Biblical archaeology is the archeology of the people, places and events in the Bible. Basically archaeologists pull material objects out of the ground, from stone inscriptions to clay seals to the ruins of old structures, and match their findings against the biblical narrative.
This has been going on for 150 years, and there are hundreds of artifacts that confirm the Bible, and to date not one significant finding that contradicts the Bible.
Three separate purposes are fulfilled by biblical archaeology. First, it authenticates or corroborates the historicity of the Bible. Second, it shows the presence of the Jews in their ancestral homeland going back thousands of years. Third, it supports the foundations of America and the West. This third point requires a bit of explanation.
The philosopher Leo Strauss once said that America and the West are built on the twin pillars of Athens and Jerusalem. Athens represents “reason” and the fruits of reason: Socratic philosophy, the exploration of nature which is the root of modern science, freedom of speech, and the birth of democracy.
Jerusalem represents divine “revelation” and its fruits, from the idea of divine creation as a source of rights to the moral teachings of the Bible, including the 10 Commandments, and also the wisdom of the psalms and the Hebrew prophets.
Athens, in a way, doesn’t need a defense. But Jerusalem does, because skeptics going back to the Enlightenment have sought to debunk the Bible as a work of fable and myth.
In a sense, the skeptics have used Athens to try and overthrow Jerusalem. Biblical archaeology, however, moves in the opposite direction.
It draws on the techniques of Athens—which include science and archaeology—to support and reinforce the Jerusalem pillar upholding America and the West.
My new book The Stones Cry Out summarizes the most important findings of biblical archaeology. It moves chronologically through the Bible, from the era of the patriarchs around 2000 B.C. through the Exodus and crossing into the promised land around 1500 B.C. through the royal period of King David and King Solomon around 1000 B.C. through the era of the prophets from the eighth through the fifth centuries B.C. and then to the New Testament era starting with the birth of Jesus around 4 B.C. through the early Christian movement ending around 50 A.D.
Here we focus on one intriguing project of biblical archaeology, namely, the search for Sodom and Gomorrah.
Through this exploration we learn not only the two leading contenders for those famous—or infamous—biblical locations; we also learn something about how biblical archaeology goes about its business. I hope you find this material as engaging as I do.
In the latter days of Abraham’s life, according to the Bible, fire and brimstone rained down on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, destroying them completely. From a vantage point in Hebron, a long distance away, Abraham saw the smoke rising from the conflagration.
The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 is one of the most memorable accounts in the Bible, representing divine wrath and punishment for persistent human sin and wickedness. Thus they are sometimes called the “sin cities” of the Bible.
While skeptics over at least a couple of centuries have insisted that Sodom and Gomorrah are legendary, and that the Bible is merely giving us a “morality tale,” the Scriptures portray the destruction of the two cities as an historical rather than an allegorical event.
But if Sodom and Gomorrah were incinerated in a fiery conflagration nearly four thousand years ago, the evidence of that destruction might give biblical archeologists the opportunity to locate those two ancient cities. So where are they?
From various biblical references it is quite clear that Sodom and Gomorrah are somewhere near the Dead Sea. Since the 1920s, the traditional view of biblical archeologists is that the two cities were quite likely located near the southeastern coast of the Dead Sea.
In subsequent decades, archeologists excavated two promising sites in the region: Bab edh-Dra, which they identified with Sodom, and Numeira, which they identified with Gomorrah.
Notice that Numeira even sounds somewhat like Gomorrah, and this is significant because many ancient cities changed their names over the centuries, but in a manner that preserved the echoes of their original names.
We recognize the names Sodom and Gomorrah instantly, but the Bible actually speaks of five “cities of the plain.” The other three are Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar. Four of the five were, according to the biblical account, wiped out. Zoar was spared. In fact, Abraham’s nephew Lot, who lived in Sodom, survived by fleeing to Zoar, where he and his family lived in a nearby cave in the mountains.