Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1910 — VERIFIES BIBLE SIORY [ARTICLE]

VERIFIES BIBLE SIORY

<• j -Y Head of Yale Palestine Expedition Investigates Sites of Sodom o and Gomorrah. DESTROYED BY A VOLCANO. All the Elements of the Scriptural Sanative Found in Exactly the Location Described. Ellsworth Huntington, the head of the recent Yale expedition to Palestine, gives in Harper’s a most intereating account of how he verified the Bible story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which has been so often questioned. “Among the scientific problems connected with the Dead Sea,” Huntington, “none is more interesting than that of Sodom and Gomorrah. Hundreds of pages have been written to„prove that the story is a myth, or that the ancient towns were destroyed by the bursting forth of oil wells like those of Texas or Baku, which sometimes are ignited and burn for days. Other hundreds of pages have been devoted to proving that Sodom and Gomorrah were, or were not, at the north end of the Dead Sea, and thstt they were, or were not, burled under the saline deposits at either end of the lake. “The identification of biblical sites was not part of the intended work of the Yale expedition, but no intelligent man can wander among places whose fame is world-wide without becoming keenly interested in them. According to the story in Genesis, Lot and Abraham were at Bethel, ten miles north of Jerusalem, when their herdsmen quarreled and they decided to separate. ‘And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of the Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, before Jehovah destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, like the garden of Jehovah, like the land of Egypt, as thou goest Into Zoar. So Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan.’ Then the story goes on to the time when ‘Jehovah rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven while Lot fled to the near town of Zoar. He did not stay there long, but ‘went out of Zoar and dwelt in the mountain—in a cave.’ “Having freshly read the story and having looked over the strong arguments for locating the towns south of the Dead Sea and for believing them to have been destroyed by someth lng in the nature of bituminous outbursts, I was taken surprise when I visited the little ruin of Suweimeh and picked up bits of genuine scoriaceous lava. • I went into the mountains at once from Suweim in order to see where the lava came from. As we climbed the lower hills the sheikh noticed that I picked up black pieces of lava and broke them open. ‘Don’t bother with those,’ he said. ‘Up here,’ pointing southeast, •there Is a whole mountain of black rock ’like that.’ Not two miles from Suweim, along the line of the great fault which separates the Ghor from the plateau of Moab, we found the mountain, a genuine little volcano of very recent date geologically. From it flowed a sheet of lava which made a small headland between Suweim and Ghuweir. . “The present ruins of Ghuweir doubtless date from a time many hundred or even one or two thousand years after the days of Abraham and Lot. There is one work of man, however, which may''go back to the period 'of the patriarchs and which may have played a part in the biblical narrative. Near the head of the valley which leads eastward' from Ghuweir up toward the plateau of Moab we discovered a carefully excavated cave among the mountains at a place called El Ghuttar, between Abu Hassan and Beth Peor. It is about twenty feet long and fifteen wide, carefully hewed out of the limestone above a spring. Two windows look down the wadi toward Zoar and a door with a rock-cut trough to lead off the water of rains has been •so located that it can be reached only by climbing a precipice by means of six or eight , little niches cut in the rock or by climbing down over pome difficult steps in the rock above. Nowhere else in this region is there known to be an artificial cave upon which any such care has been bestowed as upon this. The discovery of the cave, together with the volcano and the tradition of Suweimeh, supplies all the elements of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in exactly the location where the biblical account would lead one to expect them.