September 24, 2021

Have We Finally Found Sodom, the Ancient City Destroyed By Fire and Brimstone?

By Clarke Morledge

Those interested in biblical archaeology have perked up recently, as a paper published in the scientific magazine, Nature, suggests that “A Tunguska sized airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam a Middle Bronze Age city in the Jordan Valley near the Dead Sea.”  Some archaeologists and other scholars identify Tall el-Hammam as the ancient site of the city of Sodom, where its destruction by “fire and brimstone” is recorded in Genesis 19.

The Nature paper describes evidence that shows that a large meteor, roughly the size of the Tunguska 1908 meteor strike in Russia, devastated a region on the eastern side of the Jordan River, around 1650 BCE.  Research shows that melted pottery and other artifacts found at Tall el-Hammam indicates that an explosion 1000 times more intense than the Hiroshima atomic bomb, wiped out the population of the region, and even deposited a large amount of salt, making the area uninhabitable for decades.

(Credit: Nature article, September 20, 2021, in Scientific Reports)

Some Christians have concluded from this paper that we now have strong scientific evidence, demonstrating the historical accuracy of this particular episode from the Bible. However, other Christian archaeologists and scholars are not persuaded. Archaeologist Todd Bolen, for example, argues that the location of Tall el-Hammam does not line up with the standard interpretation of Genesis 18:16, which some suggest indicates that Sodom was located nearer towards the southern end of the Dead Sea, as opposed to Tall el-Hammam’s location, north of the Dead Sea.

A more problematic objection to the story associated with the Nature paper comes from Dallas Seminary Old Testament bible scholar Eugene Merrill, who argues that the timeline for Tall el-Hammam’s destruction in about 1650 BCE does not line up with biblical chronology. Dr. Merrill follows what might be called a strict, literal interpretation of the numbers found in much of the Old Testament, which would place the destruction of Sodom much earlier, about 2067 BCE.  Dr. Merrill’s approach to biblical chronology is consistent with a belief in “Young Earth Creationism”, which places the creation of the world roughly 6000 years ago. He also adopts what is considered to be an Early Date theory of when the Exodus for Egypt occurred, in the 15th century BCE. Dr. Merrill identifies several problems with the 1650 BCE date for Sodom’s destruction:

  • The late Middle Bronze Age date of Sodom’s destruction, driven by archaeological considerations, must be the iron-clad standard against which the biblical chronology is ascertained.
  • This date demands a birth date of Abraham about 1699; since he was 175 when he died, that occurred in 1524, 76 years after the destruction of Sodom.
  • Isaac’s lifespan is 1599-1419 and Jacob’s 1539-1392!
  • Even a 215 year Egyptian sojourn must cover the years 1415-1200, requiring the Exodus to be in 1200 and the conquest, 40 years later, in 1160-1150.
  • The various judges and the reign of Saul must be compressed between 1150 and 1010, the established date of the commencement of David’s reign.
  • The only way out of the conundrum if Hammam is Sodom is to (1) disregard the biblical figures for the ages of the patriarchs; (2) jettison or greatly reduce the 215-year sojourn; and (3) minimize the length of the ministries of the judges and the reign of Saul nearly to the vanishing point.

Dr. Merrill suggests that the 1650 BCE date for Sodom’s destruction would require a chronology that fits within something like the following framework, a framework that Dr. Merrill believes does not fit within the Bible. Non-literal numbering estimates are highlighted below:

  1. Abraham was 75  at the 1600 date of Sodom’s destruction; therefore, he was born in 1675.
  2. Isaac was born in Abraham’s 50th year—1625.
  3. Jacob was born in Isaac’s 30th year—1595.
  4. Jacob moved his family to Egypt in his 60th year—1535.
  5. The sojourn lasted for 215 years—1535-1320.
  6. The exodus took place in 1320.
  7. The Sinai wanderings took 20 years—1320-1300.
  8. The conquest took 10 years–1300-1290.
  9. The administration of the judges lasted for 250 years—1290-1040.
  10. Samuel’s tenure was 10 years in length—1040-1030.
  11. Saul reigned for 20 years—1030-1010.
  12. David ascended to the throne in 1010.

