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I like the theory that this event is what inspired the biblical story of Sodom. It reminds me of how paleontologists use the ancient art and stories of Native A

I like the theory that this event is what inspired the biblical story of Sodom. It reminds me of how paleontologists use the ancient art and stories of Native Australians to figure out what Pleistocene animals looked like and how they may have behaved. In the story, Lot and his family were one of the few people to escape the city before its destruction. God told his family to not look back at the city as it was being destroyed. Lot's wife looked back and turned into "a pillar of salt". Maybe this is a metaphor for the people who went back to the site and couldn't grow food there due to the hypersaline that was spread across the region by the airburst.

scns 5y ago
Or maybe they watched her burn to a crisp from afar, did not go back to check and took the ashes for salt.
sgc 5y ago
That area is full of salt pillars. The geology served as an opportunity to create a moral and religious story. Could this have also influenced the story? Perhaps, but the salt pillars are quite large, obvious, and unique. Edit: I note that nearby Jericho is dated to have been destroyed and abandoned in the same time period (within 50 years, likely well within margins of error). One of the most striking thing about the Tel in Jericho is that half the Tel is missing. Specifically the side to the East, which would be facing this Tel. I have never seen any good reason given for that missing section of Jericho, and would not be surprised at all if the same event destroyed both cities. Obviously lending more weight to this event having been integrated into Biblical writings.
- eloff 5y ago
  Wasn't Jericho the one where they brought down the walls by making noise in the biblical story? I wonder if that could have been inspired by finding the wreckage of the city with the East wall destroyed.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  I get correlation and causation, but if I was sitting in an ancient Jericho, and watching another Army walk round the walls - and after they did a sodding great meteorite fell from the gods and blew down half my city walls, I would certainly think about religious conversion. :0) On the other hand we should not get too carried away matching up events like this. The team behind this article took pains to prove it must have been an airburst by finding molten glass that could only come from certain temperatures etc etc. I always understood that walking round the walls of Jericho was supposed to be cover for the sounds of sappers, just as the wooden horse of Troy may well have been a animal shaped cover for a battering ram, as opposed to a rather easy to avoid foot-gun.
  - sgc 5y ago
    My edit was to indicate that the air burst might have been a distant inspiration for the Jericho story as well as the Sodom story. There are about 600-1000 years between event and writing by most estimates, so there was plenty of time for it to inspire more than one story. But local geology plays a big role in many Biblical stories, not just these. People who are teachers look for teaching moments, and find them in the things that surround them.
  - hyperpallium2 5y ago
    > A sapper, also called pioneer or combat engineer, is a combatant or soldier who performs a variety of military engineering duties, such as breaching fortifications https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapper https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapper
- pyinstallwoes 5y ago
  Could it be the result of a weapon? I know this is on the edge of absurd but to let the possibility entertain the mind wouldn't a laser or some payload from space "glass" an area on the ground? I've never thought about people turning into salt before... it seems possible?
  - scroy 5y ago
    I think it's best to use Occam's razor on that one. But it would be great for an episode of Stargate.
    - pyinstallwoes 5y ago
      Sometimes "aliens did it" makes more sense than a lot of the imaginative narrative that somehow explains 15 billion years in confidence of certainty. But yeah, I get your drift indeed.
bmcahren 5y ago
Like this? https://theconversation.com/of-bunyips-and-other-beasts-living-memories-of-long-extinct-creatures-in-art-and-stories-113031 https://theconversation.com/of-bunyips-and-other-beasts-livi... They reference this book which seems interesting: https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/edge-of-memory-9781472943262/ https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/edge-of-memory-9781472943262/ What is your source?
Ericson2314 5y ago
Well, that sure makes it work out to be one hell of a victim blame!
elwell 5y ago
I find it interesting that despite so many years of scrutiny these biblical stories have yet to be conclusively invalidated. It seems there's some balance between each critique and each discovery, always leaving room for faith, never 'proving' but never snuffing out.
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  Here's just one of many anachronisms from the bible. "Last week, archaeologists Erez Ben-Yosef and Lidar Sapir-Hen of Tel Aviv University released a new study that dates the arrival of the domesticated camel in the eastern Mediterranean region to the 10th century B.C. at the earliest, based on radioactive-carbon techniques. Abraham and the patriarchs, however, lived at least six centuries before then." https://time.com/6662/the-mystery-of-the-bibles-phantom-camels/ https://time.com/6662/the-mystery-of-the-bibles-phantom-came...
  - worker767424 5y ago
    "The 'Mystery' of the Bible's Phantom Camels" There's one really obvious solution to that mystery.
    - choeger 5y ago
      If you're going to tell us that the Bible is not composed of historically accurate accounts by contemporary writers, that's really nothing new. I wonder about the camel thing, though. Did the authors/editors of the texts consider camels ubiquitous? Did they know that camels were very special and wanted to mention it? Was it a mistranslation?
      - crooked-v 5y ago
        Art and literature of all kinds has a long, long history of portraying people from the past in historically inaccurate ways that the people doing the portrayal take for granted. One obvious religious example would be the many paintings of Christ showing him as a blonde European wearing contemporary (for the time of the painting) European clothing.
jonathanlb 5y ago
Some time ago, I heard of another theory for the Sodom and Gomorrah story: An asteroid clipped a mountain in the Alps, causing a landslide in Köfels (but no crater). The asteroid's trajectory had a low angle, which made the mushroom cloud arc over the Mediterranean and over the Levant, raining down fire and such. This asteroid was actually recorded by Assyrian scribes on a clay tablet, but its trajectory wasn't plotted until relatively recently (2008-ish). https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2008/212017945233.html https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2008/212017945233.html
- codesnik 5y ago
  air resistance is too high on the height where asteroid can clip a mountain, for something to reach levant. it’d explode right there. But I could believe in asteroid fragmented much higher
- pythonlion 5y ago
  nice article. but 700 BC is my be more fitted to another biblical story. sorry I forgot exactly which one but there is a story about a battle that ended when god rained fire on one of the sides
  - chrismorgan 5y ago
    You’re probably thinking of Joshua 10:11, but that’s quite some hundreds of years before 700 BC, which is more the time of Hezekiah.
ChuckMcM 5y ago
I know that for a people who were not yet understanding about bolides and ways in which the astronomical environment interacted with the planet, ascribing the destruction of the city to a deity seems quite plausible. If this event is the cause for the salt pillars in the area then I could also see people making up stories about it as well. I am left with the question though of how does a bolide become full of salt?

