Did they actually find the real biblical city of Sodom?

In 1996, Dr. Steven Collins was leading a Bible study tour of Israel and Jordan. The next morning he was scheduled to take his group to the traditional sites of Sodom and Gomorrah in the south. That night he read Genesis 13 through 19 four times. By the end of it he had written two large question marks on his itinerary.Nothing in the text pointed south.

Everything pointed north and east of the Dead Sea.What followed was 16 seasons of excavation at Tal al-Hammam — the largest Bronze Age city in the entire southern Levant — and one of the most compelling and controversial cases in the history of biblical archaeology.

Dr. Mark Chavalas sits down with Dr. Steven Collins — Dean of the VIU School of Archaeology and the lead excavator at Tal al-Hammam — to walk through the full case. The biblical geography. The site itself. The destruction event. And what 21 scientific proxies found in a single destruction layer tell us about what actually happened to this city roughly 3,700 years ago.

In this episode:

- Why Genesis 13 places Sodom northeast of the Dead Sea — not south

- Why every city in the region survived the Intermediate Bronze Age except this one

- The gate system, the palace, the temple — what 16 seasons of excavation actually found

- The destruction layer — violently churned debris unlike anything else in the archaeological record

- The cosmic airburst argument

- The Egyptian execration texts and the name Shutu

- The chronology question — why the biblical patriarchal lifespans may not be literal numbers What it means for the rest of Scripture if the most doubted story in the Bible turns out to be historically grounded

The debate around the site's identification as Sodom remains active and contested in the scholarly community. This episode presents Dr. Collins' case as he makes it — a serious scholar's argument built on decades of fieldwork, not settled consensus.

📚 Sources & Scholars Mentioned

Stephen Collins & Latayne Scott — Discovering the City of Sodom (Howard Books, 2013)

Barry Beitzel — Lexham Geographic Commentary — articles on northern and southern Sodom

Anson Rainey — The Sacred Bridge — historical geography including the Shutu identification

Craig Olson — How Old Was Father Abraham?

Lane Ritmeyer — chief architect and architectural reconstruction specialist at Tal al-Hammam

Gary Byers — assistant director at Tal al-Hammam, now leads TSU College of Archaeology

One of the strangest passages in the entire Bible - the Goring Ox laws of Exodus 21.

It sounds like the most irrelevant law in all of Scripture — until you realize it's almost word-for-word identical to laws found in Mesopotamia hundreds of years older than Moses.

Dr. Mark Chavalas traces the Goring Ox laws of Exodus 21 through Sumerian scribal texts, the Laws of Eshnunna, the Code of Hammurabi, and a real ancient court case from Nuzi — drawing on J.J. Finkelstein's landmark study, The Ox That Gored. The wording is nearly identical across cultures. But one detail changes everything about why the Bible treats this law so differently.

In this episode:

- Why Goring Ox laws show up almost everywhere in the ancient Near East

- The Eshnunna parallel that reads almost like a direct copy of Exodus 21

- Why Mesopotamian law never says what happens to the ox — but the Bible insists it must be stoned

- Why the Israelites were forbidden from eating its meat

- J.J. Finkelstein's argument...

- What this reveals about a radically different view of human life and dignity

This is one of the clearest examples in the entire Old Testament of laws that look almost identical to their ancient neighbors on the surface — and turn out to be saying something completely different underneath.

📚 Sources & Scholars Mentioned

⬩ J.J. Finkelstein — The Ox That Gored (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1981)

⬩Martha Roth — Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor

⬩Bridget Lyons — translator, Judicial Decisions in the Ancient Near East

⬩Jacob Milgrom — Leviticus commentary (Anchor Bible series)

⬩Harry Hoffner — "Incest, Sodomy, and Bestiality in the Ancient Near East" (in honor of Cyrus Gordon, 1973)

Daniel 12:1-3 is widely treated as the Bible's clearest Old Testament prophecy of bodily resurrection. Dr. John Walton says that reading might be exactly backwards.