Dr. Steve Collins is perhaps the leading archaeologist who has studied the site at Tall el-Hammam, a committed evangelical Christian, and professor at Trinity Southwest University. Collins fully accepts the 1650 BCE date and location of Sodom at Tall el-Hammam. Collins argues that the arithmetic interpretation of numbers by Dr. Merrill is misleading, and that other biblical evidence lines up better with the 1650 BCE date and location of Sodom at Tall el-Hammam (from a YouTube video recorded at Tall el-Hammam). Much of Collins’ reasoning is aligned with arguments presented by the esteemed Egyptian archaeologist Kenneth Kitchen, and author of the comprehensive On the Reliability of the Old Testament., though it must be noted that Collins does not accept the so-called Late Date theory of when the Exodus happened, dated to the 13th century BCE.

The most central of Dr. Collins’ arguments in favor of Sodom’s destruction near 1650 BCE, at Tall el-Hammam, is from archaeological population and tree density studies conducted in the Jordan Valley area. These studies show that the population of the Jordan Valley area was drastically reduced near the year 1650, which would coincide with the data from the Nature paper, postulating a large meteor strike, which would result in a significant and rapid population loss. However, the same research indicates that the 2067 BCE date for Sodom’s destruction proposed by Merrill does not coincide with any change in population, as the population of the Jordan Valley was already relatively low for 100-200 years prior to Merrill’s proposed date for Sodom’s destruction.

This analysis begs the question: Is a bird in the hand worth two in the bush?

Nevertheless, the debate over the timing and location of Sodom’s destruction and whereabouts has not been settled by the Nature paper. But it does lend some credence to the argument that the basic historical chronology of the Bible is still credible, in an age where skepticism is the order of the day.

10 Comments   |  tags: | posted in Apologetics

September 13, 2021

The Death of John Shelby Spong… (But His Ghost Lives On)

By Clarke Morledge

John Shelby Spong, the outspoken Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA, a towering voice of progressive Christianity, died on September 12, 2021, at age 90.

By the time Bishop Spong had published his bestselling 1991 Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture, the then Bishop of Newark New Jersey was well-known for his controversial, liberal theological views. In some cases, John Shelby Spong, a cousin of a former U.S Senator from Virginia, William B. Spong Jr., had sought rightly to correct some abusive misinterpretations of the Bible, as when many Southern church leaders used Noah’s curse of Ham as a justification for enslaving African Americans, along with more recent misguided attempts by others to read the Bible as a scientific textbook, or marginally ostracize the contributions of women to theology and ministry. Spong had grown up as a child in an unhealthy wing of conservative evangelicalism. Much of his adult life was spent working through a lot of that dysfunctionality.

But Spong’s critique of “fundamentalism” went much further than that, going onto undermine some basic tenets of historically orthodox Christian theology. In his Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, along with his other work, Spong repeatedly echoed a series of common themes of progressive Christianity, popular still thirty years later:

  • Jesus’ work on the Cross, articulated through a doctrine of substitutionary atonement, is to be rejected, as “barbaric.” To say that “Jesus died for my sins” is not only dangerous, it is absurd.
  • The Bible is full of contradictions.
  • The concept of theism, of a supernatural power, is meaningless in today’s world.
  • The Virgin Birth never happened.
  • Neo-Darwinian evolution dispels any concept of “original sin” as being nonsense.
  • There was no bodily resurrection of Jesus, nor any ascension of Jesus, after the resurrection.
  • A lot of the practices of traditional Christianity simply need to give way to a changing new world.
  • Saint Paul was a repressed homosexual, and Christians should drop any sexual ethics concept of marriage between one man and one woman, for one lifetime, as being relics of the pre-modern era.

In the mid-1900s, I had the opportunity to hear Bishop Spong preach at his former parish in Richmond, Virginia, at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church. It was a surreal experience, in that his sermon essentially repudiated almost every main point articulated in the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, that the congregation had previously recited, just moments before he took to the pulpit lectern.

While Spong’s message appealed to certain persons struggling with how to relate their lived experience with their faith, and though I found in meeting him that he was a congenial and polite fellow, I walked away from my encounter with him wondering why anyone would think that his version of Christian faith would in any way be considered attractive (much less “true”). During his tenure as bishop, church membership in his area of New Jersey Episcopalianism declined by 43 percent.

