have archaeologists discovered sodom and gomorrah what are the sulfur balls that some are claiming maybe the means god used to destroy the cities well my guest today joel kramer has been on the show a couple times before he’s an archaeologist who lives in jordan and has visited the very sites that we’re going to talk about today he’s published some books joel thanks for coming back on to talk about what i consider one of the more interesting conversations kind of at least in the translation of archaeology to the biblical text the potential find of sodom and gomorrah yeah thanks for having me on i appreciate it well let’s jump right in before we look at the evidence uh just remind viewers what happened at sodom and gomorrah according to the biblical text uh yeah sure in uh in genesis chapter 19 we have the destruction of what are called the cities of the plain and uh and so it says specifically that the lord rained down burning sulfur from the lord from heaven and and so we have this burning of these cities and then these cities are abandoned after that and become examples even up into the time of the early church at the time of jesus in the early church they’re used as an examples of god’s judgment and uh and desolation now in some ways you started to answer this but i was going to ask specifically why do we care if the cities of sonoma gamora are potentially or actually found yeah that’s a that’s a great question and in this particular case we read the story of lot who is in sodom and is trying to reason with his sons-in-law you know get out of this place it’s going to be destroyed and they think he’s joking and and so we have this intense story and and uh and really the situation is is that we are in the world today in the same situation that the people in sodom and gomorrah were in in their day jesus clearly says this when he talks about the destruction of sodom and gomorrah as an example of exactly how it’s going to be when the son of man returns when he returns and so um and so to understand how those who did survive lot and his daughters this massive destruction is really key to understanding how you survive the end of the world that’s a powerful thing to say so not only finding these cities could be one support for the reliability of the bible or not finding them or evidence against them could undermine the bible but this is a particular story about god’s judgment of evil which has a lot to say to our moment today as well it’s interesting on those two levels now the bible talks about where sodom and gomorrah may be found doesn’t give us an exact like latitude but it gives us kind of boundaries what biblical boundaries does the bible give us of where we should expect to find these cities yeah the probably the most uh key verse or or one of the most basic ones is genesis 14 where we have the five cities of the planes named those are sodom and gomorrah admira zeboim and zoar and then it mentions the kings from those five cities and names them and then they are defending themselves against a an attack from an army and so they’re fighting in defense of their cities it says in the valley of saddim which is the salt sea so this is a reference to the dead sea so we would expect the cities of the plain to be near the dead sea and then another key verse is genesis 10 19 which is laying out the boundaries for canaan and it gives the western boundary along the mediterranean coast from sidon in the north down to gaza in the south and then it says you turn towards and it names out sodom and gomorrah and the rest of the cities of the plain that could only be east because you’ve come from the north you’ve stopped you’ve been told to stop at gaza you can either turn to the west or to the east if you turn to the west you go out into the mediterranean sea so the only way that it can you can turn is east so that means that um these five cities of the plain and their towns this agricultural plane is uh east of gaza and then ezekiel 1646 says that samaria are some areas to the north of jerusalem and your wicked sister sodom is to the south of jerusalem and so those are the three keys right there um the city is the plane which by the way is we’re looking for something huge not not small um we’re not even looking for one city we’re looking for five cities that are five main cities and their towns in a agricultural plane that is south of jerusalem near the dead sea and east of gaza should be easy to find yeah right right now if we take those three markers that you mentioned roughly how much area are we talking about in that southern part of israel um well it’s the southern part of jordan today and it’s uh it’s roughly you know you’re talking about 25 30 miles across it from north to south okay so none of these sites are in modern day israel they’re all in present day oh on the southeast side of the dead sea so roughly an area 25 30 miles across we’re looking for five cities with certain signature marks that match the story in sodom and gomorrah okay now i should i i should mention really quickly too that um one of the one of the reasons today when you’re driving on the southeast side of the jordan uh are the dead sea in jordan and you’re driving south through this area you you’re in an area that only receives less than two inches of rain per year it’s a desert area and all of a sudden you come into this green agricultural area it’s bizarre and so how is that possible well it’s because the um plateau the the high mountains of jordan receive a lot of rain and so the springs are coming out uh from from this rain that falls in the high country is draining down and coming out in this particular area so it’s a very important agricultural area even to this day and the reason why is because you have this warm desert-like climate and you have lots of water and so you can grow your agriculture year-round in this area okay so i’m eager to get to the evidence but just bear with me to make sure i understand the three markers that you gave near the dead sea and of course east of uh gaza south of jerusalem there are areas in southern israel that could in principle fit that so why don’t we look in israel why only in jordan absolutely um you know the southwest portion of the dead sea matches that biblical location just like the southeast does the reason that that we don’t have sites identified as sodom and gomorrah on the western side the israel side is because no archaeological sites have been found over there and again the reason the reason has to do with water um on on the southeast side you have these high mountains in jordan where you