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Topic: Sodom and Gomorrah
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BORN AGAIN
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The Lisan (in English, tongue) Peninsula juts out into the lower half of the Dead Sea, leaving only a fairly narrow channel between its west side and the west side of the Dead Sea.
Because the Dead Sea has no outlets, any solids and salts which flow and drip into it cause the bottom to rise over the centuries.
In the 1960s when Dr. Baney surveyed the Dead Sea with a conventional diving team, they discovered that on the north side of the Lisan peninsula, in teh "armpit" of the peninsula near the east side of the Dead Sea, was a manmade circular shaft whose top was in the 1960s under about 100 feet of water.
And once they reached the top of the circular shaft they dived for another 75 feet down the shaft until they reached a chamber with a horizontal ceiling into which they dived only a short distance because it was getting late.
At one time the water in the Dead Sea was thus much lower than it is today, and that means that the channel on the west side of the Lisan peninsula was either dry, or as is more likely, was marshy with reeds bogs.
In south Sudan is a massive swamp called the as-Sudd swamp, with "sudd" referring to reed and vegetation bogs.
"Sudd" is Arabic, which is very akin to Hebrew, and this helps us understand where the vale of Sidd-im was in which the battle took place between the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and the 4 kings of the East.
This area in the channel west of the Lisan peninsual was almost certainly a sidd area, that is, a swampy area of sidd or reed and vegetable bogs.
The 4 kings of the East had come around the south side of the Dead Sea and had defeated the kings living in Kadesh (Enmishpat), and then the 4 kings came to Engedi which is in about the middle of the west side of the Dead Sea:
Genesis 14
7 And they {the 4 kings of the East} returned, and came to Enmishpat, which is Kadesh, and smote all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites who dwelled in Hazezontamar.
2 Chronicles 20
2 Then there came some that told Jehoshaphat, saying, There cometh a great multitude against thee from beyond the sea on this side Syria; and, behold, they be in Hazazontamar, which is Engedi.
From Engedi, the ancient track descends south along the west side of the Dead Sea and passes the channel west of the Lisan peninsula.
If the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were on the north side of the Lisan, the armies of Sodom and Gomorrah could have gone west over the ancient track which led over the Lisan to the west side of the Lisan peninsula, and encountered the armies of the East in the vale of Sidd-im which would have been the boggy or sidd channel between the Lisan peninsula and the west side of the Dead Sea.
Genesis 14
8 And there went out the king of Sodom, and the king of Gomorrah, and the king of Admah, and the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (the same is Zoar;) and they joined battle with them in the vale of Sidd-im.
God bless, ![[Cross]](graemlins/cross.gif) BORN AGAIN
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barrykind
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Sodom and Gomorrah are 'found at bottom of Dead Sea'
By Jonathan Petre
A BIBLE scholar believes that he has found the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah, the evil cities destroyed by God with fire and brimstone, after leading the first expedition to explore the bottom of the Dead Sea.
Michael Sanders and an international team of researchers discovered what appear to be the salt-encrusted remains of ancient settlements on the seabed after several fraught weeks diving in a mini submarine. Mr Sanders, a Briton who is now based in the United States, said yesterday that he was "immensely excited" about the find, and he is already planning a follow-up expedition.
He said: "The evidence cannot be ignored. I predicted there must be something extraordinary there and, lo and behold, there was. What we found matches exactly what the remains of an ancient city might look like."
Dr John Whitaker, a geologist from Leicester University and the former editor of Geology Today, said yesterday that the new development - which will be unveiled in a television documentary tomorrow - appeared "very significant". He said: "There is a good chance that these mounds are covering up brick structures and are one of the lost cities of the plains, possibly even Sodom or Gomorrah, though I would have to examine the evidence. These Bible stories were handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation before they were written down, and there seems to be a great deal in this one."
God's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to punish the sexual immorality of their inhabitants is one of the most graphic episodes in the Old Testament. Genesis says that "the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground".
Many archaeologists and scholars have concluded that the story was symbolic, a warning to erring humans of the divine punishment they faced for wickedness. But there has been speculation for centuries that the cities existed in the region of the Dead Sea. A growing number of experts, including Mr Sanders, are now convinced that "the cities of the plain" were destroyed by an earthquake, which threw up flaming pitch, about 5,000 years ago.
Since the 1960s, archaeologists have discovered mass graves on a peninsula jutting into the Dead Sea which contain human bones dating from the Old Testament period. And sulphur, or brimstone, have been found in nearby cliffs, adding to the mystery.
More recently, Mr Sanders unearthed a map dating from 1650 which reinforced to his belief that the sites of the two cities could be under the north basin, rather than on the southern edge of the Dead Sea. He recruited Richard Slater, an American geologist and expert in deep sea diving, to take him to the depths of the Dead Sea in the two-man Delta mini-submarine that was involved in the discovery of the sunken liner, the Lusitani.
Also part of the expedition, which took place in November, was Zvi Ben-Avraham, the director of the Dead Sea Research Centre, who has studied the region for decades. Their explorations in November, which were filmed for a Channel 4 documentary to be broadcast at 8pm tomorrow night, were fraught with difficulties. The 10ft submarine, which was flown in from California, had to be weighted down with lead to counteract the buoyancy of the salty water. Because of constraints of time and money, only four dives were undertaken.
To complicate matters further, the Dead Sea is a military zone with the border between Israel and Jordan running down the middle of it. Attempts by researchers to explore the most important site nearly sparked an international incident because it was partly in Jordanian waters, and military authorities ordered the submarine out.
Mr Sanders is in little doubt that the salt-covered mounds, found over an area 800 yards square, are man-made structures. He said: "I have spoken to geologists and nobody has come up with the suggestion that they are natural phenomena. We don't know what else they could be if they are not ruins. But we need more conclusive evidence by chipping off the salt. That's why we need to go back."
ISSUE 1766 Sunday 26 March 2000
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The HEART of the issue is truly the issue of the HEART!
John 3:3;Mark 8:34-38;James 1:27
Posts: 3529 | From: Orange, Texas | Registered: Jun 2002
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