Sodom and Gomorrah and their fiery fate crop up in the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament,
in the Torah, and in the Quran.
But whatever you've heard about Sodom and Gomorrah, you're probably getting things a
bit confused.
Here's the truth about Sodom and Gomorrah.
Sodom and Gomorrah are like Batman and Robin, you're so used to hearing them together that
one without the other sounds weird.
Yet this cozy partnership is a little misleading, because Sodom and Gomorrah were actually part
of a larger group of civilization called the Cities of the Plain, a collection of five
great cities that sat along the Jordan River in Biblical times.
The three forgotten cities aren't just background details.
Although they appear in the story of Lot far less than Sodom or Gomorrah, they have their
own names and everything.
Deuteronomy identifies two of the other cities as Admah and Zeboim, while Genesis 19:23 identifies
the final city as Zoar.
But aren't Sodom and Gomorrah still the ones that get destroyed?
Well, that's sort of the issue.
The Bible repeatedly makes it clear that Admah and Zeboim went up in the conflagration, thanks
to being equally sinful.
Zoar's role is even more important.
It's the surviving town that Lot flees to as God implements His whole plan of "Kill
everyone, and let me sort them out."
If the average person knows anything about the Cities of the Plain, it's that they were
incinerated because of homosexuality.
However!
There's also been a recent tradition of people saying, nuh-uh, it was because the inhabitants
were unkind to strangers.
While homosexuality and inhospitality are the two most likely reasons Sodom went kaboom,
there are more than those two options in town.
We don't just mean on the fringes of theology, either.
The Bible itself is a veritable galaxy of fan theories from different prophets on what
exactly God was trying to say by blowing up Sodom in such a dramatic fashion.
For example, Ezekiel says:
"Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed
and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy."
In other words, Sodom was iced for being a fantasyland that hated charity.
But there are even more interpretations.
Jeremiah implies adultery was what put a bee in God's bonnet.
Finally, 2 Peter talks about Sodom being "lawless," which you could probably either read as the
inhabitants breaking a Biblical law on homosexuality, or as them breaking one of the literally zillions
of other laws the Bible covers.
"Then we'll write our own bible, with less Sodom and more Gomorrah."
The reason for all these multiple interpretations is likely that the Bible's books were all
written hundreds of years apart by wildly different people, all with wildly different
axes to grind.
Looking for a single, unified message from God in the story of Sodom is like looking
for an easy way of beating Battletoads.
Impossible.
Most of the Old Testament is set one heck of a long time ago, and the Book of Genesis
is set even before that.
So you won't be surprised to hear it's difficult to find scientific proof of its cities.
But one major exception might be the city of Sodom.
Back in 2005, archaeologists uncovered a vast site in Jordan known as Tall el-Hammam.
According to Popular Archeology, the discoveries they've since made may support the idea of
the city being the Biblical Sodom.
Now, there are some caveats here.
The lead archaeologist, Steven Collins, is an evangelical who went into the excavation
specifically looking for Sodom.
As such, it might not be surprising that he thinks he found it.
On the other hand, he definitely found an actual historical site of major importance,
in an area identified as the most probable location of the Cities of the Plain, dating
from around when they would have existed, that just happened to have been destroyed
by fire.
Whether or not Tall el-Hammam is Sodom, it went out in a similar fashion.
The team uncovered a layer of ash dating from the Middle Bronze period burying the site,
along with pottery that had burned at temperatures far too high to have been produced in a kiln.
One pottery shard had even melted into glass.
What could possibly cause such high temperatures in the ancient world?
Good question!
In 2018, Steven Collins previewed a paper on what he believes happened at Tall el-Hammam.
According to News Corp Australia, the signs point to the ancient city being wiped out
3,700 years ago in a cataclysmic event.
It was an event that created so much heat it turned pottery to glass, swamped the surrounding
land in saline water, and rendered the site uninhabitable for 700 years.
We'll give you a clue as to what could do all that: the same thing that wiped out the
dinosaurs.
"Whoa."
A meteor exploding over the Dead Sea could easily account for all the damage seen at
Tall el-Hammam.
Remember that meteor that exploded over a Russian city back in 2013?
That was just a minor airburst.
In 1908, a much bigger airburst likely occurred over Siberia's forests.
Known as the Tunguska Event, it flattened 775 square miles of forest and could have
wiped out a sizable city if it hadn't happened over freaking Siberia.
This theorized Tall el-Hammam airburst would've been half the size of the Tunguska meteor.
The difference is, it happened right beside five thriving cities.
It's easy to see how someone witnessing such an event in 1600 B.C. would automatically
assume God had just decided to blow up the world.
Still, Collins' theory hasn't been confirmed yet.
Until someone does some serious peer reviewing of his paper, a theory is all it'll be.
Zoar first crops up in Genesis 13, when Lot is striking out onto the plain of Jordan after
parting ways with Abraham.