get an abundance of water coming down in like a drain down to the dead sea on the israel side you’re you’re in uh above that is the negev desert that doesn’t receive a lot of rain and so you don’t have the water on the western side and so you don’t there’s no uh archaeological sites it’s not that there’s archaeological sites that don’t match there’s just no archaeological sites okay on the southwest side of uh uh that are from this time period yeah that makes sense now we’re going to get into some of the specifics of these archaeological sites but maybe just frame it for us that if these events happen as described in the bible 4 000 years ago what could or would we expect to find in the cities of the plains like what are we looking for in that region that would tell us oh we’ve potentially found sodom and gomorrah yeah well when you’re digging in a hotel an ancient mound which is several cities stacked on top of each other the the layer the layers that stand out the most are the burn destruction layers ash and the destruction the burn layer in this case we’re not looking for just a destruction layer in a city we’re looking for multiple cities that have been burned okay and uh to ash so um we’re not actually looking for these big glorious tells because a tell is is it rises over time it forms over time because one city is destroyed or becomes ruins and then another city is built on top and another city in another city and then over a long period thousands of years of occupation you get these really impressive looking tells that’s not what we’re looking for because the cities of the plain are described as being burned and then never being rebuilt uninhabited and we know this we we know this because the um several of the prophets use sodom and gomorrah and other cities as examples of this destruction and desolation so for example isaiah chapter 1 isaiah says if the lord hadn’t delivered us from the assyrians we would have become like sodom and gomorrah we would be extinct we have jeremiah and isaiah in isaiah 13 saying that babylon also is is going to become like sodom and gomorrah we have jesus in capernaum is the headquarters of his ministry and he’s telling capernaum you’re going to become like sodom and gomorrah therefore therefore these cities of the plain can’t be roman cities otherwise it wouldn’t be used as an example by jesus and peter and others okay as an example and and they wouldn’t be used they can’t be um cities in the um kingdom of israel period otherwise the prophets wouldn’t use them as examples of utter desolation so that’s what we’re looking for we’re looking for sites that have been destroyed by fire and and forever abandoned that’s really helpful when you took uh me and our team of students to jericho and there’s different layers there’s a tell like city like you describe like a cake layer on top of layer and people do this because there’s protection and there’s a strong foundation there may be water there’s reasons for that and when you get to the layer of jericho you show that they find burn remains around the time that the bible describes the conquest that’s a completely different burning remains than this which is total destruction city never occupied again so that makes a lot of sense in terms of what we would look for archaeologically speaking now is this evidence we’re going to get into new with you are you making some novel claim about sodom and gomorrah have archaeologists been examining these sites for a while give us some context about that if you will yeah none none of the things that we’re talking about are my idea or a new idea or anything like that these are these are the established sites for sodom and gomorrah and the um cities of the plane the new claims that have come out you know in recent times are what has thrown confusion on what was already understood in the past and so um it did take a longer period of time for these sites to be discovered the first site baba draw was discovered in 1924 so when you’re looking at other biblical cities sites that were discovered many of them were long before that so why did it take so long for the first of these sites to be discovered well two reasons one the area that they um are in in the southeast side of the dead sea it was an extremely remote area and people didn’t go into that area and so the most famous biblical archaeologist of all time william foxwell albright is the one that went in in 1924 and he was the first archaeologist to go in there wow why did he go into that particular area because albright knew his bible and he knew where to go looking for the cities of the plain according to his bible and so um on that expedition he found uh the site of babadra and um and dated it to uh 2000 bc roughly the time of abraham and lot and uh and so um that started things off but that site then was excavated in the early 60s by one of his students named paul lapp okay that makes sense now when you say like the consensus view is this among biblical scholars and i ask because i would guess that the vast majority of scholars with a more secular or a different world view think this entire story is fictional anyways and it’s a myth right yes um well actually yes that is correct uh especially today that wasn’t so much the case uh back in 1924 and back when these were being excavated in the 60s basically i would say that um that the consensus at least back then because you know i mean the ones who dug the sites really from from what they’ve written were pretty secular themselves um what they what they believed is that the bible and this many scholars believe this that the bible was uh written later in history than what uh we as christians believe and um and so uh they basically took the position that um that these these cities were destroyed and this is what the biblical writers later in history were referring to these cities and this destruction yeah they were making up a story that was uh that was mythological but they were that story was based on real events that happened to real cities and and these were the cities that that had happened to okay gotcha that helps that worldview difference really clarifies now we’re going to jump into some of these cities that you’ve mentioned and we have some pictures that so people can actually see this you’ve gone on site and made this documentary on your website i have a link below not only your website on youtube channel which i hope our viewers will subscribe to top quality fascinating on-site archaeological digs but i texted very quickly i texted my assistant i said hey i’m sending you six images of