Genesis Vol 3.pdf - College Press

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01% biiglwr ground aiid back from the lake. Their destruc-
tion would have been due to other agencies than the waters
of the Dead Sea. The names of the cities are certainly
not invented. Sodom and Zoar, furthermore, still occur
as names of inhabited places south of the Dead Sea area
in the fourth century A.D., and the former name clings
to Jebel Sudunz, as local natives called it, or Jebel Usduiiz,
as it has become known since Robinson to this day. These
Christian towns may not have stood on the identical sites
of the ancient ones, but presumably were close enough to
them to preserve the old names. All indications point to
their having lain near the southern end of the Dead Sea.
. , . If one looks at the area on the south end of the Dead
Sea, one notes first of all that on the west side there is no
suitable location for any habitations, because the brooks
that enter in here near the Jebel Usduiiz are salty. Far
different, however, is the situation 072 the eastern side of
the soi& eiid of the Dead Sea.” Kraeling goes on to show
why this region may well have been the original site of
the doomed cities, concluding that “only further explora-
tion and some excavation can shed light on the old cities of
this neighborhood.” Cornfeld writes (AtD, 68) that at
the southern end of the Dead Sea there is “the deepest rift
valley in the world, which lies 1290 feet below sea level.”
He goes on to say that “earthquakes or some other destruc-
tive agents seem to have wiped out a civilization that had
existed near the Dead Sea and east of the Jordan from the
Stone Age (4000 B.C.E.) down to the Bronze Age (around
the 20th century) :” he says, “is the area which
included the ‘five cities of the Plain,’ or ‘the circle of the
vale of Siddim.’ . . . It is thought by those who favor the
geological theory, that these cities were situated south and
east of the Dead Sea, most of them being now covered by
the water. We know also that nomadic peoples settled down
in villages and towns before the 20th century B.C.E., just
at the time when the dark age was settling over Palestine,
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