re: In case you missed it (like I did), archaeologists discovered ancient city of Sodom

There are two radical schools of thought when it comes to the Bible. Some argue that the entire thing is a complete work of fiction, and some argue that it is 100% accurate and should be taken literally at all times. Now, the truth is likely in the middle somewhere, but the reason you have folks arguing that none of it is true is because of politics.

Biblical accounts have been used to justify the creation of the political nation of Israel. This land was carved out of former Ottoman territory that had been occupied by the Palestinian population, most of whom were displaced by gentrification before the partition or by the Civil War that followed. Thus, you have a sizable population of people who have a vested interest in denying the basis for the existence of the nation of Israel and removing it so that they may retake possession of the territory it currently occupies. The free Palestine movement is very big within Muslim, atheist, and general liberal/progressive academic circles.

As such, they deny any and everything that occurs in the bible, claiming that not only are the people fictional, but that the place names and geography are made up as well despite referencing many locations that still exist today by the same names.

Thus, any discovery that verifies a biblical location, or more so, verifies a biblical account of a specific event not previously known to have been recorded elsewhere, is a huge blow to the political agenda of the free Palestine movement and is thus ridiculed, ignored, or discredited by a large chunk of “mainstream” archaeologists.

The Sodom discovery is interesting because those cities were found where they should be, were at the age they should be, and were discovered with pottery shards consistent with either a meteor impact or a nuclear explosion. This seems to verify that whomever wrote Genesis had a clear chain of custody of a first-hand account of what happened there, and recorded a historical event with a relatively high degree of accuracy.

That just means that whether the destruction was caused by the active hand of an angry God verses the statistical randomness of nature is the only real question, which is one unrelated to any political debate. In my opinion, such debates are meaningless because God would have invented the laws of nature, and thus scientifically proving that a city said to have been destroyed “by fire and brimstone” was actually destroyed by a meteor impact is kinda saying the same thing. I see God as acting through nature, not in opposition of it, being the answer to why, while science the answer to how.

However, both extremes of the religious/political debate would never accept any such nuance, thus it will be hated on everyone. In my best informed opinion, portions of the Bible are attempting to be a historical text. If they say ___ was a King of ____ at the time of ____ in the land of ____, best believe that shite is real and you can find that place by following the context clues in the story.