sodom and gomorrah sent it and didn’t read it and i looked at it said oh i’m sending you sex images of sodom and gomorrah and thought that’s kind of ironic on a couple levels so if you are looking for those images that will not be on this video but we do want to have some images for you it is in the bible yes i’m glad you chuckled on that one and they take groups you know i take groups to these sites and i’m telling them the story of uh sodom and gomorrah and lots cave and all that stuff and i’m realizing oh my gosh there’s there’s kids here what can i what can i say and what can i say yeah yeah exactly let’s jump into the actual images of the site but let’s start with a city called baba draw what do we find and does it match up with the biblical account yeah so um albright found babadra in 1924 of the five early bronze archaeological sites found in this area it is the largest and um and so his student paul lapp was took over for albright in jerusalem and he noticed that all these intact uh pots from the early bronze period were coming into the antiquity market in jerusalem and he was thinking what on earth where are all these things coming from and so he actually followed the trail and figured out they were coming from bobby draw and not from the city ruins themselves but from the cemetery that’s right next to him and so the cemetery is is just really impressive um you can tell where it is today in my video i show uh aerial footage of it because of the locals coming in for you know decades and decades and and digging into these graves to try to find antiquities you have these pop marks all over the place wow um through throughout here and so paul lap came in and started excavating the cemetery and uh and found that the burn destruction later after he was digging the cemetery went over and started digging the city and he’s the one that determined this is a city a walled city okay and um and so the burn destruction over the cemetery there’s a burn destruction over the cemetery that’s kind of weird is at the same time uh that the city is burned so the two were destroyed at the same time and so he really puzzled over this um you know i don’t see why he really he had the bible explaining it but um but anyways you know why would uh an army destroy a cemetery well they wouldn’t and um and this cemetery is huge um it’s estimated that 500 000 half a million people are buried in this cemetery and uh and the the graves that are up at the top because just like a city is in different layers so are cemeteries and the type of uh tombs that they used at that time were these mud adobe-like houses that they put the dead in and these were burned through in their roofs and then the contents inside were burned and so uh and it all happened at once you know if it was cremation or something like that it would have happened over a long period of time and so um and so and then and then the date of of the pottery that was coming from the cemeteries destruction matched the date of the um destruction in the city and so that was the first thing that was lined up and um and that was really what had paul lapp convinced this is you know this is definitely one of the cities of the plane were in the cities of the plane what about the warped bones that were found yeah the um the bones that he pulled out of those uh tombs and studied and had them studied he has pictures of those in the excavation report and uh and they’re actually warped from the heat that um that these carnal houses or charnel houses as they’re called received um when they were met their fire destruction and so the the remains of the people inside had um suffered severe heat and burning and uh it’s really amazing evidence i’ve never seen anything like it again you see destructions in in cities but this one covers the entire city and then covers uh the cemetery as well so he he concluded because of that evidence that this was a natural disaster oh interesting okay we’ll get to that what kind of natural disaster it could be but basically if you start with a bible a certain location a certain time a certain kind of city destroyed in a particular fashion by fire that’s what the archaeological record seems to show when we look at baba draw what about numera okay so paul lapp unfortunately died very young he took a swim in cyprus and drowned in 1970 and so two of his students named rast and schwab took over the excavations of baba draw and in 1973 they did a survey of the whole area they wanted to know what else was around there and so they identified three more uh early bronze sites uh numera and uh fifa and kanazir the other site that we’ll talk about safi was already known at that point so now there’s five cities of the plane in the bible and now we have five early bronze time um according to the biblical chronology five um archaeological sites um that are in this area and so they they excavated numera which uh many linguists connect the name numera to gamora and it’s kind of complicated and i’m no linguist but um there is a a linguistic connection there which is why that site was the one that was connected to gamora got it and uh and so then um they excavated that city they found the same thing it had been severely destroyed by fire and and they say in their excavation report and never ever ever lived in again and one thing that i should point out is again how important this agricultural area is and that you have a water source in both of these sites to this day still yes you have flowing streams right past both of these sites and yet um when they were destroyed some four thousand years ago they’ve never been rebuilt they’ve never been in the case of numera ever inhabited ever again and so um so then they connected these uh these destructions between these two sites and uh and and later you know we can talk about carbon 14 later but um okay but yeah okay we’ll get into some of that dating let’s look at two more of the cities and then we’ll start talking about these sulfur balls and this super interesting discussion but tell us about fifa and conazir so yeah the the survey um also uh revealed these other two sites and not just those two sites but also some of the towns early bronze towns that the bible mentions uh in regards to these five cities and so um so those were discovered in the um in the survey they haven’t been uh excavated some of their cemeteries they have cemeteries as well and there’s been some work done in the cemeteries but not in the town themselves but you know you go to the site and it’s like identical to the other two that have been excavated um the you know