Sodom and Gomorrah

What really happened to the damned cities of Sodom and Gomorrah? Tristan Hughes and Dr. Dylan Johnson delve into the infamous biblical story to discover the context and supposed locations of these cities near the Dead Sea, and explore whether there is any historical basis to their destruction. They discuss the theological implications and examines archaeological surveys that sought to uncover the truth behind this fascinating ancient narrative. Presented by Tristan Hughes. Edited and produced by Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds The Ancients is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

  Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone and I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh. Anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Everybody, listen up.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5, only at McDonald's for a limited time. Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.

• 1:19Tristan Hughes?

  This episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet. Now, you know that one friend who always finds the best travel deals, picks the right cards, and somehow ends up in first class for the price of coach? Smart Travel is like that friend, but in podcast form. They cover all things travel finance, so you can stop stressing and actually start enjoying your trips. I'm lucky enough to travel a fair bit. You might have heard me talking about being on tour with The Ancients in Australia and New Zealand quite recently. Well, Smart Travel Podcast from NerdWallet was a great help. They dig into which airport lounges are really worth it and which are just an airport

• 2:01Tristan Hughes?

  gate with better snacks and worse lighting, and what actually happens when an airline loses your luggage for 12 days, and how to get real money back instead of a free drink and an apology. Plus, the tip I really needed: how to book flights without it turning into a part-time job. Travel smarter and spend less with help from NerdWallet. Follow Smart Travel wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:43Speaker 04

  Suddenly, the Lord rained fire and brimstone on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and destroyed them and the whole valley, along with all the people there and everything that grew on the land. Early the next morning, Abraham hurried to the place where he had stood in the presence of the Lord. He looked down at Sodom and Gomorrah and the whole valley and saw smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a huge furnace.

• 3:19Tristan Hughes?

  Those were excerpts from Genesis 19 in the Old Testament, describing one of the most famous stories from the Hebrew Bible: the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by God for their sinfulness. Today, the names Sodom and Gomorrah, particularly Sodom, are well-known and infamous, and when we did a recent poll asking which biblical story we should cover next, well, Sodom and Gomorrah won convincingly. We're going to explore the stories about these two cities that survive in the Book of Genesis. We'll delve into the context, their supposed location near the Dead Sea, and whether there is any historical basis to the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah.

• 4:00Tristan Hughes?

  It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. Our guest today is Dr. Dylan Johnson from Cardiff University. A historian of the ancient Near East and biblical scholar, Dylan has been on the podcast before to talk through the stories of Moses and the Exodus, and that of the Ark of the Covenant. Dylan is a wonderful speaker, and this was a really interesting chat about Sodom and Gomorrah. Enjoy.

• 4:28Tristan Hughes?

  Dylan, it is a pleasure to have you back on the podcast today.

• 4:31Speaker 05

  It's great to be back.

• 4:32Tristan Hughes?

  And we did the Ark of the Covenant last time, and we did Moses as well. So you are one of our go-to experts for the Book of Exodus, the Book of Genesis, and exploring the stories of these well-known objects and figures from the Old Testament. And Sodom and Gomorrah, it feels like another well-known story from that part of the Bible.

• 4:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, some people know a version of the story. I think in the podcast, we can kind of go through the fact that there's actually multiple. But most people know the names, Sodom and Gomorrah, that's for sure.

• 5:00Tristan Hughes?

  So what is the big question, first of all? What is the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah?

• 5:06Speaker 05

  So the one that most people will know is more or less contained in two chapters in the Book of Genesis. That's the first book of the Bible, chapters 18 and 19. There's a couple of allusions a little bit earlier to what's about to happen. But basically, Sodom and Gomorrah are what are known as the cities of the plain, two of five, actually. And in a little while, we'll get to what those other three cities are. But for the most part, these two are a pair, Sodom and Gomorrah. They're mentioned together quite frequently, not always, but quite frequently. And the content of Genesis 18 through 19 is kind of two stories smushed into one. The first story in chapter 18 is about a

• 5:46Speaker 05

  divine visit. Three men, they're called men initially, show up to the house of Abram and his wife, Syrah, or Sarai. And these three men are very, at least one of them is very quickly identified as none other than God himself. So very interesting, has kind of parallels with Greek stories about divine visitors.

• 6:06Tristan Hughes?

  And hospitality as well, I'm guessing, as well, isn't it?

• 6:08Speaker 05

  Exactly. Hospitality is one of the... One of the key themes, in fact, is probably the connecting theme between the two chapters. And so in this first divine visit, these three visitors come, one of whom is God, the other two, who knows, obviously Christians, very simple answer for who those other two are. But for the ancient Jews who produced it, this is actually somewhat of a mystery who these other two are. We'll get to them maybe in a moment. But because Abram and Sarai demonstrate the guest hospitality rites, which are basically, you know, to welcome your guests, to offer them food, to house them, give them lodging. They're rewarded with a divine blessing, and that divine blessing is a promise that Sarai, who's well advanced in age already, will bear a son. And that son would eventually become Isaac. So that's basically the first part of the story.