In this episode, Dr. Mark Chavalas sits down with Dr. John Walton — Old Testament & ANE Scholar — to walk through his and Dr. Aubrey Buster's reexamination of Daniel 12.

Their argument: "the wise will warn like the stars" isn't about glowing bodies in heaven. It's about ancient constellations as personified figures whose stories were told and retold — and "eternal life" may mean living on in story rather than rising in a new body.

Dr. John Walton:

⬩Old Testament Scholar

⬩PhD — Hebrew Union College

⬩Professor of Old Testament — Moody Bible Institute (~20 years)

⬩Professor Emeritus of Old Testament — Wheaton College

⬩Author of The Lost World series & many others

⬩Known for the framework: "The Bible is written for us, but not to us"

In the episode:

- Why the standard translation "the wise will shine" should actually read "the wise will warn"

- How ancient constellations functioned as personified figures who warned or instructed through their stories

- Why nobody — Jewish or Christian — connected Daniel 12 to bodily resurrection until roughly 500 years after it was written

- How this fits into the larger argument of the book of Daniel about empires, the Kingdom of God, and the hope of the martyred

📚 Books by John Walton Mentioned:

👉 Wisdom for Faithful Reading: Principles and Practices for Old Testament Interpretation

👉 The Lost World of the Torah (with J. Harvey Walton)

👉 John Walton & Aubrey Buster — Daniel commentary, Volume 1 (published) and Volume 2 (forthcoming)

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#BuriedBiblePodcast #JohnWalton #Daniel12 #OldTestament #BiblicalStudies #LostWorldOfTheTorah #BiblicalScholarship #AncientNearEast #Resurrection #biblehistory

Most Christians read Old Testament law like a rulebook. A list of dos and don'ts handed down from God to keep people in line. Some laws seem reasonable. Others seem completely bizarre. And the whole thing feels like a burden nobody fully understands. But that is not what it is. Not even close.

In this episode, Dr. Mark Chavalas walks through a comprehensive overview of biblical law — where it is found, how it actually functions, why it looks the way it does, and what the ancient Near Eastern context reveals about what God was actually doing when he gave Israel these laws. The answer reframes everything.

In this episode:

- The three categories of biblical law

- Why the biblical laws are found scattered across Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy in what looks like random disorder — and why that disorder is actually intentional

- The treaty framework behind the entire Mosaic law

- Why the 10 Commandments are the summary of everything — and whether their content is actually unique to Israel

- The Mishpatim — the verdicts of Exodus 21 and 22 — and why calling them laws fundamentally misrepresents what they were for.

- How the laws of Deuteronomy update and expand the laws of Exodus for a different generation in a different context — and why the Bible keeps both versions

📚 Sources and Scholars Mentioned:

⬩ Bruce Wells, ed. — The Cambridge Companion to Law in the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge University Press)

⬩ Brent Strawn, ed. — The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Law (Oxford University Press, 2 volumes)

⬩ Bernard Jackson — Wisdom Laws: A Study of the Mishpatim of Exodus 21 and 22

⬩ Dylan Johnson- Sovereign Authority and the Elaboration of Law in the Bible and the Ancient Near East

⬩ Raymond Westbrook and Bruce Wells — Everyday Law in Biblical Israel: An Introduction

⬩ Samuel Greengus — Laws in the Bible and in Early Rabbinic Collections (Cascade Books, 2011) — "Laws in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament" — Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion (2019)

⬩ Roy Gane — Old Testament Law for Christians: Original Context and Enduring Application

⬩ Richard Averbeck — Old Testament Law for the Life of the Church: Reading the Torah in the Light of Christ

Key passages discussed:

- Deuteronomy 30:11-14 — the law is not in the heavens, it is close to you

- Deuteronomy 4:6-8 — Israel's laws as wisdom in the eyes of the surrounding nations

- Deuteronomy 11:1 — the clustering of law terms as a totality

- Genesis 26 — Abraham obeying God's laws before the Mosaic law existed

- Nehemiah 9:13 — the multiple terms for law used together

- Numbers 27 and 36 — the daughters of Zelophehad as legal precedent and amendment

- Numbers 5 — the Sotah, the woman suspected of adultery

- Exodus 20:22 — the transition from the 10 Commandments into the Mishpatim

- Genesis 38 — Judah and Tamar understood only in ancient Near Eastern legal context

Was the Exodus real?