in most sites you have to dig way down into a tell to get to the destruction layer right because the basically i call these cities stunted tells these are tell that would have grown and developed over time but their growth got stunted by this fire and so their final phase is a burn destruction layer and so literally all you have over the top of that is um you know some of the dust that’s been blown over it for years but you can kick the ground and ash comes up and you’re already in that destruction so to get to this early bronze period in most tells you’d have to dig and dig and dig for years and years and years all the way down until you finally reap this time period whereas this these sites you uh you immediately dig straight into the destruction layer that is the top layer and so even though they haven’t been excavated there it’s still easy to determine that they were destroyed by fire okay so what we know right now with the archaeology is that to the time and to the place we find the kinds of cities that the bible would expect destroyed in the way genesis reports that they were destroyed but what about zoar is there any evidence this was destroyed in catastrophe because i think the bible says this city survived yeah so the the biblical account um lot and his uh wife and daughters are in sodom and uh and so he’s told to flee to uh to the mountains and um and and lot is an old man and the mountains like i had said are very very high that’s where all this water is coming from and a lot’s like i’m too old i’ll die right right and climb out of this valley um how about this this city which the name of the city is bella um and uh how about it’s a small one it’s a small city you know would you spare this small city if i run to uh to it and so zoar in hebrew means small and so the lord says okay you can you can run to the city zoar and i will spare it because of you and so of course uh lot’s wife turns into a pillar of salt but uh he and his two daughters end up in zoar and zoar is the one of the five cities that is spared and therefore what we’re looking for archaeologically is even even more detail we’re looking for five major early bronze cities four of them destroyed by fire and one of them not destroyed by fire that survives history and that’s exactly what we find here zoar is the one that’s mentioned in the extra-biblical sources because it’s the only one that survives history and uh so for example uh the oldest map of the holy land that we have is here in jordan it’s called the mataba map it’s on the church floor it’s from 86th century and uh the only cities of the plane that’s on that map is zoar why because it still exists and it’s shown as it’s shown as a city as a byzantine city on the map and then also a church over the cave where lot and his daughters lived and both of those have been found and excavated by a greek archaeologist named politus and uh they’ve they’ve been identified and found and so um and then we have references to them from eusebius for example okay talks about them on the map uh the city’s name is zura so that preserves the biblical name zoar but if that’s not good enough for people eusebius says that zorah is the biblical city of zoar and he says the only city to have escaped the catastrophe and so um and and then the interesting thing the really interesting thing to me is okay so you have this whole area of the planes and uh so i would expect maybe zoar to be out on the outskirts you know all the rest of it is destroyed and then zoar is out right on the edge of that destruction and doesn’t get destroyed but that’s not the case um zoar is right in the middle of the other four so there’s two to the north of there and two more of the destroyed cities to the south so are covered their cemeteries covered in ash and right smack dab in the middle is zoar who also has a huge cemetery next to it but the difference between the cemetery of zoar in the cemetery of these other four sites is that the cemeteries go out of use at the destruction of the cities of these other four cities but the cemetery of zoar continues in use people continue to be buried there in uh the middle bronze and in the iron age and all the way into the roman period and into byzantine period with gravestones that say zora you know zoar on them and so yeah it’s it’s quite obvious that that’s incredible that i i this is an area i’ve not studied in depth until you started sending me some of this material and i just want to make sure this is the interpretation of this might be debated but the fact that we found five cities four destroyed one not with the name zora in the place to the time that the story in genesis uh calculates and says that finding in itself is really not debated right now amongst scholars is that fair yeah in fact i would say that um that the evidence is so strong that they adopted this secular interpretation that okay this story in the bible has to um has to be based on something that really happened um to some catastrophe that happened in the past and this must be it because because of the way that it fits the biblical record with the evidence okay interesting now you mentioned earlier that that you think it maybe was a natural disaster that caused this and it’s important for people to understand that sometimes when god does a miracle like splitting the the red sea he sends an east wind and does it through natural means but it’s the power and the location and the timing that arguably makes it identifiable as miraculous how do you think this was destroyed and are there any potential remains of this kind of destruction yeah so um you know what i would say is is the way me and you might think of how this was destroyed as one thing but what’s really funny is when you’re looking at the uh the excavation team themselves you have geologists um clap and donahue are the geologists that work on this site and you know what you have here is a crime scene it’s like a crime scene you have you have four cities destroyed and their cemeteries destroyed by fire what on earth happened you know so so even though they’re coming from more of a secular standpoint they have to give a reason they have to give an explanation for what happened yep and so what they say is uh they say that this lies along the um a major fault line you know the rift valley is the lowest place on earth and it’s a major fault line so they say there must have been an earthquake which then caused these gases and what not to come up from the ground and uh and basically they say the area exploded and um and so i’ve talked to um to the geologists that