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Joining The Dots
I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
Sodom
Abraham
Abraham is generally accepted as the Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, possibly living in the 2nd millennium BC. The name Abraham and its variants has been identified(a) in many cultures, although the existence of Abraham as a real historical person has been disputed.
Nevertheless, there have been a number of efforts to connect Abraham with the religion of ancient India(b) . An Ancient Origins article(f) highlights some of the history of this idea – “A fascinating hypothesis, developed in recent years, proposes a vision of the patriarch Abraham totally different from what eminent biblical studies have until today reported. In 1552, the French linguist, astronomer and cabbalist Guillaume Postel (1510-1581) was among the first to correlate Abraham with Brahma, deducing his hypotheses from the study of the Jewish Zohar. In 1769, Immanuel Kant, similarly to what Voltaire wrote before him, compared Adam and Abraham with the Hindu Adimo and Brahma. In 1799, Joseph Priestley, in his text A Comparison of the Institutions of Moses with those of the Hindus and other Ancient Nations, took up the claims of Voltaire and Kant by re-proposing the possible derivation of Abraham from Brahma.”
The most publicised modern proponent of this view is Gene Matlock who offered his evidence in a paper titled Who was Abraham?(c)
He begins this document with three citations from ancient sources;
“In his History of the Jews, the Jewish scholar and theologian, Flavius Josephus (37-100 A.D.), wrote that the Greek philosopher Aristotle had said: “…These Jews are derived from the Indian philosophers; they are named by the Indians Calani.” (Book I:22.)
Clearchus of Soli wrote, “The Jews descend from the philosophers of India. The philosophers are called in India Calanians and in Syria Jews. The name of their capital is very difficult to pronounce. It is called ‘Jerusalem.'”
“Megasthenes, who was sent to India by Seleucus Nicator, about three hundred years before Christ, and whose accounts from new inquiries are every day acquiring additional credit, says that the Jews ‘were an Indian tribe or sect called Kalani…'” (Anacalypsis, by Godfrey Higgins, Vol. I; p. 400.)”
Matlock believes that India ruled our prehistoric world, including parts of America and furthermore. that Atlantis was located in South-East Mexico at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan [0472]. In an attempt to link his Mexican location with Plato’s description of Atlantis, Matlock contends that the ‘elephants’ mentioned by him were the long-snouted tapirs of Meso-America!(e) Furthermore, he claims that there was a connection between India, the Phoenicians, Atlantis and Mexico.
However, Matlock by way of clarification, added “My readers should know that the ‘Atlantis’ described in this book may not be the same as Plato’s ‘Atlantis’. I’m just proving that there was once a part of the world called ‘Atlantis’ – that a part of Mexico once had the Sanskrit name Atlán, Tlan or Toltán, whose citizens were known as Atlantecas and Atlantl.” He then continues with “if my ‘Atlantis’ is not the real ‘Atlantis’ no one will ever find the one Plato mentioned.”
Matlock’s widely quoted internet article(c) begins with the identification of Abraham and his wife Sarai with the Hindu god Brahma and his wife Saraisvati.
In 2000, Matlock published Jesus and Moses Are Buried in India, Birthplace of Abraham and the Hebrews[0473], in which he develops this theme further.
A book supporting Matlock by the controversial Sri G. Ananda (Gregory Alexander) entitled Brahma: The God of Abraham [1187] was published in 2014. However, the idea is hotly debated on the internet by all interested parties, Christian, Muslim and Hindu.
Roger M. Pearlman tackled the subject of Atlantis in Plato’s Atlantis Legend Resolution: Abraham is the Real Atlas [1596]. Apart from the unexpected identification of Abraham, he also equates Hercules with the biblical Samson and places the Pillars of Hercules at Gaza. Disturbingly, he suggests that Sodom can be identified as Atlantis. Then, for good measure, he maintains that Göbekli Tepe was founded by Noah‘s family!
Jason Colavito had a critical view(d) of the recent (2017) Turkish documentary, supported by the government, which claims that Göbekli Tepe was built by Telah, Abraham’s father, and destroyed by Abraham.