• 6:52Speaker 05

  Positive, happy, and then it turns a little dark.

• 6:57Speaker 05

  And then it turns a little dark because this guest, who is none other than God himself, reveals what he's been conspiring to do to these two cities called Sodom and Gomorrah. We'd had a couple of references a little bit before this episode. So we know that Sodom and Gomorrah, they exist somewhere near the Dead Sea, or maybe in the Jordan Valley, we're not exactly clear.

• 7:19Tristan Hughes?

  So they're geographically positioned in the literature, in the story at least.

• 7:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, so again, not consistently, but it seems to be that, based on quite a few descriptions geographically, but also geological descriptions of the region, should situate them in the Dead Sea, and we can kind of get to that in a moment. But basically, these two cities are, for some reason, synonymous archetypes of places of sin, the worst places that that could possibly be. And basically, what this divine visitor reveals after the blessing he gives to his guests is that he's planning to destroy these two cities. Fire and brimstone.

• 7:57Tristan Hughes?

  Fire and brimstone, that's it. And just to clarify, so the location of the- This house where the divine visitor, where God and his two followers, they receive hospitality. That house itself is not in Sodom or Gomorrah. It's a different location. And he's talking about Sodom and Gomorrah from outside almost.

• 8:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. It's at a place called the Oaks of Mamri, and Mamri is some biblical figure who's associated with this kind of pre-Israelite group known as the Amorites. Who they are, you'll need another podcast to cover that. But basically, it's away from the Dead Sea region. But Abram has a vested interest in these two cities because his kinsman, whose name is Lot, has settled in Sodom. And we know about that a few chapters earlier. So he tries to dissuade God from destroying these cities. And there's kind of this interesting didactic back and forth between God and Abram, which raises really interesting theological questions of can you really dissuade God from doing things? And why would God need to be reminded of, you know, morality and things like that?

• 8:58Speaker 05

  But in any case, the back and forth negotiation is basically if they're able to find just 10 good people in Sodom, then Sodom and Gomorrah will be spared. So the takeaway again from this first chapter is Sodom is definitely taking the lead in the narrative. Gomorrah is really, it's there, but it's, it's really not as prominent. So the main story is following the city of Sodom. And in fact, if you actually just look across the biblical text, Sodom is mentioned 38 times and Gomorrah only 19.

• 9:28Tristan Hughes?

  Wow.

• 9:28Speaker 05

  And Gomorrah is only ever mentioned with Sodom.

• 9:31Tristan Hughes?

  Because always, even now, we say Sodom and Gomorrah. It's now Gomorrah and Sodom, isn't it?

• 9:35Speaker 05

  And there's no independent stories about Gomorrah, right? It's just destroyed alongside Sodom. So if we're really going to focus in on the narrative, it's really Sodom we're talking about. And then Gomorrah kind of tags along. So that gets us to the end of the chapter 18, and then the narrative switches. And what happens is basically these other two men, who are now suddenly called, what are called Malakim in Hebrew, angels, messengers, not human beings in any case. They're sent to Sodom and they go to the house of Lot. And again, this hospitality theme recurs. Lot brings them in. He shows them hospitality. Is the sodomites are the antithesis to that. They show up at the door of Lot and they demand that Lot

• 10:19Speaker 05

  give these two men, angels, whatever they are, to the crowd, to the mob. And in proper euphemistic biblical words, so that they may know them. And that specific line is where a whole bunch of associations of sodom with sexual devancy and and other different sexual acts. That's where that derives from because the threat is quite clearly sexual assault of some kind. Lot refuses. There's a strange offer to to send his own daughters out to appease the mob. It didn't come to fruition because ultimately the messengers, the men, the angels, they managed to ferry Lot and his family out of the city, his wife, his children, to the nearby other city of the plain called Zohar.

• 11:05Speaker 05

  And then we get the destruction of sodom and Gomorrah presumably as well. With again, these classical King James words, fire and brimstone. No one knows what brimstone is anymore, but it's just sulfur. So the story essentially ends there. And then after this episode, these two cities, sodom and Gomorrah, become bywords for sin and punishment. And they're going to enter into the biblical imagination as these archetypes of those two outcomes, which obviously happens quite a bit, recurs quite a bit in the unfolding history of Israel and then Judah.

• 11:36Tristan Hughes?

  Describing enemy cities, I'm guessing it's sodom and Gomorrah or?

• 11:39Speaker 05

  Describing their own cities.

