SODOM & GOMORRAH

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 264, 3 August 1932, Page 16

SODOM & GOMORRAH

What Excavations Reveal BIBLE STORY CONFIRMED Sodom and Gomorrah were utterly destroyed by a rain of fire and brimstone because of their great wickedness, according to the Bible story. Recent archaeological excavations on the site of these twin cities .by the shores of the Dead Sea in Palestine, which have been made by Father Mallon, of the Biblical Pontifical Institute of Jerusalem, have ’ confirmed this account in striking fashion. The whole four ‘‘Cities of the Plain” have now been' identified, and the site is dominated: by Mount Nebo, from 'which Moses' viewed the Promised Land.: In a new report on this season’s work it is stated that undoubted evidence had been found that two sister-towns stood side by side. Examination has shown that these'two towns were contemporary, for each show the same civilisation. The pottery found belongs to the two periods, Neolithic and Early Bronze, and would thus fix the limits of occupation from before 2500 B.C. down to not later than 2100 B.C. At the latter date the towns had been completely destroyed by fire, and the site had never been reoccupied. Traces of violent conflagrations were found, layers of ashes succeeded by mud and debris. With the new Biblical chronology necessitated by Professor John Garstang’s recent discovery of . the date of the fall of Jericho, Father Mallon’s dating of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah formed from the archaeological evidence, agrees exactly with the Biblical narrative. On the plain below the hill on which the city stood, is a curious rock formation. It is about five feet high, and legend associates it with the story of Lot’s wife, who, looking back at the burning cities, was turned into a pillar of salt. This, however, is one of the problems which archaeology may never •solve. ’