(a) So Many Abrahams by Hiberia (archive.org)
(b) WELCOME TO AUM-SHALOM.COM (archive.org) (link broken)
(c) Abraham – Who Was He? / Viewzone
(e) http://viewzone.com/atlantis22.html
(f) The Other Side of the Flood: Was Abraham of Indian Descent? (ancientoriginsunleashed.com)
Sodom & Gomorrah
Sodom & Gomorrah along with Zoar, Admah and Zeboim constituted the Cities of the Plain referred to in the Bible and believed to have been situated in the Jordan Valley before their obliteration (apart from Zoar) in a catastrophic episode during the 2nd millennium BC. Explanations, religious and rational have been offered to explain the event. My preferred explanation is that an encounter with an extraterrestrial body such as a comet or asteroid caused the devastation(d).
In 2008, a Sumerian clay tablet, known as the ‘Planisphere’ in the British Museum, was, after 150 years, translated and claimed to record an encounter with an asteroid ‘suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah(e). The late Bernhard Beier has written an interesting article on the Atlantisforschung website about this asteroid.
“Interdisciplinary findings by scientists at the University of Bristol in 2008 suggest that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah described in the Old Testament may have been the result of a serious impact event.
The British researchers had studied an Assyrian clay planisphere that has puzzled science for some 150 years and has now been 
identified as the transcript of an eyewitness account of an asteroid impact that is believed to have also destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. This clay tablet had already been discovered by Austen Henry Layard in the ruins of the library of the royal palace at Nineveh in the mid-19th century. It is generally assumed that this specimen dates to around 700 B.C. It is a copy of a much older tablet on which a Sumerian astronomer wrote down his extraordinary observations of the sky. An ‘approaching, white stone ball’ is described there, which is said to have ‘rushed past violently.'”(l)
For most Christians, Sodom in the Bible has been associated with homosexuality, however, this idea does not stand up to any careful scrutiny as explained in a detailed paper by Roger Farnworth, a retired Church of England minister(q).
In October 2015, there were reports that the sites of Sodom and Gomorrah had been finally located(a). November 2018 saw a further claim(b) that Sodom and possibly other the ‘cities of the plain’ had been destroyed by a meteoric airburst, similar to the Tunguska or the more recent Chelyabinsk events. This catastrophe took place north of the Red Sea in what is now Jordan, according to archaeologist Phillip Silvia of Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque(g).
Silvia’s conclusions have been confirmed by Dr Steven Collins, dean of the College of Archaeology at Trinity Southwest University, who has excavated at the Tell el-Hammam site over sixteen seasons(n). He describes his findings in his book co-authored with Dr Latayne C. Scott, Discovering the City of Sodom [1625]. Collins offered the following interesting observation(c), “the Tall el-Hammam site has twenty-five geographical indicators that align it with the description in Genesis. Compare this with something well-known—like Jerusalem—that has only sixteen. Most other sites have only five or six, or less. So, the site has many more geographical ‘signs’ than any other Old Testament city. That’s truly amazing.”
A September 2021 paper(h)(r) outlines interesting new evidence that the destruction of the Tell el-Hammam site was probably caused by a Tunguska-type airburst and further suggests that “about a minute later, 14 miles (22 km) to the west of Tall el-Hammam, winds from the blast hit the biblical city of Jericho. Jericho’s walls came tumbling down and the city burned to the ground.”
Jason Colavito added some further comments on the authors and background to this paper and concluded that “In short: The claim Tell El-Hammam was destroyed by an airburst is disputable. Its identification with Sodom is unproved and dubious, and no one has provided any evidence that an event supposedly transpiring in 1600 BCE was preserved accurately down to the composition of the first written account of Sodom in the surviving Genesis narrative, typically ascribed to the period around 500 BCE or later. If we can’t agree whether the Greeks preserved any real history from the Mycenaeans after only five centuries, we should be very careful in imagining the preservation of stories for two or three times that long with no evidence of intermediary versions.”(j)
The original report appeared on the Nature website and so far over a quarter of a million people have accessed it. This lengthy document can also be read on the cosmictusk.com website(k).