Bishop John Shelby Spong was like a late 20th century to early 21st century version of the 1963 author of Honest to God, John A. T. Robinson, the English Anglican Bishop of Woolrich, as Robinson argued that a humanist form of religion would likely replace orthodox Christianity. Spong actually developed a correspondence and friendship with Bishop Robinson, before Robinson died of cancer in the 1980s.

It is quite probable that if John Shelby Spong had not been a bishop in the Episcopal Church, few would even know of him today. Robinson, on the other hand, surprised many of his liberal colleagues, when he challenged the broad scope of critical, academic scholarship with his 1976 Redating the New Testament, that argued that much of the New Testament had been written prior to the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, in 70 A.D., a stark contrast with the typical liberal, critical view, that places the dating of all four of the Gospels to having been written after 70 A.D., if not later towards the end of the first century, or even the beginning of the second century.

However, we should be wary of knee-jerk reactions: It is very tempting for an evangelical Christian to overreact to Spong’s in-your-face liberal theology, and embrace a siege mentality, where one tries to circle the wagons, shutting off the rest of the world around them. Instead of hiding the light under a bushel, Christians are called to let the light of Christ shine for all the world to see, even to those who embrace “progressive Christianity.” The “ghost” of John Shelby Spong continues to live on, in the ideas that he popularized, ironically even in some conservative evangelical churches.

There are surely certain critiques that Spong made that needed to be said. At the same time, the precipitous decline of historically orthodox faith, under the tutelage of misguided, at best, teachings propagated by spokespersons like John Shelby Spong serve as a cautionary tale in how not to allow erroneous teachings to gain a foothold among the people of God.

2 Timothy 4:3 is worth quoting here: “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.” Beware of the ghost of John Shelby Spong.

 

William Lane Craig debated John Shelby Spong, on the topic, “The Great Resurrection Debate”:

Leave a comment   |  tags: , | posted in Apologetics

September 11, 2021

Remembering September 11…. 1683

By Clarke Morledge

King John III Sobieski praying for Christian victory, for his Polish forces, against the Ottomans, outside of Vienna, on September 11, 1683.

When Osama Bin Laden selected the date of September 11, 2001, to attack the twin towers of the World Trade Center, in New York City, this was not just a clever play on the phrase “911,” the standard phone number for making emergency calls. It was a deliberate attempt by Bin Laden to symbolically reverse the devastating defeat of Islamic Turks, at the Battle of Vienna, on September 11, 1683.

The Ottoman Empire had held the city of Vienna in a brutal siege for several months, as the Ottomans sought to take advantage of the disarray experienced in Western Europe, after years of religious wars between Roman Catholics and Protestants, that divided Christian Europe from within. By attempting to take Vienna, the Ottomans were hoping that a weakened Hapsburg Empire would eventually capitulate to the relentless attempts of the Islamic Turks to take the city, as a gateway into the rest of Christian Europe.

But the Austrian Hapsburgs established an alliance with the Polish-Lithuanians, led by King John III Sobieski. Sobieski led what many historians consider to be the largest calvary charge in world history, as typically dated to September 11, 1683, that broke the Islamic Turkish siege of Vienna, thus ending the threat of Ottoman expansion into Western Europe. As demonstrated in the following 3-minute movie clip, from the 2012 film, The Day of the Siege, Sobieski describes the importance of the battle, in explicitly apocalyptic terms, as a heroic defense of Christendom, with a passionate speech to his troops before the battle.

Twenty years after Osama Bin Laden’s attack on America, a symbolic victory for the radical wing of Islam, a massive visual spectacle imprinted on the minds of nearly all Americans, we can look back at the challenges faced by Christians, in the wake of 911.

In many ways, 911 marked significant shifts in our culture: a decline of the Christian Right, the first major world event to be broadcast across the then infant world of social media, and the rise of the New Atheist movement, a.l.a. Richard Dawkins, that portrayed all religion, not just Islam or Christianity, as the greatest threat against humanity. A new generation of young people, growing up in the wake of 911, have grown increasingly sympathetic to the cries of such skepticism about organized religious faith. After the era of the Post-Reformation religious wars, after the Age of the Enlightenment, and now into the reality of a Post-Christian moment, how will the Christian movement respond?

That is something to think and pray about today.

