Evening star., 1924-06-22

great stratum of rock salt and sui
phur was ruptured. The salt and
sulphur were carried, red hot, up into
the heavens, from which fire and
birthstone were rained upon Sodom
| and the whole plain and "aI that
grew out of the ground"
The whole region was blasted. The
! account in the Bible draws aside the
| curtain to let US see what God was
doing. The geologists show US what
took place in the elements of nature
The two accounts exactly agree.
Now, where was that catastrophe?
Where was Sodom? Manifestly the
catastrophe was where the ruins of
it now are. Ruins stay put" The
rivers converge toward a point in
the shallow water in front of this
salt mountain-the place which was
overf1owed by the filling in Of the
upper end of the sea since Abraham's
day. There the waters have merci-
fully come and hid from view the
shame of the doomed cities.
Some one will remind me at this
point that the actual evidence of that
old civilization on the plain has not
been shown. That very day OF our
cruise to Jebel Usdum, Pere Mallon
came upon some graves which the
Arabs had opened in search Of treas
ure. They were on the high ground
at the eastern edge of the cultivated
land There, scattered around the
graves, were many precious pieces of
nP 10
early bronze age. An examination
the following day showed hundreds
of these graves and d great quantity
of pottery. Here was conclusive evi-
dence that the old civilization of that
age-of which we could find no trace
at any subsequent da,e-was actually
here.
Besides the evidence OF the pottery
we also found the High Place with =,
it's stone circle and seven sacred
standing stones. There were also the
remains of great fortress that
guarded this frontier, the sacred
place. and the cemetery. This was at
least one OF the cemeteries and High
Places of the Cities of the Plain. The
location has been known as Beb ed
ORA, and seems to have been a place
of pilgrimage similar to Gilgal for
Israel.
WE had found everything we hoped
w for; the evidence for the Cities
of the Plain was complete, but still
more was in store for us. In 1908
I excavated around the base of a
statue of Rameses the Great at the.
Temple of Luxor, and found an in--
scription in which he boasted of haV--
ing made conquest of Moab. This
certified the existence of the civilfza-
ton in Moab-as early as the time
of the Exodus The Bible represents
that civilization to have begun with
the fight of Lot to the mountains OF
Moab, when he was afraid to stay
longer in Zoar.
A few days after the discovery at /.
Bah ed-Dra, a Moabite temple was
found at Ader in the mountains east -
of the Dead Sea. 1t is similar in con-
struction to Solomon's temple, only
smaller and ruder. The pottery here :
dated this temple at the latter part
of the early bronze age and the early
part of the middle bronze age, 1900 /,
1900 BIC. Thus are confirmed both :.
the Biblical date for the rise Of
Moabite civilization and Rameses' .
claim for its importance in his day,
just before the Exodus.
Coming down over the long CEN i.
turies of silence to the present. we
now know the burial of the dead and :
the worship of the gods by the peo-
pie of the plain in the days of Abra-
ham and before that time. The
sparkling fresh water, fertile fields :
and fig trees attest the richness of
the plain in which the cities stood.
The extensiveness of the cemetery at
Bah ed-Dra and the size and strength r
of the fortress give a guarantee that
more than sustains the biblical ref .
erences to the greatness of the :
metropolis OF Sodom.
The precisely typical character of
the shrine with its seven sacred pill e
lars puts this civilization exactly
alongside the civilization of that age
elsewhere in Palestine. For the date
of all this we have the distinct pot
terry of the early bronze age. as con-
elusive as printed books are of the
modern age of printing. The geolo-
gists, as we have seen. show US
exactly what took place here in the
elements of nature-the bed of rock
salt mixed with free sulp' lr, rent
and torn and uplifted. They have
shown us the oil field with its by
product of asphalt and the source
of the gases that ruptured the
stratum and carried salt and sulphur
into the heavens, and let them de-
scend. red hot, sending up such a"
column of smoke as only hot asphalt
can generate. The geologist cannot
| tell us the time Of these events, but
the Bible tells us that, and the pot
terry substantiates the Bible records.
| Copyright, 1924, in United States and Great
Britain by North American Newspaper
Alliance. ALI rights reserved.)