National Geographic: Riddles of the Bible - Second Season

Some of the most chilling stories in the Bible

are tales of legendary cities destroyed by the hand of God.

Sodom and Gomorrah were incinerated in a hail of fire and brimstone,

and Jericho's walls came tumbling down to the sound of trumpets.

But are these stories fiction or fact?

Archaeologists have recently begun to uncover some clues.

There's undeniable evidence of catastrophic events,

but does it support the Biblical accounts or point to a more earthly explanation?

One of the oldest stories in the world

is a dramatic tale of two cities whose names are synonymous with sin and debauchery...

Sodom and Gomorrah.

The story of what happened to these cities is a powerful parable of sex and pleasure,

a moral fable about wickedness and corruption...

..and the price tag that comes with sin.

4,000 or so years ago,

the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah had an infamous reputation,

although the Bible doesn't specify exactly what they did to deserve it.

Genesis simply says.. ''The men of Sodom were evil, and great sinners before the Lord. ''

Later on, it also mentions ''abominations'',

but doesn't elaborate as to what they were.

We have very IittIe information, actuaIIy, about exactIy what was going on there.

I think that's why HoIIywood, among others,

is so fascinated by Sodom and Gomorrah.

It's open to whatever you want to think.

''What was going on there?'' ''I don't know, but it must have been bad.''

But if the Bible is vague about the sins that were committed,

it's clear about the punishment.

''Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah

brimstone and fire out of heaven. ''

The Bible later goes on to suggest that after Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed,

their people fled, leaving the cities abandoned.

lf this Biblical story really did happen, it probably happened here,

in these empty, desolate lands, next to a lifeless sea.

But this is far from certain.

Like many things in the Hebrew BibIe,

it's hard to actuaIIy pin down a Iocation for pIaces.

The Hebrew BibIe taIks about the five Cities of the PIain.

The nearest we can get today is thinking

that they're somewhere around the shores of the Dead Sea, say in modern-day Jordan,

but even that is a best guess.

According to the Book of Genesis, the story took place in the time of Abraham,

centuries before Moses fled from Egypt.

Abraham was apparently the patriarch of a tribe of nomads,

who avoided towns and cities, which may be why we know so little about them.

City dweIIers were usuaIIy the peopIe who wrote the history.

Nomads, usuaIIy, are archaeoIogicaIIy invisibIe.

What we have in the OId Testament in the writings of these very Iiterate tribaI peopIe,

who eventuaIIy became city dweIIers themseIves,

is we have the nomads' side of the story.

The Bible tells us

that Abraham's tribesmen were constantly fighting with each other over pastureland.

To settle the dispute, Abraham and his nephew, Lot, agreed to part ways,

and Lot settled on the plain, near the city of Sodom.

''Lot lifted up his eyes, and saw all the plain of the Jordan,

and Lot moved his tent as far as Sodom. ''

So Sodom was already an established city when Lot moved there.

lf it was a typical Bronze-Age settlement,

about 1,000 people would have lived inside its walls.

No-one had ever looked for, or found, any evidence that this Biblical city actually existed.

Then, in 1 924, an archaeologist named William Albright made a trip to the Dead Sea.

WeII, some of the peopIe with him were certainIy Iooking for Sodom and Gomorrah,

and generaIIy the Cities of the PIain,

so they came down here, foIIowing the BibIicaI text

and they circIed around the southeast shore of the Dead Sea,

and just at the end of their survey here, they came across the site of Bab-edh-dhra.

Bab-edh-dhra was a Bronze-Age site, but there was no evidence that it was a town.

ln fact, it seemed to be a cemetery.

Albright didn't have the resources to excavate it at the time,

and nearly 50 years passed before anyone went back to the site

and began to dig.

Archaeologist Paul Lapp led that 1 967 excavation,

and Thomas Schaub was one of the people digging.

He's been back to the site many times since then,

and, over the years, he's uncovered a cemetery that was vast,

even by Bronze-Age standards.

This is the Iargest buriaI house that we've excavated at Bab-edh-dhra.

It is some 1 5 metres Iong, and seven metres across.

We've found hundreds and hundreds of pots here, and skeIetons and bones.

We found a buriaI with goId jeweIIery,

we excavated over 700 pieces of pottery

that were funerary gifts here, incIuding many smaII perfume jugIets

and many other objects, incIuding cIoth, and one unusuaI...

The remnants of wooden poIes

that were used as a paIIet to bring in the bodies to the buriaI house.

lt was an exciting discovery, a graveyard that had been in use for about 1,000 years,

around the time of Abraham and the destruction of Sodom.

But there was nothing to link the cemetery to Sodom, except this..

in about 2350 BC, the burials stopped...suddenly.

The reason why was unclear.

There are any number of reasons why a site might not be re-occupied.

Some we can put our finger on, some we can't.

Perhaps the water suppIy dried up. Perhaps the environment changed.

Perhaps the cIimate changed.

Perhaps the peopIe were annihiIated and compIeteIy kiIIed.

Over the next few seasons, the archaeologists expanded their search,

looking for signs of a lost city.

lt wasn't long before they found something..

traces of human habitation on a hillside overlooking the cemetery.

