Deborah Hurn | Patterns of Evidence
Summary: Was Sodom in the Jordan Valley, and was this site destroyed by a cosmic airburst? In Part 2 of this 2-part series we consider evidence from inside and outside the Bible to close in on the true location of Sodom’s spectacular destruction.
Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. – Genesis 19:24 (NRSV)
Biblical Clues to Sodom’s Location
Some years before their fiery overthrow, the five cities of the Plain were conquered by an alliance of four northern kings led by Chedorlaomer of Elam who were in turn pursued and defeated near Damascus by Abram and his own private army. The record is rich in geographical data, as is the account of Israel’s crossing the southern Jordan Valley on their way into Canaan some four hundred years later. Both stories help to fill out the ‘dossier’ on Sodom’s location and must be taken fully into account along with the details of the destruction.
Four Northern Kings
David Barrett of the Bible Mapper blog recently posted about “The Battle at the Valley of Siddim.”[1] His map came just in time for me to correct a section of my dissertation on the geographical regions of the Israelite journeys for which I had to consider the Genesis 14 campaign amongst other biblical data.
