Also, I don't think they've found the real "Sodom and Gomorrah" yet - that account is a dead-on description of a Vesuvian-style eruption... The most recent candidates for the notorious twin cities of sin, Tall el-Hammam, doesn't have deposits of volcanic ash, as far as I can tell by the archaeological descriptions that I've skimmed; neither do the other candidates: Bab Edh-Dhra (first discovered in 1924), Numeira (found by Rast and Schaub in 1973), Safi, Feifa and Khanazir...
Another interesting coincidence is the similarity between the 'sign of god' that led the Isra-EL-ites out of Egypt, in Exodus 13: 21-22 and Exodus 14: 19-20: "The Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to lead them on their way during the day and in a pillar of fire to give them light at night, so that they could travel day or night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night never left its place in front of the people..." "The pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and stood behind them. It came between the Egyptian and Isra-EL-ite forces. The cloud was there [in] the darkness, yet it lit up the night..."
(Which indicates that, as they traveled, the geographical landmark - probably an erupting volcano, as I will show in a moment - came to be situated behind them as they progressed northward...)
Here's a description [from the Time/Life book "Volcano", part of their "Planet Earth" series printed in 1982, pages 33 - 37...], the aftermath of the eruptions of Mount Pelee' on the island of Martinique, beginning with the eruption on May 8th, 1902 that produced a pyroclastic flow that killed 30,000+ people in the capital city of St. Pierre: [the team of volcanologists present after the first eruption were fortunate to observe another one on July 9th, 1902...] "Anderson and Flett were offshore, cruising past St. Pierre in a sailboat (geologist Jaggar was...in Fort-de-france, 12 miles away) when in the gathering darkness they saw a dull red glow suffuse the summit of Pelee. The glow became brighter and brighter until the whole scene was brightly illuminated, and the sailors cried in terror: "The mountain bursts!" The men watched in awe as an immense red-hot 'avalanche', as they termed it, swept down the flanks of Pelee and across the ruins of St. Pierre to the sea...Hardly had the crimson glow of the 'avalanche' faded than a cloud shaped itself against the starlit sky...It rushed foward over the water...boiling and changing its form every instant...When the cloud was about a mile from the scientists, they could see...the cloud rose from the sea and passed directly over the heads of the men. Stones, some as large as chestnuts, rained down on the boat, then came a shower of smaller, pea-shaped pellets, and finally a downpour of dry, gray ashes. The air smelled faintly of sulphuric acid..." (Which is also strongly reminiscent of the "Sodom and Gomorrah" story, again...)
But back to the description of the "pillar of cloud by day, pillar of fire by night"... "Hovey and several others had observed...what they believed to be a growing cone of volcanic debris inside the crater...by May 31...[estimated height of] 1,440 feet..."
"By June 27, the cone had risen above the rim of the crater. On July 6, Jaggar reported seeing the cone, whose summit sported a large monolith shaped like a shark's dorsal fin...The dome's famous dorsal fin...was destroyed in the July 9 blast observed by Anderson and Flett. But in mid-October...another gigantic shaft of solidified lava rising from the dome in the crater of L'Etang Sec...The spine...was 350 to 500 feet thick at its base...At night, the spine glowed with a tracery of red incandescent lines, and frequently a luminous spot could be seen at its tip...it rose at such an astonishing rate, often as much as 50 feet a day, that it continued to grow taller. By the end of November, the "Tower of Pelee" had reached a height of 800 feet, and after seven months it soared 1,090 feet above the crater's mouth. At its maximum height it was twice as tall as the Washington Monument and of an immensity equal in volume to the Great Pyramid of Egypt....
...by September 1903 it had collapsed into a mass of rubble..."
Can you see what this must have looked like from a distance of 10 - 20 miles? A "pillar" of smoke - "cloud" by day, and by night??? The glowing, 1,000-foot-tall "spine"... "Pillar of fire by night"... DEFINITELY a volcano!! If you paid any attention to the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens, you will recall that its appearance BY DAY was that of a "pillar of smoke/cloud"...
So much for the 'scientific' understanding of the 'god' of the bible - that's THREE scriptures that strongly indicate, if not CLEARLY describe - in primitive, ignorant tribesmens' terms - volcanic eruptions!
Zid