Referred to in the Bible as the smallest city, it soon winds up the biggest by default when
Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim all turn into clouds of smoke and death.
But Zoar also has another claim to fame.
We haven't just found the city's remains, we know plenty about its non-Biblical history,
too.
Just check out the British Museum's overview of the site, as part of their summer lecture
series.
Zoar has evidence of Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age activity.
It was a serious trading settlement.
The Romans wrote about it, along with the Byzantines.
Even Islamic sources record its existence.
Researchers have been digging there at least 20 years, and new discoveries keep cropping
up.
There are quite a few instances of Biblical stories overlapping with tales from other
cultures.
The tale of Sodom and Gomorrah is no different.
But rather than cropping up on an ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform or something, its doppelganger
can be found somewhere much more accessible.
The fables of Roman writer Ovid feature a tale called Baucis and Philemon, and it's
as close to Sodom as you can get.
See if any of this sounds familiar.
One day, two heavenly beings in disguise, in this case, Zeus and Hermes, travel to a
wicked city to see if they can find any good people living there.
Lo and behold, everyone in the city is kind of a total jerk except a dude called Philemon,
who invites them into his home alongside his wife, Baucis.
The kind couple feed their guests, who reveal themselves as gods and say they plan to destroy
the city.
Baucis and Philemon are told to run away and not turn back no matter what.
The tale isn't a perfect copy, though.
In Ovid's version, Baucis doesn't turn back and get turned into a pillar of salt, and
the city is destroyed in an Atlantis-style flood rather than fire and brimstone.
Oh, and the story ends with Baucis and Philemon turning into trees because that's just how
fables rolled in ancient Rome.
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah sucks for nearly everyone involved, but it really sucks
for Lot's unnamed wife.
After Lot's family are judged to be worth saving they are told to run for the city of
Zoar and not look back, a command that's pretty hard to obey when the whole world is exploding
behind you.
So Lot's wife turns around and, hey presto, Genesis 19:26 has her turn into a pillar of
salt.
Ouch.
The fate of Lot's wife is similarly cruel in the Bible and the Torah, but the Quran
goes even further.
While the basic outlines of the tale are the same, the Islamic scripture really sticks
the knife in.
In Surah Hud 11:81, the angels tell Lot to flee with his family and not look back.
But rather than have Lot's wife turn around of her own accord, the angels state:
"Let not any among you look back, except your wife; indeed, she will be struck by that which
strikes [the people of Sodom]."
In other words, Lot's wife's fate was all part of God's crazy plan.
Given the whole "exploded in an apocalypse" thing, saying that the Cities of the Plain
had some cruddy luck might seem like saying Noah got a little wet.
But the thing most of us forget about Genesis is that Sodom and Gomorrah don't get introduced
just to be destroyed.
Before Genesis 19 sets them on fire, the Cities of the Plain feature in Genesis 14.
The trauma came in the shape of the King of Elam, who'd ruled the Cities of the Plain
for 13 years.
In Genesis 14, the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Zoar, Admah, and Zeboim all rebel against
him and raise an army.
They ride out to do battle, but fall into a bunch of tar pits and get massacred.
The king and his allies then ransack Sodom and Gomorrah, taking all their possessions
and food and carrying a ton of their citizens off after the raid.
"Time for another raid.
Time to swing the ol' sword again."
That's right.
The famous rain of fire the cities experienced was only their second apocalypse: They were
already recovering from a devastating war.
In this context, it's kind of hard to judge the Sodomites for getting up to a few hijinks.
The mega-apocalypse is just the first part of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.
No sooner is all the fire and death over than the Bible segues into another equally-famous
tale: the one where Lot's daughters get their old man blind drunk and sleep with him in
order to continue his line.
Why did they do that?
The lazy explanation is that Lot's daughters thought the rest of the human race had perished
and were just doing their duty, but Genesis 19 is quite clear that the family had just
left the surviving city of Zoar.
So again… why?
For an answer, you'll need to turn to Genesis Rabbah, a Jewish book from Roman times that
offers interpretations of Genesis.
Genesis Rabbah makes it clear that a messiah king was prophesied to one day come from Lot's
line, so his daughters were less interested in preserving the human race than they were
preserving Lot's genetics.
"I'm sure it was quite common in those days.
Limited gene pool, incest, and what have you."
"That would probably explain why Lot's wife was so dead set upon returning to the forbidden
city."
Saving Lot has a tremendous impact on the Biblical narrative, and some of it is just
really, really negative for the Israelites.
After Lot's daughters seduce him, two of them give birth to two boys, who both go on to
found dynasties of their own, known as the Moabites and the Ammonites.
According to Britannica's two articles on the subject, the Moabites and Ammonites then
spend the next few centuries waging continuous warfare on the Israelites.
Still, there were some positives.
King David was descended from Ruth, herself a Moabite, so no Moabites means no King David
and no Solomon, who were pretty important Bible guys.
On the other hand, it also means no centuries of warfare, and fewer regional rivals.
Take your pick.
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