Page:Buried cities and Bible countries (1891).djvu/114

 course of formation over the central portions of the Dead Sea."

[Authorities and Sources:—"Memoirs of the Survey: Geology" Dr E. Hull. Smith's "Dict. of Bible." "Tent-Work in Palestine." By Major Conder, R.E.]

There is now a general consent that Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim were situated north of the Dead Sea, in the Kikkar or Plain of the Jordan. There are old maps which represent these cities as situated at the bottom of the Dead Sea waters, and yet enveloped in flames! Popular ignorance imagines that the bitumen which rises to the surface of the waters is a relic of the agency which effected the destruction. And until recently even the best scholars supposed the cities to lie beneath the shallow part of the sea, south of the Lisan peninsula. All such theories are disproved by the geological investigation, which shows that the Dead Sea is much older than any date which can be assigned to the destruction of the cities, and that the surface of the water has been constantly diminishing in area and sinking to lower levels.

There is nothing in the Bible which should lead us to look for the cities south of the Dead Sea, where the Crusaders placed them, or east of it, or anywhere but north and in the Kikkar. When Abraham and Lot talked together concerning the disputes between their herdsmen, and decided to go different ways with their flocks, "Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld all the Plain of the Jordan, that it was well watered until thou comest unto Zoar." It was clearly shown by Sir George Grove, in Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," that the Plain of the Jordan here spoken of is not the Arabah, in which the Dead Sea reposes, but the Kikkar or "Round" of country north of it. The