North vs. South: Why the Southern Location Doesn’t Work

A number of scholars in the past have placed Sodom at various places at or near the southern end of the Dead Sea. William F. Albright proposed that Sodom and Gomorrah might be underwater south of the Dead Sea’s Lisan peninsula.¹ Bryant G. Wood suggests that Bab edh-Dhra and Numeira might be Sodom and Gomorrah,² while R. Thomas Schaub and Walter E. Rast, the excavators of those sites, believe that they may be the visible ruins from which the etiological legend arose.^a3 Still others, like Burton MacDonald, suggest that there were two separate etiological traditions—one favoring the north end of the Dead Sea (Admah/Zeboiim) and one favoring a southern location (Sodom/Gomorrah)—that arose in Israel and Judah, respectively.⁴