that um that i know and they they seem to think that that’s a very reasonable explanation for how this physical sulfur because you have the evidence of sulfur balls in this area now honestly uh these sulfur balls it took me a long time to understand these sulfur balls um you know i i went down and there’s a museum this this uh archaeologist that excavated zoar um has a museum down in that area and on in on the in the display in that museum are these sulfur balls and so i was fascinated with them there they are it’s his explanation of what destroyed these cities and of course that matches a biblical account which says burning sulfur came down out of heaven and destroyed these cities and so i went to these sites and i scoured these sites and i looked and i looked and looked for a sulfur ball and i couldn’t find a sulfur ball to save my life and uh so finally one day i was uh i was guiding a geologist named john whitmore around um jordan and uh and so i took him to that museum and i showed him the display and i said i can’t find any sulfur balls i was i was a sulfur ball skeptic and he said he said oh well you’re looking in the wrong place they wouldn’t you wouldn’t find them on land you uh you would find them only where the dead sea waters have receded and the reason why is because they’re they’re coming down from uh on fire and so they would burn up and they would burn anything that they hit but if they hit the water that would um they would go out and uh and sink down to the bottom and whatnot so then there was another geologist friend of mine that was in town a little bit after that and so we went down looking for sulfur balls and sure enough uh we found some and then i went back uh again and found more and more and then they’re just you know they’re they’re all over the place down where the water has receded now you know in the video that i did i burn those and show um show how they burn and how they turn to goo when they when they burn and i’ve taken them i’ve burned them i’ve dropped them in water i’ve seen what happens when they hit water and then they sink down to the bottom and that’s what that’s the way you find them in these areas as i show in the video is you have the geological uh layers and um and you have them in a layer you know these uh these sulfur balls yeah and then they’re eroding out and washing down the ravines and uh and so now now one of the geologists uh have have been doing a lot of research and uh on these and everything and um he’s pretty you know he’s looked at all that’s been written on this kind of stuff and he’s pretty much determined uh at least at this point unless there’s something that he doesn’t know about or we don’t know about that that this sulfur ball these sulfur balls like these are unique to the southern end of the dead sea and so um and so that’s really interesting but um but yeah so um so it’s not me connecting the sulfur balls to the construction it’s actually the archaeologists that have excavated down there that’s what they have displayed in the museum down there that they’re connecting to the destruction of these sites and and you know it makes perfect sense to me when you read the biblical description of how these cities were destroyed that they were destroyed by burning sulfur and then you have this unique so so i can’t as an archaeologist i can’t tell you how unique these archaeological sites okay okay i’ve lived in the middle east for 28 years i’ve never seen anything like these sites an area that vast that has been destroyed like that it’s so unique and there has to be an explanation for it and and then you have this unique geological uh you know phenomenon that’s unique to this particular part of the world the southern end of the dead sea and it just seems and then you have the biblical connection that these cities were destroyed by burning sulphur coming down from heaven it’s just uh you know it’s just too uh strong of a connection to to ignore i mean it uh it’s what makes sense to me now how exactly how exactly sulfur ends up spraying up in the air you know from uh earthquake and all that kind of stuff i i don’t really know um or how god worked that like you said how much of it was natural and how much of it you know was him you know that’s there’s lots of questions there yeah good well i i can envision the scene where you go to the museum see these sulfur balls and they’re like i’m gonna go find with the dead sea disappointed that you don’t this geologist tells you out of the look in the water or the rains where there was water then you go find them and you visualize this within your documentary this must have been one of the coolest moments for you did like the indiana jones theme song start playing naturally in the background was that honestly one of the cool moments for you as an archaeologist yeah absolutely um you know i mean i i have been taking groups to these sites and teaching them for several years i’ve been studying them for several years and and it’s just like any site over here you don’t just show up at a site and look at it for uh an hour or two and then you got it figured out and then you leave it takes it takes years and years it’s one of the benefits of living over here so you can go and look and you get confused by something and you come back and you think about it that doesn’t make any sense and then you oh well maybe it’s you know and then you go check it out and uh back and forth back and forth and um and so it all has to make sense to me i have to work it all out in my own understanding in order to then be able to explain it to somebody else and teach it to a group and teach it to seminary students and whatnot and so um and so it’s been it’s been years and years that i’ve been studying jericho as you know and uh same thing with these sites these are kind of like i lived in israel for 10 years studying jericho that whole time and over here now this these sites have been kind of my jericho on this side of the jordan river and um and you know it’s it’s uh the evidence is so amazing that it’s not it’s obvious all the connection with the biblical record is very obvious but it it uh it takes time to figure out and there’s still lots of questions you uncover one question the answer it and it leads to 100 more unanswered questions and so it’s a continual thing like that well there’s a lot of questions about the dating that we’re going to get into but before we specifically lay that out are there other sites and theories about sonoma gamora that are competing for this in particular on a more popular level like youtube i see all these other