Biblical Archaeology: Figure 08

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Figure 08

The city wall at Tall el-Ḥammâm (Sodom), Jordan, in season 1 (2006)

The author, standing in front of a cut-away section of the city wall (created by cutting the wall by modern military activity to put in a road) at Tall el-Ḥammâm (Sodom), in season 1 (2006) exposing the stratigraphy of the tall. The military cut a road through the wall and exposed this cross section, which was later clarified. At his feet is the location of a 0.5 m (1.6 ft.) thick Middle Bronze (MB) burn layer (char from the time of the Patriarchs) in the mudbrick section of the city wall, dated by a MB handle (inset photo) at the same location. The Iron Age stone wall above it was built over the earlier burned MB mudbrick wall. Notice where the two wall are constructed on top of one another. This indicates that after the destruction at the end of the Middle Bronze Age there is no occupation until the Iron Age (550 years). This has become known by archaeologists in the Jordan Valley excavations as "The Late Bronze Gap."1. The 550 year “Late Bronze gap,” when no one is living in most of the Jordan Valley, including Tall el-Ḥammâm, fulfills the prophecy of Jeremiah 50:35-46.

The “Late Bronze Gap” on the Jordan Valley for over 500 years may be evidence of salt affecting the land so nothing could grow for such a long time.2. Silva and Collins call this catastrophe the 3.7KYrBP Kikkar Event.3.

Close up of the charcoal which is evidence of the destruction layer at the Middle Bronze layer of the city wall at Tall el-Hammam.

Footnotes

1. James W. Flanagan, David W. McCreery, and Khair N. Yassine, “Tell Nimrin: Preliminary Report on the 1993 Season,” Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan (ADAJ) 38 (1994): 205–44. see 207.

2. David E. Graves, “Sodom And Salt in Their Ancient Near Eastern Cultural Context,” Near East Archaeological Society Bulletin 61 (2016): 18–36. PDF.

3. Phillip J. Silvia, “The 3.7kaBP Middle Ghor Event: Catastrophic Termination of a Bronze Age Civilization,” Chronology & Catastrophism Review 1 (2020): 4–13; Phillip J. Silvia and Steven Collins, “The Civilization-Ending 3.7KYrBP Kikkar Event: Archaeological Data, Sample Analyses, and Biblical Implications,” in Annual Meeting of the Near East Archaeological Society: Atlanta, GA. (Albuquerque, NM: TSU Press, 2015), 1–6; Phillip J. Silvia et al., “The 3.7kaBP Middle Ghor Event: Catastrophic Termination of a Bronze Age Civilization,” American Schools of Oriental Research, November 2018; Phil Silvia,
The Destruction of Sodom: What We Have Learned from Tall El-Hammam and Its Neighbors (Albuquerque, NM: Trinity Southwest University Press, 2016);