the body, and they find the skeleton behind a wall that’s about four feet high,” Bergsma stated.

“So, what’s going on here? Long story short, they find massive evidence that a huge heat blast from the sky at about 25 degrees above the horizon incinerated these Twin Cities on the Jordanian side of the [Jordan] River just north of the Dead Sea.”

“From a natural material explanation, this looks like a meteor blast.”

“When a meteor comes into the atmosphere, it heats up and then explodes, and it can be like an atomic blast, but again, the timing and location and the cities all track with what is described of Abraham and Lot in Genesis 19 and the surrounding chapters.”

A meteor blast a thousand times larger than an atomic bomb

Archeologist Steven Collins theorized that the blast above the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah may have been even larger than the so-called Tunguska Event of 1908, a gigantic explosion in Siberia caused by a meteor air burst.

A paper published in Nature in 2021 confirms Collins’ theory. According to the authors, who used a supercomputer to analyze the data from the site at Tall el-Hammam, the meteor blast that destroyed the ancient city created a 15-megaton airburst, which would have been larger than the Tunguska event and have had more than 1,000 times more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

The blast that likely destroyed Sodom also created large amounts of salt, possibly accounting for the biblical account of Lot’s wife becoming “a pillar of salt” (cf. Gen. 19:26).

Emeritus professor of earth science James Kennett told Relevant Magazine that “The salt was thrown up due to the high impact pressures…[a]nd it may be that the impact partially hit the Dead Sea, which is rich in salt.”

In addition to wiping out the entire population of Sodom and Gomorrah, the blast rendered 500 square kilometers of land almost uninhabitable for centuries since the salt made the soil infertile and, therefore, unusable for agriculture.

In a 2015 conference paper, Collins and his colleague Phillip Silvia wrote, “The soil/ash samples gathered from Tall el-Hammam contain evidence of top-soil destruction and sub-soil contamination with Dead Sea salts that would have prevented the cultivation of crops for many centuries following the event, which explains (in part, at least) the long occupational hiatus.”

Again, this seems to confirm the description of the events in Genesis 19, which shows the general devastation in the region, including the loss of plant life: “And he destroyed these cities, and all the country about, all the inhabitants of the cities, and all things that spring from the earth.” (Gen 19:25) https://www.lifesitenews.com/analysis/archeology-appears-to-confirm-biblical-account-of-sodoms-destruction/?utm_source=most_recent&utm_campaign=usa