• 11:40Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, their own.

• 11:41Speaker 05

  Jerusalem is destroyed by the Babylonians because it was sinful and it's being punished. Samaria, the northern capital of the northern kingdom is destroyed for the exact same reason. So in the Psalms and in various other texts, in fact, far more often, they describe their own cities as sodom and Gomorrah. A couple of times they will label places like Babylon.

• 11:59Tristan Hughes?

  But it's interesting also how there is a lot, and you've mentioned this to me before we started recording. I mean, theological baggage with those two chapters, isn't there, surrounding sodom and Gomorrah? And this whole narrative, saving this one family related to Abraham. But then everyone else is just consigned to being destroyed by God. I mean, the theological discussions are aplenty in the chapter.

• 12:23Speaker 05

  Exactly. So it's extremely theologically loaded based on the questions of sin and of mercy and of proportional destruction. And the other component is also that it's bound up in this bigger narrative. The Sodom and Gomorrah story that most people would know from chapters 18 and 19 concerned Abraham and his wife Sarah. And the catch is also is that it's part of this broader narrative about Abraham or Abram and his kinsman Lot. And so when we encounter other references to Sodom and Gomorrah and then the five cities of the plains, which we'll get to,

• 13:03Speaker 05

  it's assume that narrative that I just described, chapters 18 and 19. But we now think that that's a pretty late development. Sodom and Gomorrah is probably an old tradition, folk tradition. But that specific story with all of the details with Lot, with the three messengers or the three divine beings, hospitality theme, the sexual deviancy component, it's only there. No other biblical text seems to be aware that Abraham has anything to do with Sodom and Gomorrah. But the problem is, is that once you read that story, you kind of can't escape it. You always are going to be with every reference to Sodom and Gomorrah, thinking of that whole story. So

• 13:44Speaker 05

  what I'm trying to piece apart here is maybe if that's the last piece added, there is to get to some of the, if not the historicity of of these events, at least to access what the oldest story was. And it's not there, is what I'm trying to say.

• 14:03Tristan Hughes?

  But is that important to highlight? Also, we might think today, Book of Genesis, at the beginning of the Bible, it must have been written first. But of course, almost it feels like an onion. There are so many different layers to these stories. And when they're added and compiled together, it's not that the oldest stories are at the beginning and that the stories we have today were the earliest versions of them either.

• 14:22Speaker 05

  Right, exactly. It's something that I struggle to teach the students sometimes is that there's, there's a clear narrative trajectory in the Bible from the beginning of time to more or less the Persian period. And at certain points, that intersects with actual chronology. But again, it's a narrative chronology. So when something occurs early in the biblical text or it's based early, it doesn't have much bearing on when that text was actually written. So the best example is the story of creation is probably pretty late. Whereas a prophetic text like Hosea is probably much older. So you can't exactly correlate the narrative context with the scribal context, the composition of those texts.

• 15:12Speaker 06

  Hi folks, it's Farnoosh Turabi from the So Money Podcast, here to talk about NerdWallet Wealth Partners. Making more money doesn't come with instructions, but that's where NerdWallet Wealth Partners comes in. They're a financial advisory firm built for high earners in their 30s and 40s. They create a financial plan with every client. It's basically a roadmap from where you are today to where you want to be. When you decide you want to retire five years earlier or spring for the bigger house, they'll run the numbers on what's possible and meet with you regularly. Think of NerdWallet Wealth Partners as the manual for high earners that you never got, plus someone who's actually read it. Learn more at nerdwalletwealthpartners.com/so money. NerdWallet Wealth Partners LLC is an SEC-registered investment advisor.

• 15:57Speaker 06

  Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training, nor does it constitute an endorsement by any securities regulator. Please see nerdwalletwealthpartners.com for disclosures and important information.

• 16:11Speaker 04

  Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed: Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one. And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with a whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 17:35Tristan Hughes?

  We've covered that main narrative story of Genesis 18 to 19, but there's another part of the Book of Genesis, isn't there, which talks about Sodom and Gomorrah that I feel we need to talk about first before visiting those other cities and the historicity and archaeology about it.

• 17:50Speaker 05

  Right, exactly. So this gets to a completely different, also in Genesis, but it's a completely different chapter in chapter 14, which is a chapter that has long been recognized as one of the strangest chapters in the Book of Genesis. It's going all over the place in terms of what it's talking about, its content. It concerns international politics, which is completely out of place in the Book of Genesis. That's more at home in Kings and Samuel and things like that. It has Abram in this section, essentially as a king with an army that he raises. He encounters a strange priest called Melchizedek, who's the priest of El Elyon in pre-Israelite Jerusalem. And then, of course, there's these references to this strange battle

• 18:33Speaker 05

  between the four kings of the east and then the five cities of the plain. And so what's most interesting here, before I even get into the content of Genesis 14, is that this is the story, this is the Sodom and Gomorrah, and then the three other cities, that other biblical texts seem to know. They don't know Genesis 18 through 19, at least there's no clear indication. But texts like Amos 4, Hosea 11, and First Isaiah, so texts that we tend to date earlier, or at least while they're still a model. monarchy around. They know this text. They know this story. And the associations of Sodom and Gomorrah therefore are not with sin and punishment and all of the details in chapters 18 and 19, but with the strange battle in chapter 14.

