[drewwwwww]

the authors list as sponsoring institutions two quite small christian seminaries/universities - i don’t mean to impugn their fieldwork, but only mention it so as we may consider there to be some motivated reasoning in connecting it to events described in the Bible.

[jeroenhd]

Many of the stories from the ancient world probably have a basis in fact. All the old civilizations in the area have a story about a massive flood, for example, like the story of Noah. Other biblical events have been linked to vulcano eruptions, comets, and other natural phenomena as well. The Bible was written as much a a holy text as it was a history book for its people. Some parts of it were made up or exaggerated (like the whole "slaves in Egypt" thing) but others were attributions of divine interaction by people who couldn't possibly understand the forces of nature they observed.

I think it stands to reason that at some point a city in the Levant was destroyed violently. A comet exploding and taking out a city seems like a very plausible reason for how such a event may be attributed to holy intervention. You can discuss whether or not it was some divine being sending a comet towards a particularly bad city or not, but I'd definitely tell stories about divine punishment if I saw the remains of a destroyed city like this. Even today, I think you'd find plenty of people who'd claim that whatever the people in those city were doing was bad enough to upset the divine powers enough to bomb them from space.

[ocschwar]

It's almost a universal for people who live around the ruins of an older society to attribute that society's downfall to some kind of sin.

The Navajos have a Soddom and Ghomorra tradition about the Anasazi.

THe Welsh had such traditions about the downfall of Roman Britain.

The Greeks accused the Minoans of hubris (hence the legend of Atlantis.)

The Jews accused themselves of sin again, and again, and again, every time an outside force came to their borders. Both exiles are attributed to corruption and sin.

[AlotOfReading]

Can you link me to any information you know about the Navajo thing? I'm pretty well versed in the area, but I'm not aware of anything like that. It's also worth noting that "Anasazi" is considered a bit offensive by modern puebloans. Ancestral puebloans is preferred by archeologists, but that could be interpreted as a political stance depending on who you are.

[floatrock]

> Even today, I think you'd find plenty of people who'd claim that whatever the people in those city were doing was bad enough to upset the divine powers enough to bomb them from space.

See New Orleans and Katrina.

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

[Brendinooo]

From Tall el-Hammam's wiki:

> Starting with the publication of his book Discovering the city of Sodom in 2013 and after fifteen years of excavations of the upper and lower tall, Collins has been arguing that Tall el-Hammam is the site of the biblical city of Sodom. A 2018 conference paper identified a likely Tunguska-like airburst event near the Dead Sea ca. 1700 BCE, which destroyed a region including Tall el-Hammam[18]. According to professor Eugene H. Merrill, himself a Biblical inerrantist, the identification of Tall al-Hammam with Sodom would require an unacceptable restructuring of his early biblical chronology.

Seems worth noting that there's not a consensus in the inerrantist camp.

[amacbride]

To this point, the Wikipedia article on Veritas International University notes their doctrinal stance as follows: “Veritas International University has an evangelical doctrinal statement that emphasizes ‘three legs’ of biblical authority: inspiration, infallibility, and biblical inerrancy.”

I admire the rigor of the archaeology and physical/chemical analysis of the site, but think it’s important to note the above when evaluating the conclusions.

[robinei]

Though if the evidence presented for this event is persuasive, then all they achieve by making the connection is to speculate on a natural cause for a biblical "miracle". I mean it can strengthen a view of the Bible as source of historical information, but not as the word of God.

If this event happened, I would expect it to leave long lasting trace in oral tradition.

[mcguire]

One would have thought it would leave a written tradition---"The year a city in the Levant got blowed up" in one of the year lists or something.

Tunguska was apparently visible for 500 miles (800km); for a similar event north of the Dead Sea, that would be nearly to the Euphrates valley, central Anatolia, and most of the Nile Valley.

[Keysh]

The paper in question is by people from a variety of institutions (none of them being Veritas International University). Early in the paper there is this comment:

"After eleven seasons of excavations, the site excavators [i.e., the folks affiliated with Veritas International University] independently concluded that evidence pointed to a possible cosmic impact. They contacted our outside group of experts from multiple impact-related and other disciplines to investigate potential formation mechanisms for the unusual suite of high-temperature evidence, which required explanation."

[p_l]

Interestingly, the "biblical connections" side of the paper would actually make certain issues with biblical inerrancy.

Namely, the article notes that the most probable locations for Sodoma and Jericho are two cities that show evidence for the air burst theory. Meaning story of Lot and the Fall of Jericho would have to happen on the same day, which kinda doesn't work with bible being infallible and inerrant.

[Bayart]

The Bible is a major force behind archaeology in the Levant. Not only for religious reasons, but also because the prospect of correlating material culture and written documents is always exciting.

[beardyw]

Not sure how this would strengthen the biblical story. This makes it an accidental destruction by a purely physical phenomenon, not an act of God based on the behaviour of the residents.

[nabla9]

The publication is Scientific Reports, so there is no high quality peer review. Papers are "not assessed based on their perceived importance, significance or impact."