They uncovered stones and some pottery shards.

But, in their search for the Biblical city of Sodom,

the archaeologists at Bab-edh-dhra dealt mostly with vast quantities of dirt.

There is a fascination with what has once been Iost,

and yet now is found.

This is what drives some archaeoIogists,

and to a Iarger extent, the generaI pubIic,

this idea that something couId have been buiIt and then compIeteIy Iost,

and yet is there, under the earth, waiting to be found.

Unfortunately for archaeologists, lost cities are usually buried underground.

And that's where Tom Schaub and his team found traces of a Bronze-Age wall.

lt was on a hill, overlooking the cemetery at Bab-edh-dhra,

and it was the first sign they might have come across a town of some kind.

The inescapable question was.. had they found Sodom or Gomorrah?

The archaeologists began to dig,

and gradually, the outlines of a settlement emerged.

You can see the face of the western waII of the site.

That's the foundation of the waII, and you had a mud-brick superstructure above that.

The waII was much taIIer than that, as far as we can teII, with the mud brick that coIIapsed.

One discovery led to another.

This is a good view of one waII of the sanctuary,

and the other waII with the entrance way.

lt wasn't quite a city yet, but gradually, the hard work began to pay off.

Right here is an open pIaza area,

and very IikeIy, the pIace where most of the town business was carried on inside of the gates.

As the data trickled in, archaeologists realised that they'd come across something unique..

the foundations of a town from the time of Abraham, or even earlier,

just where the Bible suggests Sodom was located.

Like the cemetery, the town had been deserted suddenly,

and at about the same time.

But what exactly had been going on behind those mud-brick walls?

Was it the usual monotony of Bronze-Age life?

Or was it something else,

something sinful and corrupt?

Had the ancient inhabitants of Bab-edh-dhra engaged in behaviour so depraved

that it had to be punished from above?

Were Bab-edh-dhra and Sodom one and the same?

Not surprisingly, opinions continue to differ.

Work done in the 1 960s and '70s and in subsequent years

have reveaIed severaI sites from the time of Abraham, the earIy Bronze Age,

the Iargest of them being Bab-edh-dhra.

It wouId seem that that shouId be identified as the site of Sodom.

The sites of Bab-edh-dhra

and the other sites on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea are fabuIous sites,

but they're sites, mostIy, of the third miIIennium,

graduaIIy abandoned around 2000 BCE,

and I think we wouId aII agree that the popuIation of these sites was Canaanite.

To the writers of the Bible, Canaanite wasn't a term of endearment.

Abraham's tribe probably saw the city-dwelling Canaanites

as corrupt and promiscuous,

perfect examples of the bad things that can happen when you stop living in a tent.

This fits nicely with Sodom's reputation as a place with walls, rooms and secrets.

And Lot, one of their own,

had evidently forsaken his tent and moved into town.

Had he too been corrupted?

We have an account of Abraham Iiving near Hebron,

down in the southern part of Canaan,

and angeIs coming to visit him

with the message that they were going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.

Abraham asked God to spare the town if some of its citizens could be shown to be good men.

But how many good men were needed to avoid God's wrath?

Abraham knew his nephew, Lot, was Iiving there with his famiIy,

and so Abraham begins this diaIogue,

''For 30 righteous peopIe, wiII you stiII destroy the city?''

God says, ''WeII, find me 20 righteous men in the city of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Just find me 20,'' and Abraham says, ''WeII, how about ten?''

It's interesting that you have, in the BibIe,

you have a god who can bargain,

whose mind can be changed by a good deaIer Iike Abraham.

To count the good men of Sodom, God sent two angels to visit the town.

The angels walked through the city and prepared to spend the night on the streets.

But when they came to Lot's house, Sodom's only good man took them in.

That evening, they shared a meal with Lot, his wife and their two teenage daughters.

But Lot's hospitable nature wasn't shared by the rest of the Sodomites.

lndeed, they had something very different in mind for the angels.

They wanted Lot to hand them over,

apparently so they could be used by the townspeople for sex.

But Lot refused...to a degree.

Lot, at some point, he's trying to bargain with the townspeopIe,

''What if I give you my two daughters instead of these angeIs?''

And the townspeopIe, ''No. I want the angeIs.''

And that reaIIy becomes, in that cautionary taIe, the finaI straw for God,

and it's Iike, ''OK, Lot, you and your famiIy, get out of town. This pIace is toast.''

The debate about whether the Bible is an accurate historical record

has been going on for centuries,

and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is no exception.

Yeah, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah happened, sure.

How do we know it? We heard it from our forefathers.

We need to remember the BibIicaI stories about the IsraeIites

were probabIy not written down before the eighth or seventh century,

centuries after the period in question.

I think the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Cities of the PIain,

these muItipIe destructions of cities,

might be a teIescoping of severaI cities that were destroyed at around the same time.

There's no question that the destruction of a city would have been a memorable event,

a story that would have been passed down from generation to generation.

Throughout history several cities have been destroyed for one reason or another,

and their names have lived on.

Troy and Carthage were demolished in a war.

So were Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The wrath of nature buried Pompeii under six metres of hot ash when Vesuvius erupted.

San Francisco was levelled by an earthquake.