• 19:18Tristan Hughes?

  Sorry, just to interject there, you mentioned a monarchy and all that. Just so we know, what do you mean by monarchy there? What are we talking about?

• 19:23Speaker 05

  Right. So we're talking about the existence of biblical or Israelite and Judeite monarchies. Basically timeframe we're imagining here is roughly 1000 till 586. So texts produced in that period, we call monarchical texts produced after 586 when Judeites were exiled into Babylon, we'll call exilic. And then their return, I mean, there's phases of return, but we'll say roughly, you know, 539 and later into the Persian period is post-exilic. So the only text other biblical traditions seem to know is this Genesis 14. So what is Genesis 14? The story basically picks up with, again, it's about Abram. He's living near the city of Hebron. That's in the currently in the West Bank, not too far from Jerusalem, but not at the Dead Sea,

• 20:07Speaker 05

  importantly. And his brother Lot has settled in the city of Sodom. So that that kind of gives us the connection to the bigger picture. But the actual content of Genesis 14, at least the first 11 verses, have nothing to do with Abram, have nothing to do with Lot, have nothing to do with that. It talks about a group of four eastern kings who make war on the cities of the plain. So I suppose I'll start with the eastern kings. So first off, none of these kings are known from history. Their names are clearly meant to evoke eastern empires. Some are accurate and some are less clear, but we can't identify any of them. The first king is Amrafel, king of Shinar. Shinar,

• 20:47Speaker 05

  we know is how biblical writers refer to the land of Sumer, that is extreme south of modern Iraq.

• 20:53Tristan Hughes?

  Place like Uruk-Andur and the Sumerian kind of area.

• 20:56Speaker 05

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So pre Babylon, Babylon, basically. The next is Ariak, king of Elisar. No idea. No idea about these. There, there's hypotheses, but really this is the only reference to this king or to this place. The other king is Hedor La Omar. That's a tricky name because it's an Elamite name and Elam is pre Persian Iran. So it's an ancient kingdom as well. And the last is Tidal, king of the Goim. And Goim just means the nations. So these are

• 21:29Speaker 05

  Figures who the biblical writers are associated with extremely great antiquity, but also coming from the east. So before they get to the Dead Sea, we learn about how these kings of the east, they kind of have some kind of coalition, they come, they fight with a motley crew of peoples who are the peoples of the land as far as the biblical writers are concerned. These are the pre-Israelite inhabitants. So again, they're clearly setting these events in a very, very ancient past, in the very distant past. So these kings encounter groups like the Rephaim, which are often remembered as giants, the Amalekites, this quintessential enemy of Israel, the Horeans, which is a Bronze

• 22:09Speaker 05

  Age people who lived up in Syria, northern Iraq region, and other obscure groups. So they come, make war with these peoples before then turning their attention to the cities of the plain. And finally, we get to the cities of the plain. So we have Barra, king of Sodom, one of the targets, Birshe, king of Gomorrah, and then we get the other cities of the plains. We have a king of a place called Adma, named Shinab, a king of a place called Zeboiim, named Shemeber, and then a king, or the king of Bella, we don't know if that's the name of the king or the name of the town, which is associated with this Zoar. Zoar is the place where Lot and his family fled at the destruction of Sodom. So these are the enemies of these eastern kings, and long story short, they lose the

• 22:54Speaker 05

  fight. And the instigator of all of this, Herodolomar, king of Elam, he takes prisoner Lot. So this is the kinsman of Abram, but only after 11 verses, I should say, does Abram suddenly appear in the story. And then it goes in strange directions. So it really seems like this whole chapter is a bit of a patchwork, but that first 11 verses, that looks like some kind of a core old story, at least as far as it's represented in other texts, because in other texts, we have these other cities named. So Zeboiim and Adma are named in other biblical texts, so they know these places. And in fact, those places are sometimes named without Sodom and Gomorrah.

• 23:37Speaker 05

  So exactly what the association is with these cities and this story is not entirely clear, but at least we know that biblical writers are aware of it outside of the book of Genesis.

• 23:49Tristan Hughes?

