Part 2 – Finding Sodom and Gomorrah with Dr. Titus Kennedy

Summary: Part 2 summarizing a recent podcast where Dr. Titus Kennedy talked about the location of Sodom and Gomorrah, southeast of the Dead Sea.

And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked and, behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace. So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived. Now Lot went up out of Zoar and lived in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to live in Zoar. So he lived in a cave with his two daughters. – Genesis 19:27-30 (ESV)

Part Two of Two

Tim Mahoney, Steve Law, and Titus Kennedy recently talked on a podcast about Sodom and Gomorrah being located southeast of the Dead Sea. In part one of two, Kennedy used the Biblical passages: Gen. 13:1-12; 10:19; 14:1-8; Duet. 34:2; and Ezek. 16:46 to point out useful geographical and historical information. These texts tell us that in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, four cities from the Valley of Siddim were destroyed and never rebuilt, but one city, Zoar, survived and continued on. The podcast discussion summary continues in this article with Kennedy talking about the five Biblical cities he believes are located in the area of es-Safi: Sodom (Bab edh-Dhra?), Gomorrah (Numeira?), Admah (Feifa?), Zeboiim (Khanazir?), and Zoar (es-Safi?).

Four Destroyed Cities

Timothy Mahoney:

What have archeologists found at the sites of Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira? Do they find four cities that are destroyed and one that’s not?

Titus Kennedy:

What we have are five cities that existed back in the Early Bronze Age. They are very old. Old enough to be there at the time of Abraham and Lot. They’ve been established for a while and are fortified. Clearly, Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira are fortified. There’s some evidence of fortification at Feifa and Khanazir also in the form of towers. Then they are abandoned. We know from the excavations that Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira are destroyed. It’s more difficult to say about Feifa and Khanazir, although, where some illegal digging has been done, we do see an ash layer. However, Zoar continues to be occupied for not just centuries, but millennia. It’s still existing in the Byzantine period and beyond, and it retains its name. I keep stressing Zoar is key in understanding where Sodom and the other cities are because it is never lost. People knew where it was and we know where it is today.

Timothy Mahoney:

Do you have any idea how large the population of the cities were? Was it a beautiful area at one time as the Bible describes, because now it’s pretty barren.

Titus Kennedy:

To estimate population, we would mostly look at the surface area of the city, plus the size and number of houses. We don’t have quite enough information to give a good estimate of that. But in Bab edh-Dhra, probably a few thousand people. The other thing we can look at are the cemeteries which, in some cases, contain maybe hundreds of thousands of burials. They weren’t all buried at the same time but over a period of many centuries. But we do know that these cities had a substantial population because of how large their cemeteries are.

As far as agriculture, the area was definitely well watered. Just as Genesis 13 tells us, there were streams flowing next to each of these five cities. You can still see it on topographic maps. Today, the water only comes through there in periods of heavy rain because the climate is different than it was way back in the Bronze Age. But when they excavated, particularly at Bab edh-Dhra, they found all sorts of interesting botanical remains of plants that people were farming. They found wheat and barley, dates and plums, almonds and olives, pumpkins and even watermelons. They were growing all sorts of different things. It was a very fertile area at that time. There’s still agriculture going on, but it is much drier, and we don’t have those five streams or small rivers that are constantly running anymore.

Steven Law:

That’s incredible. It fits the Bible narrative so well, the fact that it’s so well watered and had all this agriculture going on. Even that it is barren and desolate today fits what God said would happen, that it would be wiped out and never inhabited again. It is a really good match.

Fiery Destruction

Timothy Mahoney:

The next question in a “patterns approach” would be: how were these cities destroyed?

