kaidi06

Have the remains of the biblical cities Sodom and Gomorrah ever been found? I've been told that the two cities were located southeast of Gaza. Is there any actual evidence that the two cities existed or are theologians simply taking the remains of other ancient cities and calling them Sodom and Gomorrah?

Marduk

A&E had a show 'Mysteries of the Bible' They say they found the remains of an ancient city in the spot S & G were said to have been, many graves & human remains, it's very old and may predate the story but it is there, whether or not it's the real one and not just some city that was destroyed by war or earthquake who knows.
Many cultures have stories like this, a preacher will point to the remains of a well known ancient ruin and say "see, that was once a prosperous city but the people were bad and the Lord kicked their ass!"

jayh

Like the walls of Jericho. These had long collapsed by the Isrealite times, but the legend that grew up around them about Joshua, et. al. was created to provide a form of national pride.

j

Ihatecheese

I have no idea if they have been found but I read the terra not so firma liquefying theory. While there have been historical precedents it doesn’t work for me.
Pillar of salt close to the dead sea, who would of thought

comradeBillyboy

yes, the rev jerry fawell and his ilk point out the un-godly influence of the soddomites on our christian nation. if there are sodomites then logic tells us there must be or must have been a sodom. i'm gonna guess that gomorah was to sodom as ft. worth is to dallas. but since we hear nothing of gomorrahites maybe gomorrah did not relally exist, or they didn't do anything the rest of us do or dont do.

SingleDad

IIRC, one can get gomorrhea from sodomy.

offa

Offa;
Way to go Single Dad. You have my applause, "clap, clap, .... clap, clap, clap!
... gonorrhea"

thanks,
Offa

-DM-

Have traces of Sodom & Gomorrah ever been found?

I think not.

They are not mentioned, except in passing, in the two books that I have on my shelves regarding biblical archaeology. For example, Magnus Magnusson has this to say in his Archaeology of the Bible (now out of print): I think that if identifiable traces of either of these two cities had been found, biblical archaeologists would provide more than a passing mention.

--Don--

-DM-

... Several times, as a matter of fact.

--Don--

Photocrat

Bah, I've lost the quote in there, but I have one minor quibble -- anything which looked like a woman now (or in modern times) probably would not have looked anywhere near the same back then, given erosion & the very growth of the formations. Of course, that does not preclude the existance of another formation which *did* look like a woman having also been there in ancient times.

Besides, what little I heard about it always claimed that the cities were *in* the Dead Sea :] Makes it a bit hard to check, since IIRC, nobody has gone down there & it would be hard to. But the Dead Sea is supposed to dry up sooner or later, given current water usage, so maybe someone will check up on it then, while they're mining all the salt out of there for other uses (it's valuable source of chlorene, among other things