videos popping up i don’t know what to make sense of them they’re not my expertise but are there some other theories and what do you make of them yeah i would say uh probably the most there there’s there’s two other places that um okay that are identified one is the western southwestern side of the dead sea um and the other one is up on the northern end of the dead sea especially at a site called tel alham and so um on the western side it’s this uh you know there’s sulfur balls over there and so you see videos of people burning sulfur balls and they’re pointing they’re pointing to uh geological formations and trying to convince people that those are archaeological sites they’re not and uh and then it’s talking it’s looking at marl which is is like a chalk it’s a sedimentary rock that was formed when uh at the bottom of the dead sea and they’re saying this is burned ash which of course it’s not and um okay so there’s a bunch of things like that believe me if there were archaeological sites on the southwest side of the dead sea they would have been excavated a long time ago just like these sites were excavated right when okay you know i mean because they would have been candidates for sodom and gomorrah and they would have been doug really albright went into this area looking for these sites real frustrated because they hadn’t been found yet even until 1924. so anyways again the the problem with the southwest side isn’t location it is uh that there aren’t archaeological sites and so you’ll see all these videos trying to make something that’s not archaeological into something archaeological and it it doesn’t work uh the other one is the north this tel el hamam and uh the problem with tel alham are two things one is location it can’t possibly be it can’t be sodom because the bible clearly says that sodom is south of jerusalem until al-hamam is north of jerusalem it also says that it’s east of gaza gaza is far to the south from jericho talham is opposite jericho which is why it’s the number one candidate for uh abel shatim in the bible because april shatim is described as being east of jericho sodom is described as being uh east of gaza yet you can’t you can’t have the site that the director there says that his site talalam is is both shateem and sodom that’s like saying you know beersheba and jerusalem are the same city that’s an impossibility that’s a contradiction um can’t can’t possibly be neither of them could be it one of them or the other but not both okay so um so it’s disqualified in its location from from the bible that’s that’s the most important thing then secondary is uh it it’s archaeology is doesn’t line up because it is a magnificent tell it’s one of the most magnificent tells in all of jordan um and that’s because it was occupied one period after another after another they’ve excavated a late bronze building they’ve they’ve excavated their a um iron age palace from the kingdom period of israel time period they’ve excavated it it was a huge um roman city and so it it you can’t have a roman city when jesus is saying capernaum you’re going to become like sodom and gomorrah then sodom can’t be a roman city and the prophet’s saying babylon you you big glorious babylon which which by the way i’ve been to babylon i’ve traveled there a couple times and i just released a video on on babylon as well and what uh what a bizarre experience for myself to have studied sodom and gomorrah so much and know what they look like and then go to uh go to babylon where isaiah and jeremiah say babylon you will become like sodom and gomorrah now babylonians understood what they were saying who knows but the israelites surely knew what they were uh saying and so and then when you’re at babylon today it’s like sodom and gomorrah it’s completely uninhabited and abandoned and so um and so tal uh talal hamam does not match archaeological and they try to put this they try to argue there’s this gap of time and that it’s wide and that there was only one building at this period and that kind of thing but um but yeah it just it just doesn’t work and uh and so it does work for sha team it’s a very important site and their archaeological work there in my opinion is very important um but but yeah not for sodom and gomorrah um autumn and gamora okay it’s like it’s like this with many sites you have the old established sites okay where if you were uh if you were in the past in the 1920s or 30s or 40s or 50s or 60s and on and you were asked asking to go to sodom and gomorrah they would have taken you to these sites that we’re talking about and then you have these new claims okay by uh by um that oh no no this is sodom and gomorrah and that is what has confused people and um that is what people hardly anybody knows about these established excavated burnt sites and burnt cemeteries and and and the connection okay if you got sulfur balls fine that’s interesting you got sulfur balls but what makes those sulfur balls interesting is when they connect to the archaeological record and specifically in this case to the destruction of this archaeological record and then both of those connect to the written text that says this is how it all connects then you have something powerful okay let’s talk a little bit about the dating i know this is controversial as well and there’s a number of issues without getting too lost in the particulars of radio carbon um so far we’ve been assuming that the dating of these cities matches up with a biblical account so maybe tell us how we can actually date this biblically and why you think we have reason outside the bible pottery remains radio carbon whatever it is that these match up yeah it it’s the number one argument against any connection from archaeology to the bible it always comes down to the connection is so strong it’s so obvious that the only way really to argue against it is to go like this chronologically right to say it doesn’t line up chronologically over and over jericho on and on and on so that’s always the argument the argument is always focused on chronology yeah yeah you got burn cities yeah you got sulfur balls you’ve got all these things but the dates don’t line up okay so um in this case it’s not the pottery dates that don’t line up when uh when the site was discovered by albright who is the main guy who developed the pottery chronology that’s still used today he dated it to within the time of the biblical chronology 2067 is the biblical chronology destruction for sodom and gomorrah he updated it to around 2000 um so that fit very nicely you know give or take you know as he should say and so