Titus Kennedy:

The archeological sites of Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira have been excavated, and they found that both cities were destroyed by a massive fire. Initially, there were some thoughts that maybe they had been attacked by a foreign army and intentionally burned. However, the prevailing theory now is an earthquake because it’s on a fault line which could provide combustion of highly flammable material that’s all over that area, like bitumen and petroleum.
Seeing that the cemetery had been burned was key in changing the perspective because no one would attack a city to take it over and then spend time burning the whole cemetery. Really interesting objects are found all over this particular area. Sometimes they’re called sulfur balls, little golf to tennis ball-sized sulfur spheres that are extremely flammable. Light them on fire and they will burn a blue flame and completely disintegrate. There are videos of this. They are found embedded in the soil in certain places. But basically, the only place that you find them is where the waters of the Dead Sea have receded. It’s almost like they got extinguished in the water and then stuck in the sediment because we don’t find them higher up. Especially around the Lisan Peninsula, you find a lot of them. (Joel Kramer from Expedition Bible talks about this in his video: “Sodom burned, Zoar did NOT: The full story of the discovery of the Cities of the Plain!”)

Erroneous Carbon-14 Dates

Steven Law:

One criticism against these southern sites is that the destructions didn’t happen all at the same time, but were centuries apart. What is your view on when they were destroyed in relation to each other?

Titus Kennedy:

There are things to address regarding the destruction of Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira, and part of that is because the dates have been changed over time. So initially, just looking at the pottery (which is the main thing we have to go by in those early periods) it looked like they were destroyed around the same time, in the Early Bronze IV or maybe the transition to Middle Bronze I (or Intermediate Bronze in some systems). This would overlap with the time that Sodom and Gomorrah were occupied from Biblical data and chronology.

However, what happened is that calibrated carbon-14 dates influenced researchers to move the date of the destruction of Bab edh-Dhra back about 300 years and the date of Numeira another 250 years earlier than that. So, this is a consequence of looking at newer calibrated C-14 dates. But pottery is our standard chronological marker in archeology and there’s really no issue with the pottery there. However, calibrated carbon-14 dates for this region, particularly in the Bronze Age, have a serious problem. They’ve been shown to be centuries higher than the archeological and historical dates. Because of that, a lot of archeologists just ignore them or don’t even bother using them.

Now in the Iron Age, the Roman period, carbon-14 dates work well, but in the Bronze Age there are definitely problems that need to be worked out. So we shouldn’t use C-14 as the primary method of dating an archeological stratum in the Early Bronze Age or the Middle Bronze Age, because it is going to give us a number that’s earlier than the archeological and historical data.

Isaiah 13, Jeremiah 49, Matthew 11

Timothy Mahoney:

Was it commanded that they wouldn’t ever be inhabited again because of what happened? There was a curse, in a sense, so people would’ve been afraid. Steve, aren’t there some verses you want to look up here?

Steven Law:

Isaiah 13:19-20 talks about Babylon: “the glory of kingdoms, the splendor and pomp of the Chaldeans, will be like Sodom and Gomorrah when God overthrew them. It will never be inhabited or lived in for all generations…” So, what was once great and populated and thriving, will be destroyed as Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. The same is true in Jeremiah 49:17-18: “As when Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighboring cities were overthrown, says the Lord, no man shall dwell there, no man shall sojourn in her.” These verses imply that these cities are going to not just be destroyed but are going to remain in a state of destruction for generations to come.

Titus Kennedy:

Then in Matthew 11:23, Jesus is talking in the first century and compares Capernaum to Sodom. “And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.” Jesus is telling us Sodom is still not in existence in the first century, so there shouldn’t be anything there in the first century.

Tall el-Hammam

Titus Kennedy:

The passages you talked about, prophecies against Babylon in the future and against Edom in the future, use Sodom and Gomorrah and their destruction and abandonment as examples. So, in the time of Isaiah, in the time of Jeremiah, in the time of Jesus, there should be nothing at Sodom and Gomorrah. They were destroyed. They should continue in their abandoned state all the way through those centuries.

For the site of Tall el-Hammam, that is a big problem. All three of those passages are a problem. Isaiah and Jeremiah are in the Iron Age. Matthew is in the Roman Period. If we look at Tall el-Hammam after the major destruction there, which is in the later part of the Middle Bronze Age (different chronology than what we have for Abraham in the Bible) but let’s just say if it’s Sodom and that was its destruction, the problem is that site is occupied in the next period and then moving on from there. So, it’s occupied in the time that Isaiah and Jeremiah are saying that Sodom is an abandoned ruin and has been. And also, it is occupied in the Roman Period when Jesus is saying Sodom is not in existence. So Tall el-Hammam not only conflicts with the Biblical chronology for Abraham and Lot living in the area of Sodom, but it also disqualifies itself because the city continues to be in existence at multiple times when the Bible tells us it is not in existence.