scns 5y ago

Or maybe they watched her burn to a crisp from afar, did not go back to check and took the ashes for salt.

sgc 5y ago

That area is full of salt pillars. The geology served as an opportunity to create a moral and religious story. Could this have also influenced the story? Perhaps, but the salt pillars are quite large, obvious, and unique. Edit: I note that nearby Jericho is dated to have been destroyed and abandoned in the same time period (within 50 years, likely well within margins of error). One of the most striking thing about the Tel in Jericho is that half the Tel is missing. Specifically the side to the East, which would be facing this Tel. I have never seen any good reason given for that missing section of Jericho, and would not be surprised at all if the same event destroyed both cities. Obviously lending more weight to this event having been integrated into Biblical writings.

eloff 5y ago
Wasn't Jericho the one where they brought down the walls by making noise in the biblical story? I wonder if that could have been inspired by finding the wreckage of the city with the East wall destroyed.
lifeisstillgood 5y ago
I get correlation and causation, but if I was sitting in an ancient Jericho, and watching another Army walk round the walls - and after they did a sodding great meteorite fell from the gods and blew down half my city walls, I would certainly think about religious conversion. :0) On the other hand we should not get too carried away matching up events like this. The team behind this article took pains to prove it must have been an airburst by finding molten glass that could only come from certain temperatures etc etc. I always understood that walking round the walls of Jericho was supposed to be cover for the sounds of sappers, just as the wooden horse of Troy may well have been a animal shaped cover for a battering ram, as opposed to a rather easy to avoid foot-gun.
- sgc 5y ago
  My edit was to indicate that the air burst might have been a distant inspiration for the Jericho story as well as the Sodom story. There are about 600-1000 years between event and writing by most estimates, so there was plenty of time for it to inspire more than one story. But local geology plays a big role in many Biblical stories, not just these. People who are teachers look for teaching moments, and find them in the things that surround them.
- hyperpallium2 5y ago
  > A sapper, also called pioneer or combat engineer, is a combatant or soldier who performs a variety of military engineering duties, such as breaching fortifications https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapper https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapper
pyinstallwoes 5y ago
Could it be the result of a weapon? I know this is on the edge of absurd but to let the possibility entertain the mind wouldn't a laser or some payload from space "glass" an area on the ground? I've never thought about people turning into salt before... it seems possible?
- scroy 5y ago
  I think it's best to use Occam's razor on that one. But it would be great for an episode of Stargate.
  - pyinstallwoes 5y ago
    Sometimes "aliens did it" makes more sense than a lot of the imaginative narrative that somehow explains 15 billion years in confidence of certainty. But yeah, I get your drift indeed.

