Science, Sulfur, and the Sinking of the City of Sodom

 

 

 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/evidence-of-sodom-meteor-blast-cause-of-biblical-destruction-say-scientists/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2018/12/04/new-science-suggests-biblical-city-of-sodom-was-smote-by-an-exploding-meteor/?sh=32714b345c67

and here’s my favorite: Sodom and Gomorrah: Fires Created by Ignition of Combustible Gases by Earthquake-Impelled Thermobaric-Hydrothermal Explosions

https://www.longdom.org/open-access/sodom-and-gomorrah-fires-created-by-ignition-of-combustible-gases-byearthquakeimpelled-thermobarichydrothermal-explosions-2329-6755-1000202.pdf

 

  

We read both in the Torah and Midrash that the plane of Zo’ar, where Sodom, Gomorrah,  Admah, Zoabim and Bela existed, was a fertile plain where crops grew with great ease, compared to Eden (Gen. 13:10).  Now the area is a wasteland, the Torah notes.  How?  Drop it down a few meters and expose it to burning sulfur, that’s how. When pure sulfur burns, you get sulfur dioxide, SO₂. Ask expert Chemist Avrom Littin what happens if you inhale such fumes. I did, and the answer is not pretty. Breathe in SO₂, he warns, and you will get H₂SO₄ - sulfuric acid - forming in your lungs. Get SO₂ into the atmosphere, and you get Acid Rain, the kind that kills off whatever is growing and any chances of future growth. Add in some backwash from the Dead Sea,  and nothing grows there anymore.  From sulfur and fire,  you get nature turning Eden into a wasteland,  and making people into pillars of salt. 

Some newer theories about the destruction are anchored in some serious science that indicates an airburst, and by that we mean a meteor that never quite hits the ground. Rather, while still hurtling through the atmosphere at incredible speed, thermodynamics, inertia and chemistry all look up at the space rock and say, “you're not touching the ground, buster!” and make it go “boom.” Which is another way to say that a massive explosion in the air was recorded in the Jordan River Valley basin over 3000 years ago, and not only that, but the heat was so intense it turned pottery shards into glass! It is possible that an airburst drops fragments of molten rock from the sky. Sulfur is so common in the universe, it's not impossible for molten sulfur to rain from the sky from a shattered asteroid.  Here, read some theories for yourselves! Here are two to start with,

https://www.timesofisrael.com/evidence-of-sodom-meteor-blast-cause-of-biblical-destruction-say-scientists/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2018/12/04/new-science-suggests-biblical-city-of-sodom-was-smote-by-an-exploding-meteor/?sh=32714b345c67

and here’s my favorite: Sodom and Gomorrah: Fires Created by Ignition of Combustible Gases by Earthquake-Impelled Thermobaric-Hydrothermal Explosions

https://www.longdom.org/open-access/sodom-and-gomorrah-fires-created-by-ignition-of-combustible-gases-byearthquakeimpelled-thermobarichydrothermal-explosions-2329-6755-1000202.pdf

So the rain of sulfur and fire, a plain collapsing into a rift, verdant fields becoming wasteland? More than possible. But if the science is a challenge, I would venture that the moral of the story is even more difficult for the modern mind to parse. If one is to accept the Biblical phrasing of the story, Sodom as a society was so perniciously nasty it deserved exactly what it got. We moderns often find such a conclusion troubling, we who are bound by the Geneva Convention and think of people as innocent until proven guilty. For our sages who were continually concerned for human life and human dignity, there was no doubt in their minds about Sodom's evil. They summon many stories and legends as a warning to the rest of us about how the wealthy and the comfortable can embrace evil by twisting good law into bad.

The danger for the modern reader, then, does not lie in saying that the Torah text is not historically accurate. The danger lies in saying that the Torah text is not morally accurate.  The problem lies in saying that there could never be a group on this planet so evil that it deserved to be annihilated for its cruelty, or that there will never be a part of human civilization that could descend to the point where  the very sulfurous wrath of the LORD should be poured out upon them. The suggestion that such evil is not possible despite the testimony of the Torah  and modern history should be far more troubling for the Jew than usual suggestions that Sodom was not real and no molten sulfur really rained down on it. The Human potential for evil that corrupts just law into cruelty, and the fact that it may take miraculous efforts to extricate decent people from such evil, that is a Torah lesson that must not be dismissed.