>In 2025, Colavito reported(t) that “the 2021 scientific paper claiming that an airburst caused by a comet destroyed the Biblical city of Sodom (identified with Tall el-Hammam) appears to be heading toward retraction—at least according to Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis supporter George Howard. Writing in a bitter Cosmic Tusk blog post this week, Howard reported that Scientific Reports had taken the decision to retract the controversial and flawed paper. Howard is hopping mad about skeptics challenging the paper.” (u)<<
Sean Bambrough, who is better known in these pages for promoting Tiwanaku as Atlantis has also argued against the Tell el-Hammam site as the site of Sodom, preferring to opt for a Mesopotamian location instead(s).
Andis Kaulins has suggested that the destruction of the cities of the plain was a consequence of the eruption of Thera(p). David Rohl in The Lost Testament [231.180] has dated the destruction of Sodom to circa 1830 BC following a period of unheeded seismic warnings that eventually led to the rupturing of the earth and the violent ejection of deadly sulphur. Rohl also proposed that Sodom is located “a little over 100 metres beneath the surface of the Dead Sea,” a few kilometers south-by-southeast from En-Gedi.
More imaginative commentators, such as Dan Sewell Ward (1940-2019) have proposed(f) that the destruction of S & G was the result of atomic warfare!
In Atlantis and Other Lost Worlds [1535], Frank Joseph claims that Comet Encke in 1198 BC “scores a number of meteoric hits along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and possibly on Atlantis itself, which perishes ‘in a single day and night’, according to Plato. The catastrophe is global, encompassing the destruction of the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah” Joseph bases this on the studies of two Swedish geologists, Thomas B. Larsson and Lars Franzén.
This linkage of Sodom with Atlantis is not new. In the 18th century, Carl Friedrich Baër (1719-1797) who was pastor at the Lutheran chapel in the Swedish Embassy in Paris, was possibly the first to propose a connection between the demise of Atlantis and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
A similar theory was proposed by Roger M. Pearlman in a 2018 booklet [1596]. In this small, difficult-to-read, book the author also suggests, a linkage between the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah and Atlantis, placing Atlantis in the Jordan Valley and equating Abraham with Atlas – “If Atlas, as described in Plato’s work, was based on a historic figure, Abraham alone meets key criteria.”
On a lighter note, in 1948, William Comyns Beaumont published an extraordinary book, Britain – The Key to World History [0088], in which he claimed among other things, that Edinburgh was the original Jerusalem, London was Damascus and rather worryingly, that Bristol was Sodom.
However, more recently, some demented soul has suggested that “Atlantis comprised three centers of civilization. The main center of civilization was a very large island stretching through what is now the area of the Azores near the mid-Atlantic, down almost to off-shore Brazil in South America. The present-day Islands of the Azores are mountain tops of the original. The second was along the foot of the Himalayans, now occupied by Nepal and Northern Punjab. The third was the plains, now called North America.” Then for good measure, they claimed that Sodom had been located in Washington State in the United States and Gomorrah could be found offshore Miami!(i)
In 2021, Mauro Biglino & Cinzia Mele published two books [1907][1908] that link a number of biblical episodes with locations in the Baltic region. One was the identification of two places in Finland as Sodom and Gomorrah, which was followed by dozens of similar geographical ‘coincidences’(m)!
It was recently (April 2022) written(o) that “What everyone agrees on is that something unusual happened at Tall el-Hammam, an ancient settlement near the Dead Sea.” Unfortunately, that is as far as any agreement has gone. Even the date for the disaster is hotly disputed.
“What was unlike destruction caused by earthquakes or warfare were pottery shards with their outer surfaces melted into glass, some bubbled as if boiled, “bubbled” and melted building brick and plaster, suggesting some unknown high-temperature event. Objects of daily life, carbonized pieces of wooden beams, charred grain, bones and limestone cobbles were burned to a chalklike consistency.”