bmcahren 5y ago

Like this? https://theconversation.com/of-bunyips-and-other-beasts-living-memories-of-long-extinct-creatures-in-art-and-stories-113031 https://theconversation.com/of-bunyips-and-other-beasts-livi... They reference this book which seems interesting: https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/edge-of-memory-9781472943262/ https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/edge-of-memory-9781472943262/ What is your source?

Ericson2314 5y ago

Well, that sure makes it work out to be one hell of a victim blame!

elwell 5y ago

I find it interesting that despite so many years of scrutiny these biblical stories have yet to be conclusively invalidated. It seems there's some balance between each critique and each discovery, always leaving room for faith, never 'proving' but never snuffing out.

jonny_eh 5y ago
Here's just one of many anachronisms from the bible. "Last week, archaeologists Erez Ben-Yosef and Lidar Sapir-Hen of Tel Aviv University released a new study that dates the arrival of the domesticated camel in the eastern Mediterranean region to the 10th century B.C. at the earliest, based on radioactive-carbon techniques. Abraham and the patriarchs, however, lived at least six centuries before then." https://time.com/6662/the-mystery-of-the-bibles-phantom-camels/ https://time.com/6662/the-mystery-of-the-bibles-phantom-came...
- worker767424 5y ago
  "The 'Mystery' of the Bible's Phantom Camels" There's one really obvious solution to that mystery.
  - choeger 5y ago
    If you're going to tell us that the Bible is not composed of historically accurate accounts by contemporary writers, that's really nothing new. I wonder about the camel thing, though. Did the authors/editors of the texts consider camels ubiquitous? Did they know that camels were very special and wanted to mention it? Was it a mistranslation?
    - crooked-v 5y ago
      Art and literature of all kinds has a long, long history of portraying people from the past in historically inaccurate ways that the people doing the portrayal take for granted. One obvious religious example would be the many paintings of Christ showing him as a blonde European wearing contemporary (for the time of the painting) European clothing.

jonathanlb 5y ago

Some time ago, I heard of another theory for the Sodom and Gomorrah story: An asteroid clipped a mountain in the Alps, causing a landslide in Köfels (but no crater). The asteroid's trajectory had a low angle, which made the mushroom cloud arc over the Mediterranean and over the Levant, raining down fire and such. This asteroid was actually recorded by Assyrian scribes on a clay tablet, but its trajectory wasn't plotted until relatively recently (2008-ish). https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2008/212017945233.html https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2008/212017945233.html

codesnik 5y ago
air resistance is too high on the height where asteroid can clip a mountain, for something to reach levant. it’d explode right there. But I could believe in asteroid fragmented much higher
pythonlion 5y ago
nice article. but 700 BC is my be more fitted to another biblical story. sorry I forgot exactly which one but there is a story about a battle that ended when god rained fire on one of the sides
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  You’re probably thinking of Joshua 10:11, but that’s quite some hundreds of years before 700 BC, which is more the time of Hezekiah.

ChuckMcM 5y ago

I know that for a people who were not yet understanding about bolides and ways in which the astronomical environment interacted with the planet, ascribing the destruction of the city to a deity seems quite plausible. If this event is the cause for the salt pillars in the area then I could also see people making up stories about it as well. I am left with the question though of how does a bolide become full of salt?