Did the brimstone come up or down?
The Bible declares that God rained down fire and brimstone upon the cities of the plain, but a new theory put forward by British geologist Graham Harris suggests that the stuff came from the opposite direction - from below!
In ancient times asphalt was a rare and valuable commodity for most of the world. In Mesopotamia, of course, it was so common that it was used instead of mortar to cement bricks together, but elsewhere it was used sparingly to repair things or in the jewellery trade. Moses, living in Egypt, wrote incredulously of how the builders of the tower of Babel "had bricks instead of stone and used bitumen instead of mortar!".
In fact, the closest source of asphalt for Egypt was the Dead Sea, which lies at the bottom of the Great Rift Valley and is the lowest place on earth. Geologically speaking, it is situated at the place where two of the earth's tectonic plates, moving in opposite directions, meet. As a result, not only are earthquakes a common occurrance, but there is a good deal of other geologic activity.
One consequence of this is that from time to time great lumps of asphalt break off from somewhere beneath the Dead Sea and come floating to the surface where they are harvested by the people who live on the shore. Until the Israelis brought about the draining of the southern part of the Dead Sea, this was one of the industries carried on in the little town of Sedom, the equivalent of the Biblical Sodom.
According to Dr Harris, Sodom and Gomorrah may well have been sited on the shores of the Dead Sea in order to profit from the trade in asphalt. Sulphur - "brimstone" in old English - is another product from the Dead Sea and was highly valued for its supposed medicinal properties.
However there are large pockets of methane under the shores of the Dead Sea and it is not difficult to imagine a scenario where a large pocket of methane suddenly bursts to the surface as the result of an earthquake and explodes into flame. Bitumen and sulphur would merely have added to the intensity of the fire as it rained down, apparently out of the sky.
In addition, the edges of the spreading cloud of methane might not have been concentrated enough to explode or burn, but still have been too concentrated for life to survive, which would explain the collapse and death of Lot's wife only a short distance away from her husband and daughters.
Meanwhile either a massive landslide from the nearby hills or liquifaction of the ground could have led to the disappearance of even the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Apparently, so Dr Harris claims, there is geological evidence for a massive earthquake about 4,500 years ago, which would be approximately the time of Abraham. If so - and a number of scholars at Cambridge University have agreed with Dr Harris - then we may finally have an explanation for the cataclysmic destruction of the "cities of the plain". Alas, until and unless we discover the ruins of Sodom, we will never have proof.
© Kendall K. Down 2009
