Researchers say they may have found Sodom and Gomorrah
Religion Today, March 29, 2000
A Bible scholar believes he may have found the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Micahel Sanders and an international team of researchers in November used a mini-submarine to find what appears to be the salt-encrusted remains of ancient settlements at the bottom of the Dead Sea, the Daily Telegraph of London said.
Sodom and Gomorrah are the evil cities that the Bible says were destroyed by God with fire and brimstone. Sanders, who is British-born but lives in the United States, said the team would return to the area to chip off the salt for more conclusive evidence.
There is a good chance that the mounds Sanders found are “the lost cities of the plains, possibly even Sodom and Gomorrah,” said John Whitaker, a geologist from Leicester University and former editor of Geology Today.
Some archaeologists and scholars have concluded that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was symbolic, but others think the cities existed in the region of the Dead Sea, the Daily Telegraph said. Some experts are convinced that the “cities of the plain” were destroyed about 5,000 years ago by an earthquake that threw up flaming pitch.
Since the 1960s, archaeologists have discovered mass graves on a peninsula jutting into the Dead Sea that contains human bones dating from the Old Testament period, the Telegraph said.