ZAHAVA SCHWARTZ
For centuries, skeptics have dismissed the Biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah as myth. The story seemed too dramatic, too supernatural to be a historical fact. But new archaeological findings near the Dead Sea are forcing even doubters to reconsider. Dr. Titus Kennedy, a field archaeologist with the Discovery Institute, has uncovered compelling evidence that matches the Bible's description of divine destruction from above.
The breakthrough centers on a geographic anchor that has been hiding in plain sight for millennia. Of the five cities mentioned in Genesis as located in the Jordan Valley, one, called Zoar, was never lost to history. Named in numerous ancient documents and located on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, Zoar provides the key to finding its infamous neighbors. Kennedy, who headed excavations in the area of ancient Zoar, explains that when angels came to save Lot from Sodom, he escaped to Zoar that same day. This means archaeologists searching for Sodom have a limited area to cover.
The answer lies in the nature of the destruction itself. For years, the leading candidate for Sodom has been Bab edh-Dhra, an Early Bronze Age city on the southeastern shore of the Dead Sea within a day's walk of Zoar. Kennedy reports that mass charnel houses have been found there, where the dead were buried above ground instead of being interred in caves. These burial sites show evidence of fires that started from their roofs and spread downward. "This hints that the destruction came from above and was not deliberately set from within the tombs," Kennedy said. This matches precisely what the Bible describes.
The Bible records the fate of these cities with chilling clarity: "Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And He overthrew those cities, and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground" (Genesis 19:24-25). The Hebrew word gofrit, translated as brimstone, refers to sulfur, and Kennedy's excavations have revealed sulfur balls embedded in the soil around the Dead Sea, golf-ball to tennis-ball-sized spheres that are extremely flammable.
About 20 kilometers south of Bab edh-Dhra lies the site of Numeira, tentatively identified as Gomorrah. There, Kennedy discovered human skeletons beneath a collapsed tower. "We don't usually find complete skeletons just lying around in excavation sites from this period," Kennedy noted, because it was customary to bury the dead in sealed tombs. This suggests a sudden catastrophe in which people died where they stood, much like what happened in Pompeii during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Two other nearby sites, Feifa and Khanazir, which may have been the remaining cities of the five-city grouping, also showed signs of sudden destruction and fire. All five cities existed in the Early Bronze Age and were fortified. Then they were abandoned. Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira were definitively destroyed by massive fires, and at Feifa and Khanazir, where illegal digging has occurred, ash layers have been discovered. Meanwhile, Zoar remained occupied not just for centuries but for millennia, still existing in the Byzantine period and beyond, retaining its name as the Bible indicates.
The archaeological evidence for Zoar's survival is matched by repeated Biblical references. Moses mentioned Zoar in Deuteronomy 34:3 as a geographical boundary. The Sages understood that Zoar's preservation served as testimony to God's judgment on the other cities. Isaiah and Jeremiah both referenced Zoar as a living city in their times, in stark contrast to how they spoke of Sodom as destroyed and desolate.
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