 

8 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Topics

August 30, 2021

The Rise and Fall of Summer 2021

By Clarke Morledge

Now that the last days of summer are waning, I am writing a post to reflect on some spiritual matters that I have been considering lately.

As we near the end of August, 2021, aside from Hurricane Ida bearing down on Louisiana, what is on the minds of many is the deteriorating situation in Kabul, Afghanistan. The obvious quandary is that the Taliban has not had a very stellar record in the area of upholding basic human rights, to say the least. The situation is particularly precarious for women and young girls, due to the strict Taliban interpretation of Islamic Sharia law. Critics of the Christian faith have for years sought to fault the Bible for promoting misogyny, but those claims pale in comparison to the strict, Taliban readings of the Koran, regarding the treatment of women.

A friend of mine who served in the U.S. military recently sought to help an Afghan interpreter and his family leave the country. A few days ago that interpreter and his family arrived safely in Virginia, but the status of others left behind in Afghanistan is unknown. Furthermore, we must remember that there is a small, yet vibrant Christian community in Afghanistan, who have endured persecution under previous Taliban rule. We must pray for all who are facing extremely difficult circumstances, that God might deliver them from this crisis.

Please, Lord, protect the weak and powerless, and deliver them from danger. Let your loving Truth be made known to these people.

The famous 1975 Hugh Van Es photo, that sticks in the minds of many people, who lived through the 1970s, that recalls the tragic Fall of Saigon, after an extremely controversial and highly destructive war in Southeast Asia.

Reflections on a Meme: An Iconic Photo Examined

As an American, I particularly feel the angst of the loss of American prestige, following after the speedy fall of the Afghan government to the Taliban, after America’s longest active military involvement, in another country, during the entire history of the United States. More than a century ago, the British had to learn their lesson about how difficult it is to achieve military success in Afghanistan. In the 1980s, it was the Soviet Russians who faced the futility of gaining the upper hand in that country. Now, it is the turn of the United States to face the same scenario. When I saw the first video reports of people falling off of C17 planes, trying to leave Kabul, it made me think immediately of the Fall of Saigon, in 1975. I vividly remember the television reports, back when I was in middle school.
Continue reading

16 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Apologetics

August 20, 2021

Judaism Before Jesus: Exploring the History Between the Old and New Testaments

By Clarke Morledge

What happened in Israel between the time of the end of the Old Testament, and the coming of John the Baptist in the New Testament?

Many Christians, primarily of an evangelical Protestant conviction, know very little about the so-called “time between the testaments,” the 400-ish-year period after the Book of Malachi and before the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew. Sometimes this period is also called “the silent years,” in that we have no recognized biblical prophet speaking for those roughly 400 years, before John the Baptist.

By the end of our Old Testament, the Jews were back in their homeland, after being sent into exile in Babylon in the 6th century BCE. They were struggling to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem, along with the city itself, as we learn from Ezra and Nehemiah, but things finally came together. The narrative of Jewish history pretty much stops at this point.

Then all of the sudden, we get to the New Testament, and we run into groups like the Pharisees and Sadducees, and King Herod, and an occupation by the Romans. It seems like all of these people just come from out of nowhere!

Author Anthony J. Tomasino, in his Judaism Before Jesus, gives us a helpful analogy: Imagine you are watching a thrilling movie one night. Then you get a phone call, let us say, from your boss, a baby-sitter, or whomever, and you need to deal with a situation right away, so you step out from watching the movie. You get the issue resolved, and then 20-30 minutes later walk back in and watch the rest of the movie.

But you have missed at least 20 minutes from a story told over a 2-hour period! All of these new characters pop up out of nowhere. You struggle with trying to figure out what is going on, as you have lost the continuity of the story line.

That is pretty much what happens to most Christians when they try to study the Bible, and yet completely ignore the story of what happened between the times of the Old and New Testaments, what others call the “intertestamental period.”

Were the 400 years after Malachi and before the New Testament really “silent?” While Protestant Christians recognize that there were no canonical prophetic writings directly associated with this time period, the extraordinary history that God was working through the nation of Israel was anything but “silent.” But what do we know about those years, and does that knowledge help us to read our New Testament better? (credit: excelnetwork.org)

Continue reading

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , | posted in Apologetics