Sodom and Gomorrah Update
Sodom and Gomorrah Update
Answering a Reader's Questions
After last week’s post on Sodom and Gomorrah, I received an email from a reader who wanted to dig a little bit deeper. In this post, I will answer his questions.
My reader asks:
Are the Albright cities the same ones which Stan Vaninger identifies with the five Midianite cities destroyed by Moses? I have found that identification highly convincing given their location in Early Bronze III.
Stan Vaninger published two papers entitled “Abraham to Hezekiah: An Archaeological Revision” Part I and II, in the SIS Review in 1983 and 1984. In those papers, he argued that the patriarchs were contemporary with the Early Bronze Age and that Joshua’s Conquest occurred at the end of the Early Bronze Age III. I concur with both of those positions.
However, Vaninger then speculated on the identification of the five cities of the plain destroyed by fire and brimstone in Abraham’s day with the five cities of the Midianites destroyed by the Israelites as described in Numbers 31. Vaninger merely stated that there were three possibilities. One of the possibilities was that the five cities of the plain in Genesis 19 were the same as the five cities of the Midianites the Israelites destroyed in Numbers 31.
I reject that possibility because of the geography. When Balaam tried to curse the Israelites, Numbers 22:1 placed their location on the plains of Moab opposite Jericho near a village called Acacia Grove. The location of Jericho is not in doubt. Therefore the five cities of the Midianites destroyed by the Israelites in Numbers 31 were located at the North end of the Dead Sea.
The preponderance of evidence places the five cities of the plain that were destroyed in Abraham’s day at the south end of the Dead Sea. The location of Zoar was preserved on a Byzantine Era church mosaic called the Madaba Map, confirming it as the modern village of Gawr es Safi.
When Albright excavated Bab ed-Dra’, which I believe to be the City of Sodom, he did not find any Middle Bronze Age pottery. He found only Early Bronze Age pottery, which is consistent with my position as well as that of Vaninger, that Abraham lived in the Early Bronze Age I. However, when Albright later systematized his stratigraphy for the ages of Israel, he placed Abraham in the Middle Bronze Age I. The evidence that he found at Bab ed Dra never supported that conclusion, so Albright forced the puzzle piece into a space where it didn’t fit.
My reader’s second question:
If not, do you know where Albright’s five cities fit within the Early Bronze Age? Abraham’s context is, I believe, late Chalcolithic, so one would expect them either in the late Chalcolithic or in Early Bronze I.
John Osgood published an excellent paper arguing that Abraham was contemporary with the Ghasulian and Chalcolithic cultures of Canaan, which I would place as contemporary with the Early Bronze Age I. See The Times of Abraham by Dr. John Osgood. Unfortunately, Osgood incorrectly placed Sodom and Gomorrah at the North end of the Dead Sea as seen in his map, figure 5.
Sodom and Gomorrah were located at the South end of the Dead Sea only 22 miles on foot from En Gedi. Genesis 14 places the battle with the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah immediately after Chedorlaomer’s attack on Hazezon Tamar. Hazezon Tamar is equated with En Gedi. 2 Chronicles 20:2 states that Hazezon Tamar was the same place as En Gedi.
The opening of Genesis chapter 14 tells us why Chedorlaomer invaded the second time:
And it came to pass in the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of nations, that they made war with Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar). All these joined together in the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Salt Sea). Twelve years they served Chedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they rebelled.
The rebellion of Sodom against his rule was the reason that Chedorlaomer invaded in the 14th year. Therefore, Sodom and Gomorrah were his primary targets. If Sodom was located to the North of the Dead Sea, it would have made no sense for Chedorlaomer’s army to march all the way to the tip of the Red Sea and up to Kadesh before marching back north again to attack Sodom. Sodom was the target.
Chedorlaomer attacked the cities of the Arabah rim in modern Jordan, followed by En Mishpat / Kadesh, followed by En Gedi suggesting that he was deliberately circling the wealthy cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destroy all of their possible aid and reinforcements before sacking the cities that were his real target. After sacking Sodom and Gomorrah Chedorloamer’s army set off for home because they had acquired all the loot they could carry. Thus the route of Chedorlaomer’s campaign indicates that Sodom was located at the south end of the Dead Sea.
Osgood points out in his paper that the “Cave of Treasure” found in Nahal Mishmar was full of Chalcolithic religious artifacts, suggesting that the people of Sodom had hidden the treasures of their temple there when they heard news of the approach of Chedorloamer southward along the Eastern rim of the Arabah.
My reader asks:
How did Albright reconcile the stratigraphy with his theory that Abraham is set within Middle Bronze I?
Albright rationalized what he found at Bab ed-Dra’ to fit with his preconceived chronology. Quoting his 1924 report of the Bab ed-Dra’ expedition1:
Our view that Bab ed-Dra' was a sanctuary belonging to cities o Goihr, Sodom and Gomorrah, is supported by the fact that it was once for all abandoned at about the time when biblical tradition places the destruction of these towns, early in the second millennium B. C. If the writer’s views, defended elsewhere, are correct, the invasion of Southern Palestine by Chedor-laomer of Elam, as related in Genesis XIV, took place e the seventeenth century B. C.* If the catastrophe described in Genesis XIX occurred a few years later, we are still in the middle of the Middle Bronze Age, and there is no necessity of resorting to the desperate theory technique in order to explain the absence of characteristic forms of the Middle Bronze pottery from, Bab ed-Dra'. On the other hand the pottery offers no obstacle to an earlier date of the catastrophe, so that the might have happened in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries B.C.
As can be seen above, Albright admits that he found no Middle Bronze Age pottery at Bab ed-Dra’ at all. That did not deter him from forcing the site into his skewed chronology and stratigraphy for the land of Canaan.
49 years later, Albright published a summary of his life’s work in a series of papers in The Biblical Archaeologist, entitled “From the Patriarchs to Moses.” In part I of that series, he gives his model from Abraham to Joseph2. It is particularly notable that Albright does not mention Bab ed-Dra’ in that paper. Instead, he pegs Abraham to the Middle Bronze I based on the findings of pottery associated with caravans. It is quite interesting that Albright would discard a strong synchronism, the destruction by fire of Sodom which was never rebuilt (Isaiah 13:19-20; Jeremiah 49:18, 50:40), for an extremely weak and vague synchronism based on the assumption that Abraham was a caravan merchant, and therefore, caravan pottery dating to the Middle Bronze Age I proves that Abraham lived in the Middle Bronze Age I.
I must conclude that the evidence from Bab ed’Dra’ strongly suggests that Abraham was contemporary with the Chalcolithic / Early Bronze Age I in Canaan and that the Cities of the Plain were located at the southeast corner of the Dead Sea in a line extending about 25 miles to the south.
The Archæological Results of an Expedition to Moab and the Dead Sea Author(s): W. F. Albright Source: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research , Apr., 1924, No. 14 (Apr., 1924), pp. 2-12 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The American Schools of Oriental Research. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1355401
From the Patriarchs to Moses: From Abraham to Joseph William F. Albright Source: The Biblical Archaeologist , Feb., 1973, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Feb., 1973), pp. 5-33 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The American Schools of Oriental Research. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/3210978