  Is it also interesting, because what really struck me is when you mentioned how it's almost kind of the coming together of five different cities. And if memory serves me right- Isn't it with the Philistines later that they have five cities and sometimes they do you like the Pentapolis, five city states together? You almost see this repeating idea of five cities being linked in some sort of entity or another in particular stories.

• 24:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, I hadn't actually thought of that or made that connection. That's a great connection. I'm sure somebody has somewhere in the literature. But I mean, it's important then too, because of course the Pentapolis becomes kind of the fixation of the enemy in the early history of Israel, at least as it's depicted. So there may be a connection there. Now, the question is just how fixed were these five cities of the plane? Because eventually they start to get paired off and Sodom and Gomorrah kind of stand on their own. Adman, Zeboiim are mentioned on their own as well. But at least, I guess, when we think about bringing all of these diverse traditions together, it becomes five and that could be significant. Just as significant as well as the four eastern kings, because the places that they're associated with, Sumer, Elam,

• 24:53Speaker 05

  maybe something in the north and maybe something in the west. These might fall into a basic cognitive map of the ancient Near Eastern world, which is, you know, usually makes its appearance in royal inscriptions as the four quarters of the world, which is much like the cardinal directions, northeast, southwest. They describe these in terms of cultures and certainly Sumer and Elam are two cardinal directions. The other two places, we have no clue where they are, so we can't really decide. But some scholars tend to think that that's what's being evoked here, that these are the kings of the whole world coming to bring war to the Dead Sea region.

• 25:28Tristan Hughes?

  But also, it's almost like the five cities standing up against these powerful, mighty powers coming from the east. And as you highlighted earlier, if this is the story that includes Sodom and Gomorrah, that seems to be more better known when referring to these cities later in the Bible. Should we therefore think that actually many of the people who were reading the Bible would not have associated Sodom and Gomorrah first and foremost with sin and infamy, but actually this story of defence against these powers to the east first of all?

• 25:54Speaker 05

  It's certainly possible. It's hard to exactly tell because there is some kind of a judgmental tone in even some of these earlier ones. They talk a lot about the overthrow of these cities. And so whether or not that judgmental tone is there in the original narrative, we just have Genesis 14. In the prophetic texts, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, there is that judgmental tone. So they do somewhat associate it, which makes sense because then there's, you know, room for extrapolation in chapters 18 and 19 then to really build on this. So, so there is a sense even in this early stage that these places got what they deserved. But I should

• 26:37Speaker 05

  also add that after we leave verse 11 and go into verse 12, Abram shows back up, he musters an army, he goes to war with Herd of La Omar, and he is victorious. So there is also this kind of redemption through the figure of Abram, who's for the only time in the entire book of Genesis, acting like a king here. So it's really hard to tell, I would say, if all of this sin and sanction emerges only in those chapters, but it's certainly much less prominent in chapter 14.

• 27:06Tristan Hughes?

  Well, let's now look at the location, as you mentioned earlier there, Dylan. So is it believed, or I mean, is it expressly mentioned that, as you said, the location right by the Dead Sea or in the Dead Sea? I mean, what does it seem to suggest?

• 27:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, so it seems almost definitive that the, the imagined landscape of both these stories is probably just south of the Dead Sea because of, well, for reasons I'm about to get to. So let's start with the oldest story, at least what we think looks like the oldest story, which is Genesis 14. Now, there's some references just to the geology of the region, the city of the plain. It's taken to be the plain of Jordan. Now, where exactly the plain of Jordan is, that can be a lot of different places. But usually, if they're going to refer to, let's say, just the region east of the Jordan River, that's usually the plateau or the highlands. The plain is usually associated with this

• 28:01Speaker 05

  area just to the south of the Dead Sea. Again, we're not 100% sure this is historical geography, but we get a little bit of clarification that the battle happens in a place called the Valley of Sodom, and then it says explicitly that is the Salt Sea. So we're fairly certain, at least in the biblical writers imaginations, these cities were located down there. But also then they start to describe certain geological features that pretty much seal the deal. So the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, there's really no doubt that they're talking about the region of the Dead Sea. Just the reference to sulfur, or King James's brimstone, is a very basic geological reality of the area. I don't know if you've ever visited the Dead Sea or anything around there.

• 28:45Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, yes.

• 28:46Speaker 05

  It's a strange, alien world. It's absolutely going to be inspiring of stories reflecting on what could have possibly happened here to make this place like this. And so you can imagine stories being spun just based on the experience of being at the Dead Sea. Salt, complete lack of vegetation, sulfur, extreme heat. I mean, the temperatures around the Dead Sea regularly exceed 40 degrees Celsius. It's kind of hellish, really. So surely if there were cities here, they must have done something horrible to result in this, especially when everything around is more or less fairly fertile.

• 29:26Tristan Hughes?

