Discovering the City of Sodom: The Fascinating, True Account of the Discovery of the Old Testament's Most Infamous City

This book is a book that all biblical people should read and have in their library. It's well written and full of facts

I am a professional archeologist and a geologist. I do not know the authors and the first time I heard of them was when I bought this book. This is an important book that supports the Bible's story of a real historical event. I highly recommend this book to all those interested in ancient history, the Bible, and science. The book details how Dr. Collins came to believe Tall el-Hammam in Jordan was the location of ancient Sodom. Dr. Collins made this determination based on Genesis 13:10 which placed Sodom and Gomorrah in the "plain of the Jordan (River)," an area that it describes as "well watered." Dr. Collins, an archaeologist at Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has excavated in this area for seven years. However, his breakthrough discovery came in 2011 when he found human skeletal remains and an unusual potsherd at the site of Tall el-Hammam. The discovery and analysis of this potsherd provides physical evidence for what caused the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire from heaven. Dr. Collins found the 4,000 year old potsherd in an undisturbed layer of hardened black ash. One side is typical of ancient pottery, but the opposite side is coated with a thin layer of a beautiful translucent greenish glass called trinitite. The trinitite tells us that one side of this clay potsherd was briefly subjected to an extremely high temperature, which caused the silicon of its clay to melt and be converted to glass. Trinitite gets its name from the first atomic bomb test in 1945 near Alamogordo, New Mexico whose code name was Trinity. Trinitite was formed when the sandy clay soil at the test site was drawn up and melted by the explosion, then rained down and solidified into glass. We now know that a comet or large comet fragment exploding in the atmosphere can produce the same effects as an atomic explosion, including the very high temperatures necessary for the formation of desert glass such as trinitite. This trinitite coated potsherd corroborates that the brimstone and fire Genesis 19:24 says rained out of heaven came from a comet fragment that exploded in the atmosphere over Sodom and Gomorrah. Like an atomic explosion, this comet explosion over Sodom and Gomorrah would have caused a fiery column of smoke, dust, ash and debris to rise up (possibly looking like a mushroom cloud). Genesis 19:28 tells how Abraham "looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and lo the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace." The same black ash that contained the "Trinitite Potsherd" also revealed the partial skeletal remains of three individuals who were found huddled together in this black ash. Their bones were abnormally extended and twisted. The leg of one was charred off at mid-femur. While the intense heat generated by the fireball of a cometary explosion would literally vaporize everyone it directly hit, these people somehow were partially shielded. The macabre scene speaks of the sudden death and extreme trauma that engulfed these three people who were among those alive at the time the Bible says Abraham negotiated to save the city. I am particularly excited by Dr. Collins' discoveries because my book The Comets of God published in 2010 (www.thecometsofgod.com) and available on Amazon analyzes the Old Testament catastrophes and their connection to cometary activity and impacts. I detailed how the scriptures make it clear that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by cometary activity. On page 416 I wrote, "The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, where fire and brimstone (burning sulfur) rained from heaven (Genesis 19:24 and Luke 17:29), is an accurate description of airburst explosions." I explained how "Airburst explosions were not recognized until after the 1908 Tunguska Event in Siberia had been intensely studied by scientists. The Tunguska event is now believed to be the result of an airburst explosion high in the atmosphere of a small asteroid or cometary fragment approximately 100 meters in diameter." Since comets are rich in sulfur, cometary material can release brimstone or burning sulfur as it comes in on fire. Today a number of astronomers believe that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah involved comet activity, but until now there was no evidence for this event. In my book (page 149) I wrote that: "The most definitive evidence for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah would come from physical evidence associated with cosmic impact. Core samples from buried sediments dating to the time these cities were destroyed by fire should contain high concentrations of cosmic dust with very high concentrations of iridium, nickel, and other elements rose at impact. There could also be grains of shocked quartz, whose structure stems from the high pressures of impact or tiny spherules of fused glass like material that stems from the high temperature of impact.... The bottom line is this: if the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was caused by cosmic bombardment as the Bible indicates, there should be evidence waiting to be found." Little did I know that at the time I wrote this in my book Dr. Collins had already located Sodom and had begun to find significant evidence for cosmic impact. Since the initial discovery, four more trinitite coated potsherds have been excavated at the Tall. In addition, a number of small lumps of desert glass have been found at different locations within five miles of the Tall. While the brief heat flash or thermal pulse from the cosmic airburst was hot enough to melt and convert the outer surface of these clay potsherds into glass; this thermal pulse was also able to convert some of the silica of the sand on the ground into what geologists call "desert glass" which is not unlike trinitite. Geologists have come to learn that the creation of desert glass is typical of cosmic airbursts over sandy areas. Interestingly the thick hardened black ash Dr. Collins found at the site sheds a different light on what happened to Lot's wife. Genesis 19:26 should now be translated to read, "But his (Lot's) wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of hardened ash (not salt). The Hebrew word usually translated as "salt" is the word "malach" (#4417 in Strong's Concordance) which means "powder" as in something "pulverized" like salt, ash or dust.. Excavation at the site is still going on, and lab analysis of materials found at the site is ongoing. I can't wait to hear about the results. The Comets Of God-New Scientific Evidence for God: Recent archeological, geological and astronomical discoveries that shine new light on the Bible and its prophecies