um and then uh paul lapp did his excavations there he’s the one that determined this is uh definitely a walled city and whatnot he dated it to 2100 bc which is right in line with 2067 bc and remember these dating issues get more and more complicated and more vague the further back you go in time it makes sense okay so so there was no conflict with the dating in uh the the discovery and the excavation of these sites when the the current controversy of dating came into play was when they started using carbon 14 dating okay okay now uh just to make it as simple as possible carbon 14 dating is unreliable now that’s not just my opinion but that’s when you look at the spectrum of carbon 14 dates that are taken from all these different archaeological contexts you have this wide spectrum of dates that are given from the carbon 14 and so um it’s something that almost all archaeologists use but nobody archaeologists aren’t persuaded by carbon 14 dates okay and there’s a major problem with carbon 14 on you know there are also on the scientific side of carbon 14. i won’t go into those but there’s a huge problem on the archaeological side and that’s because you do excavations as archaeologists you also do surveys and when you do surveys you’re walking across a surface of a site and you’re picking up the pottery and you can tell the occupation of that site just from the surface pottery okay now why why is that it’s because all the layers are mixed up we like to explain all the layers individually separated from each other but in reality it’s more complicated than that people want to put a house in and they dig down and they dig down to bedrock and they put their house on the bedrock and they put a wall and so they’re always digging down just like we do today when you’re building a house or a building you dig down first to lay your foundation they did the same thing and so everything gets mixed up and so you have a representation of the pottery from all these different time periods represented on the surface which is why surveys work and when you’re in an archaeological layer archaeologists know that you take all the pottery from there and you’re going to have a spectrum of different pottery you can date that pottery and the latest pottery and that in that layer is going to date that layer gotcha okay so you can do that with pottery you can tell the difference between well in this layer we have this earlier pottery in this later pottery and you you have ways of saying okay separating out the later from the earlier pottery and you’re talking thousands of years sometimes between the earliest and latest pottery in a layer well that’s the problem with carbon 14 when you when you have a sample say an olive pit that you’re going to carbon 14 date and you have three olive pits how do you know which one maybe is goes with the earlier pottery from that layer and which one goes with the later pottery from that period and the answer is you don’t you don’t know and so um that’s why you get this spectrum of dates um there’s there’s other problems that i won’t go into but um but and so and so when carbon 14 was brought in with the early bronze period then it they they dated it later than they had are earlier in time older than they had before and then it appears that it doesn’t match um but you know it’s it it’s it’s carbon 14 dating okay i would definitely put pottery dating above carbon 14 dating and then i would put above pottery dating and all of it uh the connecting to a historical text that the historical text is what is dating your layer yeah so we have at least the pottery in favor of it we have the historical text in favor of it and then against it is radiocarbon which admittedly by the experts is helpful to a degree but not definitive for the problems that you stated so there’s really no good reason to question that the dating in fact lines up based on the evidence we have right now is that a fair conclusion that’s that’s a fair conclusion yeah and the hope with carbon 14 was to take the bias of the archaeology gotcha the archaeologists out of it but it really hasn’t been able to do that you know yeah okay so okay this is so so interesting on so many levels i have a million questions for you but maybe tell me a little bit right now what is some of the ongoing research i think you mentioned that geologists are studying the sulfur balls is there further research on dating what is some of the research going on right now we might expect in the next few months or years or even decades ahead yeah well the one who is doing uh the the work in that area and has been for quite some time is uh constantinos uh politis and he is a greek archaeologist and he’s um made some tremendous discoveries he’s he’s excavated the church that is on the mataba map that commemorates the cave where lot and his daughters lived and then he excavated the cave and found early bronze material and a wall and in the cave that the church then commemorated as the one that lot and and his daughters lived in so he found archaeological evidence that the cave was actually inhabited um in that time period then he also is the one that found the city the byzantine city um of zoar and uh excavated it but he’s only excavated the top few layers the islamic and the byzantine layers he’s found the early bronze pottery there and middle bronze and a whole bunch of different uh age pottery but um but he hasn’t gotten down to those layers so really that’s what really needs to happen is get down to the city because the pottery is there you know that the city is under there so to get down and excavate that actual city that survived and um and then you know i mean the the truth is is is uh you could do excavations at connazier you could do excavations at fifa you could do more work at babadra and numera but what they found already in my opinion is sufficient um it is it’s it’s pretty clear and pretty obvious you’re just gonna find more ash and more uh you know human remains splintered all over the place you know that’s what you see at this site is uh and uh you’re gonna find a lot more of the same it’s it’s a lot like pompeii you know you go to pompeii and that’s of course the big place that was all destroyed uh in the volcano blast all at one time and these sites are like that they’re like a small version of that where everything came to an end in this sudden destruction so you can dig and dig and dig and dig but you’re going to find a whole bunch more destruction in ash okay anything like that now there is um yeah there i’m not saying that there shouldn’t be more work done if