  Do you think that there is any potential historicity or historical basis behind the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah, or these kind of cities in that environment? Maybe the wider five cities that are mentioned together?

• 29:39Speaker 05

  For the most part, at least as the narratives are concerned, I'd say no. I think these narratives are what we call ideologies, because in both Genesis 14 and especially Genesis 1819, they really conclude with explanations for what the landscape looks like. Now, were there cities there? Yes, there were cities there, especially in the early Bronze Age. So these would have been ruins by the time biblical writers are composing these stories. So you can kind of imagine that. And maybe I can touch a little bit on the fact that there were archaeological surveys in and around the region, scholars looking for Sodom

• 30:19Speaker 05

  and Gomorrah, of course. Sirius surveys also going on in the 1970s, Thomas Schaub and his co-director Walt They did a fairly thorough survey of the region in 1973. They do find a couple of sites, Bad Eddara, which is an early Bronze Age site. So early Bronze Age is putting us somewhere around 3200 to 2000 BCE, something like that. And this was a fairly big site. So and it did come to a fairly dramatic end around the end of the early Bronze Age there. And then about 13 kilometers south of that, they found another site, Numira. So there we have our two, Sodom and Gomorrah. Pick which one you want to be which. And it also is destroyed around this time period. But

• 31:03Speaker 05

  again, this puts us about, you know, 1500 years between the destruction of those cities and the composition of those texts. So my inclination then is not that these cities are Sodom and Gomorrah, or that the narratives describing their destruction are really connected to these archaeological sites. But what I can imagine is that people, biblical writers and Israelites and Judaites living in the region, who would have obviously encountered the strange geological features of the landscape and perhaps see these types of ruins, would have come up with stories explaining how these cities, which nobody could live there at that time, could have existed. Perhaps the landscape was once fertile. And in fact, we have a biblical description of this

• 31:45Speaker 05

  area as essentially a garden of Eden. And it was fertile until they sinned and the region was more or less desolated. So that's kind of what I imagine the history being is ancient encounters with the landscape. You don't need to go any further than the biblical texts itself, than the book of Genesis itself. There's two explanations for that possibility, right? One is this group of four kings from the east came and destroyed these cities. And the landscape was always like that, at least in that story. And then Genesis 18 and 19 and some other texts offer an alternative explanation about how that region transformed from what was once a fertile landscape into a

• 32:24Speaker 05

  desolate place. And then that this explanation of sin and punishment comes in. So that's kind of where I see the Sodom and Gomorrah tradition. They stand as archetypes. Of punishment because of the landscape, because the landscape is punishing. And no one can live there in the days of these biblical writers. So why people could have lived there in the past begs some kind of explanation. And the biblical writers are human beings who want to explain the world in which they live as well. And they offer two explanations for us.

• 32:57Tristan Hughes?

  If you're saying that that later story of Sodom and Gomorrah is written post the sack of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. And then you have the Judeans either coming back from Jerusalem or those writing in exile. And I guess they have a different agenda for wanting to write than the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Compared to those writing pre that time, we've, you know, you can see the different agendas of the writer right there as to why they create that story.

• 33:22Speaker 05

  Right, yeah. So, so the association of Sodom and Gomorrah, just generically with sin. It's not exclusively associated to Genesis 18 and 19, that there does seem to be other texts that are aware of this association. But what's interesting is the detail and the fixation on very particular types of sin and punishment. Really come to the fore in what we call exilic and post exilic literature. And no more is it, is it more explicit than outside of Genesis than in Ezekiel and specifically in Ezekiel 16. Where there's, he's explicit about the fact that Jerusalem is the new Sodom. And its punishment is more or less understood in analogous terms.

• 34:06Speaker 05

  So with that, you know, understanding in mind, a lot of scholars, based on other factors, which have to do with the growth and development of the book of Genesis. Kind of see, this is a setting when that Genesis 18 through 19 story makes the most sense coming into existence.

• 34:22Tristan Hughes?

  So trying to explain why Jerusalem was destroyed, why God allowed that to happen, is it kind of that thinking?

• 34:27Speaker 05

  Exactly. And Ezekiel makes clear also that for as bad as Jerusalem is, it's not quite as bad as Sodom. Because there's a remnant, there is the possibility for return and renewal, which obviously is something Sodom and Gomorrah don't get. So it's not all negative, but it definitely shows us a moment when those motifs and those archetypes would have been of great interest to biblical writers. Because Ezekiel dedicates essentially an entire chapter to it.