Most people assume there is no archaeological evidence for it. An Egyptologist who was born and raised in Egypt and has spent his life excavating the Nile Delta says otherwise.

Dr. Mark Chavalas sits down with Dr. Jim Hoffmeier — renowned Egyptologist and biblical scholar — to walk through the archaeological and historical case for the Exodus. Drawing from decades of archaeological research, fieldwork in Egypt and Sinai, and his newly updated book Israel in and out of Egypt, Hoffmeier explains why Egypt remains essential for understanding the Bible and how archaeology helps reconstruct the historical setting behind the Exodus narrative.

In this episode:

- Dr. Hoffmeier's bold claim — Exodus is the most documented event in ancient Near Eastern history

- Why the absence of Egyptian papyrus evidence for Moses means nothing

- The geographical and archaeological case for the Exodus route

- The Reed Sea versus the Red Sea

- Why Mount Sinai is almost certainly not in Arabia

- The plagues through an Egyptian worldview

Dr. Jim Hoffmeier

- Egyptologist | Old Testament Scholar | Professor of Archaeology & Old Testament at Wheaton College (1980–1999) | Professor of Old Testament & Ancient Near Eastern History and Archaeology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (1999–2019)- MA & PhD — University of Toronto, Egyptology- Trained under Donald Redford & Ronald Williams

- Author of 20 books and 100+ articles

- Appeared as consultant on Discovery Channel, History Channel, National Geographic, and the Learning Channel

📚 Books by Dr. Jim Hoffmeier

- Israel In and Out of Egypt (Hendrickson, 2025) — [ https://a.co/d/095uBbSN ]

- Israel in Egypt (Oxford University Press, 1997) — [ https://a.co/d/05rExsdp ]

- Ancient Israel in Sinai — [ https://a.co/d/05TnGi8y ]- Akhenaten — [ https://a.co/d/02yK4YGC ]

🌍 Egypt Tours with Dr. Jim Hoffmeier

- General Egypt Tour (Cairo, Luxor, Valley of the Kings, Karnak)

- In the Footsteps of Moses Tour (Cairo, Delta, Sinai)Contact through

Other Scholars Referenced

- Kenneth Kitchen — search his works on Egypt and the Old Testament- Donald Redford — University of Toronto, A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph (1970)

- Ronald Williams — University of Toronto, Hebrew & Egyptian wisdom literature

- Alan Millard — worked to bring Egyptology and biblical studies together

- Manfred Bietak — Tel el-Dab'a excavation publications

- Sir Alan Gardiner — Oxford professor - Egyptology - Bill Dever — biblical archaeology — separating the discipline from biblical studies

- Steven Mosier — geologist from Wheaton College

If you've ever wondered whether archaeology supports the Exodus account, this conversation is an excellent introduction to the evidence, the challenges, and the ongoing debate.

#BuriedBible #Exodus #Archaeology #BibleHistory #Moses #Egyptology #JimHoffmeier #BiblicalArchaeology

Was the Bible's legal tradition already present in Canaan before Moses? The answer is far more fascinating than you think.

Dr. Mark Chavalas traces the ancient scribal tradition that carried Mesopotamian law codes westward through Syria and into Canaan itself — and in 2010, archaeologists found the proof. Cuneiform law tablets discovered at Hazor, written on local clay, show that Canaanite scribes were actively transmitting Hammurabi-style legal collections right at the doorstep of Israel.

This isn't Moses copying Hammurabi. It's something far more complex — and far more interesting.

