Archaeologists and theologians are working together to analyze recent discoveries and explain what happened to the ancient city of Sodom found in the Bible’s Old Testament book of Genesis.
Dr. John Bergsma, a professor of theology at Steubenville, Ohio’s Franciscan University, thinks the evidence uncovered at Tall el-Hammam located in the southern Jordan Valley may have been caused by a very large exploding space rock, according to Relevant magazine.
Tall el-Hammam’s sudden disappearance about 3,600 years ago has been a mystery to archaeologists for years. In the city’s ruins, there are no signs of an extended military siege or conflict. However, other signs point to a different catastrophic cause, the outlet reported.
One thing that drew Bergsma’s interest was the marks of extreme heat left on pottery fragments, human skeletal remains, and other artifacts, Relevant reported. This type of heat damage could possibly be from a giant asteroid exploding above the city similar to what Genesis 19:24-25 describes in the Old Testament.
“Then GOD rained brimstone and fire down on Sodom and Gomorrah—a river of lava from GOD out of the sky!—and destroyed these cities and the entire plain and everyone who lived in the cities and everything that grew from the ground.”
The evidence points to a sudden, high-temperature destructive event that occurred. Smithsonian Magazine reported that pottery pieces from the site showed melting on the outside, but were left untouched on the inside.
In addition, pottery shards found at the Tall el-Hammam site were also covered in Trinitite. It is the glassy residue that was left on the desert floor after the plutonium-based Trinity nuclear bomb test on July 16, 1945, near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The glass is primarily comprised of arkosic sand including quartz grains and feldspar that has been melted by an atomic blast.
Bergsma also told the outlet about the unique grotesque condition of the human remains at the dig site.
“Human skeletons 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,” he described. “They found massive evidence that a huge heat blast from the sky at about 25C above the horizon incinerated these twin cities on the Jordanian side of the river.”
Genesis 19:27-28 describes the aftermath in the valley.
“Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord. He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace.”
The high-energy airburst also appears to have generated large amounts of salt that hearkens back to the Genesis 19 account of Lot’s wife being turned into a pillar of salt, Relevant reported.
“As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, ‘Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!'” — Genesis 19:17
Bergsma told Relevant that he’s convinced what the archaeologists have found explains what happened to the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
“It really changed my perspective on the Old Testament map because what it pointed out to me is things that sounded too outlandish to be history…is actually shown to be a historical event,” he said.
As CBN News reported in July, Collins told Joel. C Rosenberg in an episode of The Rosenberg Report how he and his team found the biblical cities in Jordan.
Collins said he used the scriptures as clues to find the cities’ location, focusing his search on the Jordan River Valley.