The Genesis 18-19 account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah has become part of the Western cultural zeitgeist and its location a mystery ever since the beginning of Biblical archaeology. Discovering the City of Sodom: The Fascinating, True Account of the Old Testament’s Most Infamous City by Steven Collins and Latayne C. Scott goes into the decade-long excavation of a site in Jordan that Collins purposes the evidence points towards it being the location of the destroyed city.Much of the book is written by Collins who first explores the everything around the account of Sodom in Genesis and denoting that it must be read “authentically” not “literally”. One of Collin’s most important points early on is looking at the actual Hebrew wording of the text and what important words actually mean, this factors into where Collins believes the Bible locates the city of Sodom not at what is the bottom of the southern Dead Sea or on its southeast coast but on the eastern side of the Jordan River opposite Jericho. After laying out what the Bible actually says about Sodom and the historical era the Bible describes it in—the Middle Bronze Age—Collins then goes into the what his numerous archaeological excavations at Tall el-Hammam have made him believes he’s found Biblical Sodom including the fact that after the large city that was located there was destroyed in the Middle Bronze Age, nothing was rebuilt there until the Iron Age around 700 years later. Scott’s contribution was related Collin’s professional journey giving tours that located Sodom at the traditional southern Dead Sea location to his letting reading of the Bible lead him to look for a large prosperous city in the Jordan plain across from Jericho and the discoveries made at el-Hammam that made Collins realize he had found the city of Sodom.Both Collins and Scott did a very good job with their respective parts of the book with Collins focused on the academic side and Scott doing a biographical look at Collins’ personal journey over several decades when connected to this subject. The biggest positive of the book is Collins’ balance of keeping to the authenticity of the Biblical account and dealing with facts found in the dirt, not only at el-Hammam but across the Levant. The biggest issue with the book is the same as another book by Collins’ and that is layout as the maps were placed in the back of the book and not nearer to the relevant text where they would be helpful. However, given that there were two authors the change of font style denoting when each author was writing was a very choice.Discovering the City of Sodom is an enlightening read with Collins’ engaging writing that made what could have been dry academic details lively while Scott’s biographical sketches give a more personal touch. While the layout of the book is a bit of a mixed bag with differing fonts denoting which author was writing is a positive, the placing of maps in the back of the book instead of near the text that they illustrated is a negative. Whether you agree with Collins’ archaeological discoveries and research, this is a informative read about the era of the Middle Bronze Age in the Levant.

The book is pith and yo the point concerning how dating is measure by geographic change and not necessarily by chronological time. It’s not a fantastic Jones novel but still an intriguing account of how one archeologist, after many years was blessed to be able to make a once-in-a-lifetime discovery with his team .Also it focuses on biblical accounts of this ancient city to help give clarity to the sizable damage of the Tel which seems plausible with biblical accounts.

Definitely worth a read. Hard to put down. Very accessible writing style. One of my favourite books now.