So, with all that said, what Biblical city would I consider Tall el-Hammam to be? I would say that it is Abel-shittim or Shittim, which is a very common idea. Most archeologists think that Tall Hammam is Shittim. In fact, I think that Collins does as well. He just thinks the city changed names over the period of time. But the problem with that being Sodom, as we saw before, is that Sodom is supposed to be abandoned and unoccupied, not rebuilt and then given a new name. So if it’s Shittim, it should be Shittim. It shouldn’t be formerly Sodom.

The Continuation of Zoar

Timothy Mahoney:

Let’s talk about the city that does exist, Zoar. It wasn’t destroyed. It exists throughout history. That would be an important clue.

Titus Kennedy:

We’ve got this fifth city in the area of Safi. We talked about Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira which both have fire destructions and were occupied in the Early Bronze Age into the very beginning of the Middle Bronze Age. Then we’ve got this fifth city that also has evidence of being occupied in the Early Bronze Age and into the Middle Bronze Age, probably the Late Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and then the Nabatean Period and Byzantine Period. So, it’s basically there throughout ancient history and even into the Medieval Period. The city is never lost. Zoar can help us to figure out where the other cities are in relation to it. There are a few different archeological site names around there. Safi is just used because that’s the village that is built right next to the ancient site. But it’s also called Zora based on the Byzantine name because as I said before, the city continued to be occupied and retained its name all the way through the medieval period.

Steven Law:

Genesis 19 seems to indicate that Zoar wasn’t destroyed since Lot was allowed to flee there. Are there other Biblical passages that point to Zoar continuing in history after the time of Abraham?

Titus Kennedy:

Absolutely. We’ve got a few of them. In Deuteronomy 34:3, Zoar is talked about in reference to some geographical boundaries. “The Plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, as far as Zoar.” Then we’ve got Isaiah 15:5 which says: “My heart cries out for Moab; her fugitives flee to Zoar, to Eglath-shelishiyah. For at the ascent of Luhith they go up weeping; on the road to Horonaim they raise a cry of destruction.” Isaiah is using Zoar as a place that exists in his day. He doesn’t talk about it being destroyed or abandoned like he does with Sodom.

Then Jeremiah 48:34 as well: “From the outcry at Heshbon even to Elealeh, as far as Jahaz they utter their voice, from Zoar to Horonaim and Eglath-shelishiyah. For the waters of Nimrim also have become desolate.” Both Isaiah and Jeremiah, and Moses even, are using Zoar in terms of a current geographical place. People know where it’s located. This is in contrast to the way that Sodom is always talked about as having been destroyed or desolate.

Timothy Mahoney:

There’s a lot of Biblical identifiers that say it existed. Has anybody done any excavations at this location?

Titus Kennedy:

The first excavations that were conducted in this area were at a cave near the city of Zoar by a Greek archeologist named Konstantinos Politis. What he found there is what we identify as the Cave of Lot. He found an ancient Byzantine church with multiple inscriptions and then he found this cave that dates back to the time of Abraham. In Genesis 19:20 Lot says: “Behold, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there—is it not a little one?—and my life will be saved!” Verse 21 goes on with the angel answering: “He said to him, ‘Behold, I grant you this favor also, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken. Escape there quickly, for I can do nothing till you arrive there.’ Therefore, the name of the city was called Zoar.”

So, Genesis says Zoar was not destroyed. That’s where Lot fled to. We looked at some of the other passages that still speak about Zoar as if it’s in existence. And then we hear about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in verse 24-25. If we go down to verse 30, here’s where we get to the story about the cave. “Now Lot went up out of Zoar and lived in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to live in Zoar.” So, the book of Genesis tells us Lot went up from Zoar. Well, if you look at the area of Safi today, where we, along with the ancient Byzantines and others place Zoar, and you look directly to the east of that, there are these hills that rise up in the mountains. Then just to the northeast of the town there’s an ancient cave. The Byzantines built a church there. In the inscriptions from that church, it tells us that it was the Church of Saint Lot. They built a holy place right in front of this cave.