In this episode:

- How the cuneiform scribal tradition spread from Mesopotamia through Syria into Canaan

- The 2010 Hazor discovery — ancient law tablets found in Israel that look like Hammurabi

- Why the biblical scribes weren't copying Hammurabi, but drawing from a shared legal world

- Samuel Greengus's research linking ancient Babylonian law to the Mishnah

- Why biblical law is unique not in its content but in its context

- What these discoveries mean for divine inspiration, and why they shouldn't shake your faith

📚 Sources & Scholars Mentioned

⬩ Raymond Westbrook — "Biblical and Cuneiform Law Codes" (Revue Biblique, 1985)

⬩Victor Hurowitz et al. — "Two Fragments of a Traditional Cuneiform Law Collection" (Israel Exploration Journal 62, 2012)

⬩ Samuel Greengus — "Filling Gaps: Laws Found in Babylonia and in the Mishnah but Absent in the Hebrew Bible" (Maarav)

⬩Samuel Greengus — Laws in the Bible and Early Rabbinic Collections

⬩Roy Gane — Old Testament Law for Christians: Original Context and Enduring Application

⬩Richard Averbeck — Old Testament Law for the Life of the Church: Reading the Torah in the Light of Christ

This episode reframes everything. Once you understand that Israel was not living in a legal vacuum — and that the scribal tradition connecting Mesopotamia to the Bible ran right through Canaan — the biblical laws stop looking like borrowed content and start looking like a deliberate, covenantal declaration of allegiance to the one true God.

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Did Moses copy Hammurabi Code? The answer is far more fascinating than you think.

Dr. Mark Chavalas dives deep into the Code of Hammurabi — the most famous ancient law collection ever discovered. But here's what most people don't know: it probably wasn't a "code" at all. We talk about what the Hammurabi code actually was, how it functioned in the ancient world, and why its similarities to biblical law have sparked debate for over a century.

In this episode:

- What the Code of Hammurabi actually is

- The stunning similarities between Hammurabi's laws and biblical law

- The role of scribes and legal traditions in the ancient world

- How this changes the way Christians should read Old Testament law

📚 Sources & Scholars Mentioned

- Jean Bottéro — Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods

- Martha T. Roth — Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor- Pamela Barmash — The Laws of Hammurabi: At the Confluence of Royal and Scribal Traditions

- Raymond Westbrook — Ancient Near Eastern legal theory and biblical law studies- Samuel Greengus — “Filling Gaps: Laws Found in Babylonia and in the Mishnah but Absent in the Hebrew Bible” (Maarav, 1991)

- John Walton — The Lost World of the Torah- Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD) — entries on judges, verdicts, and legal terminology

- Old Babylonian legal texts and letters related to the Code of Hammurabi

- Comparative studies on biblical law, Mesopotamian law collections, and scribal traditions

This episode will transform the way you look at biblical law. Rather than treating these laws as simple “dos and don’ts,” this episode uncovers how ancient people viewed law, justice, wisdom, kingship, and cosmic order.

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Ancient Near Eastern Law Codes as Background to Biblical Law

Dr. Mark Chavalas argues that the biblical legal tradition didn't emerge in a vacuum — it fits squarely within a broader ancient Near Eastern scribal and legal tradition. Understanding what these law codes actually were and how they functioned helps reframe how we should read the biblical law.

Law Codes Covered:

1. Ur-Namma (~2100 BC) — oldest extant code, written in Sumerian

2. Lipit-Ishtar (~1930 BC) — also Sumerian, 50 laws from the city of Isin.

3. Laws of Eshnunna — written in Akkadian, roughly contemporary with Hammurabi but earlier.

4. Code of Hammurabi (~1750 BC) — the most complete, 280 laws (220 fully intact). Found in Susa

5. Neo-Babylonian Laws — 1,000 years after Hammurabi

6. Middle Assyrian Laws (~1300–1075 BC) — written in Assyrian Akkadian

7. Hittite Laws (~1400–1200 BC) — 200 laws in Indo-European Hittite

Resources Mentioned:

- Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor — Martha Roth

- A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law — Raymond Westbrook (ed.)

- Early Ancient Near Eastern Law — Klaus Wilke

- The Laws of Hammurabi — Pamela Barmash- Mesopotamia — Jean Bottéro

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