“But last month Steven Jaret, a postdoctoral fellow at the American Museum of Natural History, and R. Scott Harris, a space scientist at Atlanta’s Fernbank Science Center, challenged these conclusions of the 21 scholars, also in Nature, basically hinting that Collins’ group confused run-of-the-mill smelting and pottery processes with heat from an airburst.”
I think the mystery of S & G will have a longer run than The Mousetrap in London!
See: Köfels Impact
(c) More Evidence Confirms Tall el-Hammam as Sodom – Assist News (archive.org)
(d) https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/12/28/sodom-and-gomorrah/
(e) https://phys.org/news/2008-03-cuneiform-clay-tablet.html
(f) http://www.halexandria.org/dward194.htm
(g) <Sodom annihilated by meteoritic blast> (q-mag.org)
(i) Atlantis | Island of Atlantis | Sodom and Gomorrah | Black Masters of Altlantis (archive.org)
(j) Researchers Offer New Evidence in Ongoing Effort to Prove Bible’s Sodom Story Real – JASON COLAVITO
(k) ) https://web.archive.org/web/20241122113018/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3
(n) https://www.scribd.com/document/549801749/Beyond-Today-Magazine-January-February-2022
(o) https://religionnews.com/2022/04/20/after-scientists-debate-meltdown-of-biblical-sodom/
(p) https://web.archive.org/web/20210411010543/http:/www.lexiline.com/lexiline/lexi58.htm
(q) https://rogerfarnworth.com/2023/02/19/sodom/
(r) https articles/s41598-021-97778-3://www.nature.com/ *
(s) https://iwillnotbeassimilated.blogspot.com/2021/09/sodom-found-in-mesopotamian-records.html
(t) Vol. 26 • Issue 16 • April 13, 2025 *
Pearlman, Roger, M
Roger M. Pearlman is a Torah scholar, who has written extensively on the reconciliation of the Torah with science. A number of his papers can be found on the academia.edu website.
He has also tackled the subject of Atlantis in Plato’s Atlantis Legend Resolution: Abraham is the Real Atlas (1596). Apart from the unexpected identification of Abraham, he also equates Hercules with the biblical Samson and places the Pillars of Hercules at Gaza! Disturbingly, he suggests that Sodom can be identified as Atlantis. Then, for good measure, he maintains that Gobekli Tape was founded by Noah’s family!
>On the subject of Abraham, I note that Gene Matlock claimed that “there are certain striking similarities between the Hindu god Brahma and his consort Saraisvati and the Jewish Abraham and Sarai that are more than mere coincidences.”(b)<
Perhaps I should mention that the superficial resemblance of Samson to Heracles was noted as far back as the time of Eusebius (Circa 300 AD)(a).
(a) https://www.maverickscience.com/wp-content/uploads/samson.pdf
(b) http://www.viewzone.com/abraham.html *
Bible
The Bible offers no direct reference to Atlantis under that name, but this is not to be seen as proof of its non-existence, when you consider that in spite of the fact that the Hebrews were in Egypt for hundreds of years, the Bible does not mention the pyramids either, and they most certainly did then and still do, exist.
The Bible has been invoked as a justification for everything from war to slavery. It has been one of the most divisive books ever, having been instrumental in the creation of hundreds, if not thousands, of competing Christian sects over the last two millennia. It is assumed that any theory, religious or secular, that can be shown to have a biblical foundation, will automatically have enhanced credibility.
Jean De Serres, the 16th-century historian, was probably the first to link Atlantis with the Bible, when he wrote that Atlantis had been located in the Holy Land. Lewis Spence[259.33] accused Huet, Borchart and Vossius, in the 16th and 17th centuries, of using ‘ingenious misreading of the Pentateuch’, to claim that the Platonic story of Atlantis was, in reality, a version of patriarchal history. In a similar vein, in 1726 a French lawyer, Claude Olivier, wrote of his conviction, that the ten tribes of Israel, were to be equated with the ten kingdoms of Atlantis.