• 35:01Speaker 06

  Hi folks, it's Farnoosh Turabi from the So Money Podcast, here to talk about NerdWallet Wealth Partners. They offer free tools for high earners who'd actually like an answer, like their calculator that estimates if you're on track for financial independence. Plug in a few numbers to see how your savings path may support your goals. Or their wealth-building checklist for high earners. It's a step-by-step guide for prioritizing your dollars once you're making six figures. And if you still have questions, you can connect with one of their financial advisors, who specializes in working with high earners in their 30s and 40s. Learn more at nerdwalletwealthpartners.com/so money. NerdWallet Wealth Partners LLC is an SEC-registered investment advisor. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training, nor does it constitute an endorsement by any securities regulator.

• 35:46Speaker 06

  Please see nerdwalletwealthpartners.com for disclosures and important information.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone. And I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh, anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Everybody, listen up.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade-in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.

• 36:34Tristan Hughes?

  Now, I'd like to return to archaeology and Sodom and Gomorrah in the 20th century, Dylan, because I got in my notes something called the Ebola Bible controversy. Now, what was this and how does it relate to Sodom and Gomorrah?

• 36:48Speaker 05

  Right, so 1970s, kind of a decade of great interest in Sodom and Gomorrah. So we have Rast and Shab who are conducting these archaeological surveys all around the southern plain of the Dead Sea. They're finding sites like Badadara and Endumira. And right around this time in 19- 1976, Italian archaeologists in Syria, in western Syria, discovered a massive archive of an ancient city known as Ebla. The city is also extremely ancient. The texts date to sometime around 2300 BCE. So to give you an idea, this is about the time of Sargon of Akkad. These are extremely old texts, but they're very difficult to decipher, even today, some 50 years after their discovery.

• 37:33Speaker 05

  You can imagine how difficult it was to decipher them in the initial years after their discovery. Nonetheless, a certain epigrapher of the expedition, Giovanni Pettenato, he starts trying to work through these texts. He finds a document that seems to be listing various cities, and he notes some of the cities, or interprets some of the cities, as nothing else but these cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Zebouim, Adma, and Bella, or Zoar. And he makes a very ostentatious claim. He goes to a couple of conferences and says, hey, look, these are the names of the cities of the plain, these cities that Rast and Shab are uncovering, they're showing up in roughly contemporary texts from ancient Syria.

• 38:18Speaker 05

  They're real. Sodom and Gomorrah did exist. Now, the problem was, we knew so little about Eblite, which is a very obscure Semitic language, and it's written in really archaic Sumerian signs, basically. So what Pettenato was translating then, first off, wasn't published, so no one could really check his work outside of the members of the excavation, and the other member of the excavation disagreed with him vehemently. So what ultimately happens is, this claim, it got scaled back, one by one, city by city, the reading was wrong, until we finally, ultimately, understood what this text was, which is describing cities in Mesopotamia. Has nothing to do with Jordan.

• 39:00Speaker 05

  So it fizzled out, but you can imagine the 1970s, they're finding the remains of cities. We're finding texts that may mention them. So there was a great interest. And then basically by 1980, all of this kind of fizzles out. The archaeologists start to just talk about, really, these are, for the most part, cemetery sites. They don't seem to have the major urban centers that are described in the biblical texts. They're interesting, early Bronze Age sites for the region, but let's stop trying to interpret them through the lens of the Bible, which more or less brings us to where we're at today.

• 39:32Tristan Hughes?

  I must also ask, because it is really interesting when exploring biblical stories, parallels with other stories from the ancient world. Is Sodom and Gomorrah different? Are there any parallel stories that we can see in other ancient cultures? I said, in my mind, actually, we go to something like Atlantis, kind of a similarity there of a city destroyed by the gods. But I mean, are there others that we can talk about?

• 39:53Speaker 05

  There are sets of texts which are known as city laments, and they're all composed in Sumerian. And they're not quite directly having gods destroy the cities. They are more or less describing great conflagrations of places like Uruk and Ur by human agents. But within the texts, it's divine agency is completely intermingled. So the goddess or the god departs their temple, and that enables the flood to sweep over, these destructions to happen. And of course, Jerusalem itself is the obvious other parallel for Sodom and Gomorrah of divine judgment. So the destruction of any city, I think, would, at least in some respects in the ancient Near Eastern mindset,

• 40:36Speaker 05

  be a result of divine causation. Things don't happen unless the gods will them. So I'm not so sure I'd have trouble finding parallels. I think I'd probably find too many parallels, and it's just degrees of similarity. It is ironic that the Atlantic's narrative is perhaps the most similar, at least as a typology, of divine destruction of a city and its complete annihilation and disappearance forever, because usually these cities are then rebuilt. And I don't know what to make of that. I sometimes think just human cultures have a tendency to converge in that way.

• 41:10Tristan Hughes?