Now when Politis did excavations there, not only did he find this church and the inscriptions associated with Lot, but when they excavated the actual cave, they found Early and Middle Bronze Age materials inside which fit the time of Lot and Abraham. This is a very significant geographical marker and an important discovery that helps us understand more about this narrative in the book of Genesis and where the five cities were located.

The Madaba Map

Timothy Mahoney:Let’s talk about the Madaba Map.

Titus Kennedy:

The Madaba Map, constructed around 542 AD, is a very key part of this whole argument because it’s the only strict map that we have talking about the site of Zoar and its location. During this time, Byzantine Christians were building churches at historical sites, which they began doing in the 300s. The Madaba Map is a mosaic on the floor of a church in Jordan that contains many sites from the Holy Land. Zoar appears on it, located on the southeastern side of the Dead Sea. Now Zoar still existed at the time the map was made, so it’s not like the Byzantines were just guessing. They knew where it was. Right next to it they put the Holy Place of Lot, also called Lot’s Cave. It’s located where we would expect it, geographically based on what’s been found at the cave that was excavated in that church.

Titus Kennedy:

But the Madaba Map is not the only ancient source that we have for Zoar and for its location. We can go back to Josephus in the first century, and he writes about the Dead Sea extending as far as Zoar of Arabia. He mentions Zoar in both of his works: The Jewish Wars and Antiquities of the Jews. Then we have Eusebius of Caesarea who lived in the third and fourth centuries and in his writing Onomasticon, he talks about Zoar, and he places it on the southeast side of the Dead Sea. Jerome put Zoar in that location as well. We have a Roman source, the Notitia Dignitatum from the fourth century and it talks about a Roman military encampment by Zoar. This military encampment has actually been found and eight tombstones from Zoar have been identified that belong to military officers. This is another thing pinpointing the location.

The pilgrim Egaria from about 380 AD, wrote about her travels to the Holy Land and she mentions the bishopric (a district under a bishop’s control) of Zoar. This is important because not every town had a bishopric. It was actually quite rare. And there’s a tombstone found at the Safi site with a Greek inscription for Opsis the bishop from about 369 AD. So we have very early bishopric evidence at Zoar. We’ve got even more sources, Stephen of Byzantium, fifth and sixth century mentions Zoar in that fort we talked about.

Ptolemy in Geography in the second century mentions Zoar and places it south in Arabia Petraea province. The Babatha Papyri from the beginning of the second century mentions Zoar, although it doesn’t give us a location, but was found on the other side of the Dead Sea.

Conclusion

Timothy Mahoney:

I want to thank you, Titus. You have been a really great source of information at times when I’ve needed it, searching for photography and such on your many travels. What are the titles of the books you have written?

Titus Kennedy:

My most recent one is called the Essential Archeological Guide to Bible Lands and talks about over 70 sites including Sodom and a little bit of Gomorrah and Zoar. Then I have a book on the archeology of Jesus called Excavating the Evidence for Jesus. Then I’ve got a book on artifacts throughout all the Biblical periods called Unearthing the Bible and I have another one coming out soon that is about the people in the Bible that are named in archeological sources.

Timothy Mahoney:

Fantastic. There’s archaeological testimony to the Biblical narrative and that’s what has been exciting for a lot of us as we’ve been doing this. There’s just so much available and we’re finding a pattern of evidence throughout history. Titus, any closing thoughts?

Titus Kennedy:

I would recommend people to be discerning with the sources and types of information they use. Go back to the original sources when possible and look at the context. Use critical thinking and logic. Be open to the possibility that you or your favorite theory might be wrong. Realize that in the future, the question you have or the debate that you’re looking into might be solved. However, it also might not be because we don’t have all the answers. The fact is that some things are going to remain a mystery.

Keep Thinking!

TOP PHOTO: Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. (credit: Herri met de Bles, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Not every view expressed by scholars contributing to podcast content necessarily reflects the views of Patterns of Evidence. We include perspectives from various sides of debates on Biblical matters so that our audience can become familiar with the different arguments involved.