The Book of Genesis in particular has inspired speculation regarding a possible link between the Bible and the Atlantis narrative. Ignatius Donnelly in his seminal Atlantis: The Antidiluvian World, devoted Chapter Six to ‘demonstrating’ that Genesis held a history of Atlantis(o).
Therefore, I advise that any new scriptural interpretation must be treated with extreme caution. With that in mind, I mention that an American researcher, J. D. Brady, who claims to be a scriptural scholar and as such has identified Atlantis, drawing on chapters 26-28 of Ezekiel. He refers to the Atlanteans as Tyrrhenians and names their leader as Satan! He claims that the Tyre referred to in these chapters, was an island named Tyrus that Plato knew as Atlantis. He offers a range of data to suggest that this Tyrus was not the Tyre we know today, located in Lebanon. Brady claims, with great certainty, that the remains of Atlantis are to be found in the Bay of Troy! A 2014 book[1016] by David Hershiser, Beyond the Pillars of Hercules, has taken up this idea, that the reference in Ezekiel was concerned with Atlantis.
Not content with identifying Atlantis, Brady also claims to know the location of the Ark of the Covenant, saying that “It is currently secreted in an underground treasure crypt on Lemnos Island.”(b)
H.S. Bellamy, the Austrian researcher, also produced a volume[097], The Book of Revelation is History, devoted to demonstrating that the last book of the New Testament, is a coded description of the catastrophes that accompanied the capture of our Moon! He claimed that the reference to the ten horns is an allusion to the ten Atlantean kings. He also interpreted the Book of Jeremiah I & II, as well as Ezekiel, as containing references to aspects of the Atlantis story. Earlier, Kurt Bilau had also been seduced by the theories of Hans Hörbiger and also like Bellamy, endeavoured to use the Book of Revelations to support this belief.
However, R Cedric Leonard does offer(a) an interesting comparison of a passage in the Old Testament with the classical writers:
“And it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose…
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same mighty men (heroes) which were of old, men of renown.” (Genesis 6:1-2,4)
This passage has been frequently invoked to support the daft idea that extraterrestrial visitors had intercourse with human females, a contention that was debunked by Klaus Aschenbrenner some years ago(l).
“The mixture between gods and men, which is reported in the sixth chapter of Genesis of the Old Testament, is to be interpreted in a similar way: “Then the children of God looked after the daughters of men, how beautiful they were, and took them for wives, which they wanted … and begot them children.”
The fact that offspring resulted from this union clearly speaks for the earthly origin of those Divine beings. There is a genetic barrier that makes it difficult for similar species to mix. For example, if one tries to cross closely related animal species, such as horses and donkeys, the stallions of the resulting mixed forms of mule or hinny are sterile. We must therefore not expect any offspring from a connection between humans and higher extraterrestrial beings because of the certainly greater genetic differences.”
Leonard points out that this same passage in Genesis coincides with Plato’s history of the Atlanteans and highlights that Hesiod referred to the Titans, of which Atlas was one, as the ‘sons of heaven’.
Leonard also offers a more rational translation of Job 26:5-6 that strengthens this view that the Atlanteans and Titans are identical:
“The Titans tremble beneath the waters and the inhabitants thereof. Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering”.
2011 saw the publication of Atlantis: The Eyewitnesses[749] by Walter Parks, in which he also quoted extensively from the Book of Job, having claimed that it was written in 9619 BC and contained an eyewitness account of the catastrophe that destroyed Atlantis!
In 2007, David Stewart Jnr., a prominent Mormon writer, offered support for Flem-Ath’s ‘Atlantis in Antarctica’ theory in an article on his scripture history website(p).