there’s the possibility to do more work than certainly there is but there has been enough done at this point it’s pretty obvious i mean again you’re looking for five cities of the plane you’ve got five archaeological sites you would expect four of them to be destroyed and never lived in again and one of them to survive history what do you have in this area you have four destroyed cities and one of them that wasn’t destroyed that survived history to make it onto the matabo map and to be mentioned by eusebius and and on and on and so um you know but the main evidence is is is lines up okay so let’s go back to one of the the secular challenges to this which i think is a very fair question how do we know some of the people who maybe survived in zohar were aware of this natural disaster spread the word years later these people write this genesis account with a basic awareness of what took place as if it’s historical we would expect to find the same archaeological account as what we might find if the genesis story is true so part of my question is what do these remains actually show and prove given that other stories could be told that account for these remains as well yeah i mean um you know what i would say to that is when you read the bible for people who read their bibles and know their bibles this is this is a this is a phenomenon and a destruction that stands out from the biblical text and um and that that is um is on the grand scale and and we’re given a lot of detail about it um we’re given where these cities are located we’re given um at least generally where they’re located um we’re given uh specifics details about how they’re destroyed and um and so we have this all preserved in the biblical text which are ancient texts and um and then we have these uh cities that um that date to the time period that the bible is talking about and that are destroyed in the way that the bible is talking talking about that are never inhabited again even though they have fresh water going by them even though to this day this is incredibly important agricultural area these cities were never rebuilt and so um and so and then we don’t have if if those scholars that are saying oh well this is this is a another story that happened well you don’t that’s not based on an ancient text because we don’t have ancient texts that are telling another story that happened in this area at a different time or something like that oh now we found this now we found this account that says that this other thing happened in this area and that must be what the um what the bible was copying or something we don’t have any texts that say that we don’t have any other story preserved account preserved in history we have one ancient account that talks about sodom and gomorrah otherwise if it wasn’t for that one nobody would even know they would know nobody would care nobody would care about these piles of rocks and these layers of ash and nobody would even look at it nobody would have gone looking for it in the first place and so uh and so i would say to uh to that kind of interpretation okay um show me the show me the written account that you’re talking about because that’s really what it comes down to with many of these things that are the arguments against the bible we’re in the strong position why because we have an ancient text a series of ancient texts that talk about all these things that that match with the archaeological evidence coming up from the ground these theories that tried to dethrone the bible and the evidence are not based on any ancient account they’re merely uh based on modern opinion of well it could have happened this way or it could have happened that way so i say the stronger position is the one that connects to a written source and that’s that’s why carbon 14 is not a strong position that’s why uh that’s why these archaeological sites and their destructions and pottery and stuff like that are a strong position because they do connect to a written account from the ancient past that’s a real helpful way to look at if we had one text that said yeah here’s another account for this and trying to explain away or some positive reason that israelites invented this account then it’d be hard to adjudicate between the sources but we have one source that claims to be historical written in historical fashion we find what we would expect the lack of another source it seems the burden of proof is on the person who says no they totally invented it and here’s what happened when there’s a lack of evidence for that other story i think so it does it’s not the nail in the coffin because we’re dealing with events 4 000 years ago but i would certainly consider this strong if not very strong corroborative support for the biblical account and amazing of this we’re talking 4 000 years ago chapter 18 and 19 in genesis doesn’t get much earlier than that now i want people to go watch your video it’s only 15 minutes in length and you are on site so if they say you know a picture is like a thousand words or whatever that metaphor is that 15 minutes of you driving up and pulling these sulfur balls out it’s so interesting if you have stayed with us till the end of this you’ve got to go click over watch this for 15 minutes and then also subscribe to joel’s new youtube channel last question tell us about that youtube channel and what you expect to do on it uh for the time to come yeah it’s pretty brand new uh it’s it’s uh been up for 10 weeks and so we’ve uh released 10 videos on it so far it’s called expedition bible and uh and that’s uh what i’m hoping to do is is just keep presenting um evidence for the bible in uh videos that people can um digest hopefully and and watch through so it’s quite a diversity of topics and it’s it’s uh you know it takes advantage of of uh the benefit of living here and being able to go to the places that i’m talking about and not just not just in israel and jordan but also in egypt and iraq and lebanon and and on and on so yeah sudan amazing i want to tell everybody who stayed with us go to expedition bible hit subscribe now we’ll have you on regularly to talk about these fines because the videos are a little shorter you get right to the point you tell a story it’s a journey and then maybe we’ll have you on now and then we will go into some more depth and unpack these so people really understand the background and scholarly issues behind it but joel you’re always a rockstar fun to have you on appreciate your enthusiasm and just for living there 28 years and doing this on hand research is super cool thanks for coming back hey thank you