GettyA huge Biblical event may have just been proven true thanks to some new research.
ICYMI/didn’t go to a Catholic or Christian school, in the Book of Genesis, there’s these two cities – Sodom and Gomorrah – which are ordered to be destroyed by God via message to Abraham.
Abraham asks God to take it a bit easy on the righteous people living there, including his nephew, Lot, and his family.
God then agrees to save the cities if Abraham can find 10 righteous people. Good odds, right? Two angels are subsequently sent to Lot in Sodom and, after being confronted by a mob, strike them blind.
Having learnt that Lot and his family are the only decent inhabitants of Sodom, the Angels advise them to evacuate the city and never look back. As they flee, Lot’s wife looks back to see Sodom reduced and is reduced to a pillar of salt.
In 2018, researchers are saying there may be some truth to the story, with one little difference. It wasn’t God’s wrath that laid waste to the city of sin, but a dastardly asteroid.
IFLScience reports the findings presented at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research claimed an arubist caused by a meteor explosion in the atmosphere wiped out any traces of civilisation in a 15.5 mile-wide region.
Tall el-Hamman, located northeast of the Dead Sea, was analysed and thought to be occupied for 2,500 years before coming to a sticky end at the nadir of the Bronze age.
WikimediaRadiocarbon dating showed mud-brick walls from almost all structures disappeared 3,700 years ago, leaving behind the mere foundations.
Outer layers of pottery showed signs of melting via Zircon crystals, which would have been formed within 1 second as temperatures potentially as hot as the sun hit.
In short: the area was really, really in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The exact nature of the lamented wickedness of the cities has been the subject of debate. Sodom and Gomorrah have traditionally been associated with homosexuality. The mob men who created beef with the angels had demanded of Lot, ‘Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them’.
GettyThis has long been interpreted as ‘carnal knowledge,’ and many believe that the common homosexuality of the citizens earned their demise. Other biblical references to Sodom and Gomorrah, including Jude 1:7, which mentions sexual immorality and ‘unnatural lust,’ and the ‘abominable things’ of Ezekiel 16:50, are seen as support for this view.
More modern interpretations, particularly in Judaism and a few branches of Christianity, has proposed that it is the inhabitants’ lack of hospitality, not their sexual orientation, that grinds God’s gears.
Whatever the case, I think we can all agree it was a pretty f***ing crummy way for these people to go. And we think we have it bad in Brexit Britain.
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