This is a very interesting book written by a scholar of many years experience in academia and digging in the deserts of the 'kikkar' region of modern day Jordan. The subject of the city of Sodom, in common with many subjects from the Bible in general and the book of Genesis in particular, has been the object of much speculation on the part of various parties. Articles have been written and television films produced in recent years about the city. A lot come from para-church organisations keen to confirm and promote the veracity of the Biblical text. The so-called 'Southern Sodom', that is a location at the South of the Dead sea, was posited in one such production which though well produced I found heavy on speculation and light on expertise and hard facts. In sharp contrast, Dr. Collins and Dr. Clarke bring real scholarship and real evidence to this particular table. Dr. Collins, himself an evangelical Christian, subjects the Biblical text to scrutiny and follows where the narrative, and the evidence he digs up, points. He makes a compelling case for the location of this famous city which ,in the uninspired map section at the back of most Bibles, is accompanied by a question mark. A good read, much recommended, and cause for considering this infamous city to be part of the fabric of history rather than the mere stuff of legend.

Well written - very thorough

This very long and excruciating tale was so overly flowery that I gave up after an hour. I’ll gladly go back to my 21st read of God’s Word the Holy Bible.If the authors get paid by the word then this might explain the 12 hour read. Don’t bother.

There is just something about looking for ancient city ruins that can fuel the imagination than anything else. To begin with, this fascination on my part was mainly about Atlantis, which incidentally, was also punished by the gods because its citizens had sinned. Videos of Sodom and Gomorah hunters can be viewed on social media even now, exiting the floors of the Dead Sea, looking for anything that might remotely resemble a city wall on the ocean bed, carried out with the same fervour evinced by those divers who went in search of Atlantis on the cost of Brimini - and being just as excited by the flimsiest intimations of ancient city walls.The Dead Sea environs create salt cliffscapes into which anything may be read - That pillar of salt could be Lot's wife. This one could be a sphinx. Or a gate. And so on.Anyone who reads this book, however, will find that this writer really does seems to be onto something. He is also a good story-teller. It begins when he realises the old site ruins mooted to be Sodom and Gomorrah are surely in the wrong place. They don't fit the descriptions given on biblical Genesis for where they might be. He uses both biblical scholarship and archaeological know-how to hit on a place further north of the Dead Sea to hit on a place that does seem to be a much better fit - what seems to be a hill at Tal el-Hammam. And as with the first explorers who began to dig under Acrotiri for a lost city, it is soon realised that Collins has hit the jackpot.The ruins of a lost, fortified Bronze Age settlement with its satellite towns looks to be a big settlement, with the sort of clout a place remembered in the Bible might have been expected to be. Better still - it is abundantly clear that something catastrophic from above, really did take place there. For example, shards of Bronze Age pottery is demonstrbly seared by temperatures high enough to have reduced parts of it to fused green glass, of the likes seen only on Bikini island. Trinitite.Unlike the case with the latter though, this was not about Bronze Age nukes. The culprit is considered to have been down to airburst from a exploding meteriorite, though it might as well have been an atomic bomb - the concussive forces it generated caused salt water bubbling up from the Dead Sea go render the whole area barren for centuries.Much as Genesis described, in fact. The surrounding vegetation as well as the surrounding cities were destroyed. There is tragedy here, not only in that fifty-thousand-or-so people were incinerated with little warning, but that a relatively advanced civilisation met another natural disaster that derailed things for so long afterwards.It is perhaps not surprising that a catastrophic event of this magnitude was recorded by someone, whether or not it was Lot who was the main eye witness. What did disappoint me was that Collins ultimately sticks to the idea that this was a deliberate act of mass destruction on the part of the Old Testament God, even while stating earlier on that these settlements could not have been any more sinful than any other cities. This writer has more of an agenda to prove the Bible right beyond the description of possibly factual events that some readers might appreciate. Collins talks about the realpolitik behind the dynamics of how the King of Sodom negotiated with what he called warlord Abram and his allies in the conflicts that were taking place before the meteor strike. The evangelist in him seems to trump the scientist in him, where he fails to consider whether or not the biblical scribes might not have had an agenda too, in describing an old political foe as 'sinful.' That aside from the fact that (sinful) human nature being what it is, there can be a tendency to blame the victims of massive misfortune for what happened to them. The ruins of Tall el-Hammam bring evidence up to a point of what happened and how they lived, but on how its people really were, Sodom, if Sodom this is, is still unable to speak for itself.