Return to Sodom and Gomorrah by
Charles R. Pellegrino
Wideangle View Of The Ancient World
Unlock doors to the lost worlds of the Bible -- from the Garden of Eden to
the ruins of Babylon
Did a volcano part the Red Sea? Have scientists found Eve? Was the
pharaoh of the Oppression a woman? Did the Jordan River really cease
flowing the day Jericho fell?
A brilliant author, scientist, and adventurer who has been called the real
Indiana Jones, Dr. Charles Pellegrino takes us on a remarkable journey
from the Nile to the Tigris-Euphrates rivers -- crossing time, legend, and
ancient lands to explore the unsolved mysteries of the Old Testament.
Return to Sodom and Gomorrah is an epic saga of discovery that
interweaves science, history, and suspense --the first book ever to bring
archaeologists, scientists and theologians together to examine the same
evidence. In this enthralling revelatory adventure, Pellegrino introduces us
to dedicated pioneers like Benjamin Mazar, Leonard Woolley, and T. E.
Lawrence, who retraced the steps of Moses to demystify the Exodus and
the Flood. In the process, he enables us to view ancient relics in an
extraordinary new light -- as both fascinating windows on the past and vivid
signposts to the future.
Personal Review: Return to Sodom and Gomorrah by Charles R.
Pellegrino
Return to Sodom and Gomorrah, recounts the volcanic eruption at the
major Minoan port on what is now known as Santorini. The shear power of
the blast, the wide distribution of the ash cloud and the tsunamis that
followed, were of "mythic proportions" and engendered myths. According
to another of my favorite books, When They Severed Earth from Sky
(E.W.&P. Barber), myths are the result of oral histories being compacted
and altered in predictable ways over millennia. In trying to decode the
events described in them, it is important to adopt the viewpoint of the
participants. Noah's flood, for instance, need not have covered the world
known to us. As Pellegrino points out, the disaster probably covered the
Fertile Crescent, the world as known to the original witnesses.
There are accounts of the Thera eruption encoded in the Greek story of
Atlantis and in Egyptian writings as well as in the Exodus story in the Bible.
Unfortunately, there haven't been enough early Minoan writings uncovered
to help in the deciphering of Linear A. It is hoped that as the extensive city
on Santorini is excavated, more writings will be discovered. Linear B is
related to early Greek, but they don't have a clue as yet what Linear A is
related to.
What impressed me most was that the Minoans, protected by the sea and
engaged in widespread trade on it, did not seem to have to fight to have
influence in the ancient world. They prospered and developed a superior
culture in peace. They had art that inspired the Greeks and plumbing
rivaling our own. (They had flush toilets and showers with hot and cold
running water.) Unlike their successors, they apparently did not relegate
women to an inferior position. Pellegrino makes the connection with their
veneration of the bull and the older
Catalhoyuk culture in nearby Turkey. Perhaps future excavations of the
even older city, below that destroyed by the giant blast, will illuminate that
possibility further.
After the volcano destroyed much of their territory and undermined their
economy, the Mycenaeans, the Indo-European ancestors of the Greeks,
took control. Minoans scattered and some became the "sea people" of the
Bible, the Philistines.
Because they were the enemy of the protagonists in the Bible, the
Philistines have had a bad press for many years. There are some
excavations going on that paint a more realistic picture. That brings me to
another point that struck me in the Pellegrino book. Sodom and Gomorrah
were destroyed; therefore they must have been wicked. From the point of
view of the witnesses, it had to be the wrath of God therefore they had to
have sinned. Pellegrino suspects that natural gas deposits in that oil and
gas rich region may have exploded causing the destruction as described in
the Bible.
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