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by jeroenhd
1739 days ago
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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. |
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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.