Thorwald C. Franke has reviewed a range of theories that have sought to associate various aspects of Bible history with elements of the Atlantis story. Most are rather speculative, but Franke concludes(d) that “the Bible should not be underestimated: There could indeed be indirect hints to Plato’s Atlantis in the Bible!” Furthermore, he also suggested that “A basic error is to consider the Bible as a source of information on the most ancient times of humankind. In truth, vast parts of the Bible were written only very late (since the 6th century BC). For the question of Atlantis, this is much too late!”
The biblical references to Tarshish are also used by those who equate it with Tartessos and in turn, identify it as Atlantis. The location of Tarshish is a highly contentious issue, with scholars unable to arrive at any clear consensus. However, there is some agreement that Tartessos had been located in Southern Spain. Some proponents of that idea not only consider Tarshish identical to Tartessos, but to Atlantis as well. Richard Freund is a proponent of a Spanish Tartessos, which he also identifies with Atlantis and of course with the biblical Tarshish. This Bible connection was taken further in James Cameron’s 2017 (a) documentary, Atlantis Rising, which shows Simcha Jacobovici also linking Tarshish with Atlantis(h) and offering as ‘evidence’ for a linkage between Atlantis and the Jewish Temple, the design of the Hebrew menorah(g), which he claims is a representation of one half the concentric rings of Plato’s city of Atlantis. This foolish idea is not new, as it has already been suggested by Prof. Yahya Ababni(f). Georgeos Diaz-Montexano has also considered this as a possibility(k).
Turning the tables on the idea of the Bible supporting the story of Atlantis, Marjorie Braymer[198.30] wrote that Cosmas Indicopleustes (6th cent. AD) was the first to use Plato’s Atlantis to support the veracity of the Bible.
Another line of investigation might be the suggested parallels between Greek mythology and Genesis(c). A 2023 paper by Neil Godfrey offers some comments on Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts [2066] by Russell E. Gmirkin, supporting the idea that the creation of the world and the story of the first humans in Genesis, both draw directly on Plato’s famous account of the origins of the universe, mortal life and evil containing equal parts science, theology and myth(n).
A paper on the Academia.edu website(e) by M. De Rosa, argues that Atlantis was the ‘Beast’ in the Book Of Revelation!
More recently, a Dutch commentator, Leon Elshout, has also written extensively in Dutch and English, linking Atlantis and Babylon(i) with details in the Book of Revelation. He claims, “that there is a dualistic principle behind Atlantis, expressed by the twin pillars of Hercules and the twin kings, so that Atlantis was mirrored in time and space from Babylon AND Jerusalem.” He also claims that chapters 2 & 7 of the Book of Daniel offer mirror images of the Athenian-Atlantean conflict(m). Among various odd ideas expressed by him, is the suggestion that Tarshish was in Britain(j).
Other events and people in the Bible that have been associated with aspects of the Atlantis story include the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Flood, Abraham, the Exodus, Amalekites, Sodom and the Ark of the Covenant.
(a) See: https://web.archive.org/web/20170607013948/https://www.atlantisquest.com:80/Myth.html
(b) The Ark of the Covenant – on the trail again! – Ritmeyer Archaeological Design (archive.org)
(c) https://njbiblescience.org/presentations/Greek%20Mythology%20and%20Genesis.pdf
(d) https://www.atlantis-scout.de/atlantis_bible.htm
(e) (DOC) ATLANTIS AS THE BEAST IN REVELATIONS | Michael Joseph DeRosa – Academia.edu (archive.org)
(f) https://mosestablet.info/en/menorah-tablet.html
(g) https://www.wnd.com/2017/02/ocean-explorer-atlantis-found-and-linked-to-jewish-temple/
(h) Lost City of Atlantis And Its Incredible Connection to Jewish Temple (archive.org)
(j) (8) Tarshish as Great Britain and the paradox with Atlantis – Rood Goud van Parvaïm (archive.org)
(l) They didn’t come from other stars – Atlantisforschung.de (atlantisforschung-de.translate.goog)
(m) 1903.0463v1.pdf (vixra.org)
(o) https://sacred-texts.com/atl/ataw/ataw306.htm
(p) http://scripturehistory.com/atlantisinantarctica.php (link broken)