  Well, I guess also that human mindset, isn't it? Because actually, that wider narrative of a city either being conquered or being destroyed because in the eyes of the victorious, that city become decadent and all of those things where they're partying too much. And then another power comes in, overpowers them, and the reasons they give is because, well, that city just became a place of sin. The Romans do it multiple times with cities that they capture. I think of Tarentum, Monte Tarento in southern Italy, they label the Greeks there as becoming incredibly decadent and a city of sin, Corinth as well. So actually, if we kind of explore that wider narrative, Sodom and Gomorrah caused the fact that it's destroyed and never rebuilt. But actually, it's a human mindset thing of people trying

• 41:55Tristan Hughes?

  to explain why a city was destroyed or conquered is because their city just became a place of sin and they were taken over by people who considered themselves more virtuous, I guess.

• 42:05Speaker 05

  Right. And I think that's actually exactly in some of the Ezekiel texts is that he's not fixating on specific sins, much less a specific sexual sin of Sodom, but he's labeling them as excessive and decadent and exactly these same parameters. Because again, he's trying to justify and explain these calamities. Why do these things happen? Because otherwise, the world's a very scary place and randomness is not a good thing, right? You want cause and effect, rather than four strange eastern empires coming and capriciously destroying your cities and you have no control over. So I think what we see across these cultures then is justification, but also maybe a bit of

• 42:46Speaker 05

  catharsis, that if we just avoid those things, we won't be the Persians, we won't be the Greeks, we won't be the Atlanteans.

• 42:53Tristan Hughes?

  Whoever it is. Yeah, exactly. Don't share that same kind of fate. When we did a poll, we did a poll after our Tower of Babel episode, asking which story from the Old Testament you'd like us to cover next. And the overwhelming answer for that, the one which had the most votes, was Sodom and Gomorrah. And we had some other juicy topics in there, like David and Goliath and so on and so forth. So Dylan, why do you think that of all the stories in the Bible, including the Old Testament and the New Testament, but why Sodom and Gomorrah is always there in like a top five most popular or people want to hear about? Why has it remained such a well-known, intriguing story to people down to the present day?

• 43:35Speaker 05

  I think there's a certain level of familiarity with the terms, obviously.

• 43:39Tristan Hughes?

  Or sodomites and stuff like that.

• 43:40Speaker 05

  Sodomites and just a cultural awareness of it. So that already kind of sparks the interest. If you know about something, or you think you know about something, you're going to have that interest. So they're well known. The next thing is they're lost. They're not to be found anymore. They're Atlantis, right? So that's appealing. It's not just, you know, Rome was destroyed. Rome was destroyed, but you can still go to Rome and see it, right? I think it was the same appeal with Troy, right? We need to find these lost civilizations, which is why there's so much media. And everyone's always disappointed when you do find it, right? We find Troy and it's, oh, it's an ancient Anatolian culture. How disappointing, right? And of course, the same would be for Sodom and Gomorrah.

• 44:22Speaker 05

  But I think so long as we don't have these places, we aren't able to pinpoint them on a map, there's kind of a sense of adventure and discovery that could still be there. And so Sodom and Gomorrah offer that. The biblical connections, obviously, are going to speak to people of faith by finding these cities reinforcing, you know, the concrete dynamics of their belief systems. So anything with the Bible always has that really important and heavy component. So I think that's probably the dynamics. And then again, there's always, you know, the personal connections, which I can't really account for. But I think that's enough to explain why it polled so well.

• 45:01Tristan Hughes?

  Dylan, this has been fantastic. Always a pleasure to get you on the podcast. And it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on.

• 45:08Speaker 05

  Thanks, it was a blast.

• 45:13Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was Dr. Dylan Johnson talking you through the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Thank you for listening. Please follow The Ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you're doing us a big favour. Now, if you want more ancient history videos and clips in the meantime, then also be sure to follow me on Instagram at @AncientsTristan. Don't forget, you can also listen to The Ancients and all of History Hits podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com/subscribe. That's enough from me, and I'll see you in the next episode.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone. And I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh. Anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Everybody, listen up.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade-in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.

• 46:30Speaker 06

  Hi, folks. It's Farnoosh Turabi from the So Money Podcast, here to talk about NerdWallet Wealth Partners. Making more money doesn't come with instructions, but that's where NerdWallet Wealth Partners comes in. They're a financial advisory firm built for high earners in their 30s and 40s. They create a financial plan with every client. It's basically a roadmap from where you are today to where you want to be. When you decide you want to retire five years earlier or spring for the bigger house, they'll run the numbers on what's possible and meet with you regularly. Think of NerdWallet Wealth Partners as the manual for high earners that you never got, plus someone who's actually read it. Learn more at nerdwalletwealthpartners.com/so money. NerdWallet Wealth Partners LLC is an SEC-registered investment advisor.

• 47:15Speaker 06

  Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training, nor does it constitute an endorsement by any securities regulator. Please see nerdwalletwealthpartners.com for disclosures and important information.