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10 Works 125 Membros 6 Críticas

Obras por Steven Collins

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Conhecimento Comum

Sexo
male
Nacionalidade
USA

Membros

Críticas

Sacrescape isn't a word. Argh.

Other than that, fine work!
 
Assinalado
Apocalypse612 | 4 outras críticas | Jan 20, 2024 |
The Genesis 18-19 account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah has become part of the Western cultural zeitgeist and its location a mystery ever since the beginning of Biblical archaeology. Discovering the City of Sodom: The Fascinating, True Account of the Old Testament’s Most Infamous City by Steven Collins and Latayne C. Scott goes into the decade-long excavation of a site in Jordan that Collins purposes the evidence points towards it being the location of the destroyed city.

Much of the book is written by Collins who first explores the everything around the account of Sodom in Genesis and denoting that it must be read “authentically” not “literally”. One of Collin’s most important points early on is looking at the actual Hebrew wording of the text and what important words actually mean, this factors into where Collins believes the Bible locates the city of Sodom not at what is the bottom of the southern Dead Sea or on its southeast coast but on the eastern side of the Jordan River opposite Jericho. After laying out what the Bible actually says about Sodom and the historical era the Bible describes it in—the Middle Bronze Age—Collins then goes into the what his numerous archaeological excavations at Tall el-Hammam have made him believes he’s found Biblical Sodom including the fact that after the large city that was located there was destroyed in the Middle Bronze Age, nothing was rebuilt there until the Iron Age around 700 years later. Scott’s contribution was related Collin’s professional journey giving tours that located Sodom at the traditional southern Dead Sea location to his letting reading of the Bible lead him to look for a large prosperous city in the Jordan plain across from Jericho and the discoveries made at el-Hammam that made Collins realize he had found the city of Sodom.

Both Collins and Scott did a very good job with their respective parts of the book with Collins focused on the academic side and Scott doing a biographical look at Collins’ personal journey over several decades when connected to this subject. The biggest positive of the book is Collins’ balance of keeping to the authenticity of the Biblical account and dealing with facts found in the dirt, not only at el-Hammam but across the Levant. The biggest issue with the book is the same as another book by Collins’ and that is layout as the maps were placed in the back of the book and not nearer to the relevant text where they would be helpful. However, given that there were two authors the change of font style denoting when each author was writing was a very choice.

Discovering the City of Sodom is an enlightening read with Collins’ engaging writing that made what could have been dry academic details lively while Scott’s biographical sketches give a more personal touch. While the layout of the book is a bit of a mixed bag with differing fonts denoting which author was writing is a positive, the placing of maps in the back of the book instead of near the text that they illustrated is a negative. Whether you agree with Collins’ archaeological discoveries and research, this is a informative read about the era of the Middle Bronze Age in the Levant.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
mattries37315 | 4 outras críticas | Apr 18, 2020 |
The debate on if the Bible is historical comes down to one event for proponents on both sides, The Exodus, not only if it happened but when. Let My People Go!: Using Historical Synchronisms to Identify the Pharaoh of the Exodus by Steven Collins combines what the Biblical text says with the historical record that Egyptologists and other historians have pieced together from numerous ancient sources in search of the man who Moses confronted.

Collins begins by examining the variables of the problem at hand from the actual Biblical account of events as well as the geographic extent of place names used, the propagandic nature of Pharaonic Egypt, and the on-the-ground facts that modern Egyptologists have constructed to get at actual history behind the propaganda. Using the Biblical account of the events from the time of Joseph to Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, in particular the consequences and impact of the Exodus events on Egypt, Collins looked to see if they matched up with Egyptian and wider Middle Eastern history at anytime to see if the Bible was historically accurate. Using this “synchronism” method, Collins pinpointed the 18th Dynasty’s rise as an anti-Semitic, due to the foreign Hyksos, empire that reached the Euphrates to it’s suddenly rapid fall internationally with domestic upheaval as seen with Akhenaten to the era that matched most of the points of reference. Collins then eliminated one-by-one the established candidates of the 18th Dynasty, as well as Ramesses II given popular culture, that Biblical scholars and mainstream Egyptologists put forward as the Pharaoh of the Exodus then showed how the “synchronism” timeline didn’t match the historical timeline. Collins ends the main body of the text with establishing Thutmose IV, the last Pharaoh of the powerful Thutmosid empire before it’s dramatic decline under his son Amenhotep III and grandson Akhenaten, as fitting perfectly the events of the Bible to go with the historical record.

In roughly 142 pages filled with text as well as tables and charts, Collins puts forward his case for the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Overall the scholarly portion of this monograph is very good for familiar with the Bible and the general history of the era, yet Collins unfortunately tried to find a middle ground between his main audience of Christians (fundamentalists or otherwise) and general readers that did not work as he explained a tad too much for one and too little for the other. The short length of the book and its layout between the covers were also problematic. In lengthening the book to explain certain things like the avenue of mainstream research he was comparing the Biblical events to and the leading Egyptologists behind them, even if those same individuals find the Exodus dubious; the book’s layout was unfortunately a mess considering it had very informative tables and charts, but those items were times with the text explaining them and at others back in the appendixes resulting the use of numerous bookmarks or looking back and forth.

Let My People Go! is an informative look at the Biblical narrative of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt, the Exodus, and the beginning of the Conquest in comparison to the mainstream view of ancient Egyptian and Middle Eastern history. While Steven Collins brings a lot of knowledge to the subject and does well to bring it across to the reader, his efforts are undercut by length and layout of the book which doesn’t do justice to his argument.
… (mais)
½
 
Assinalado
mattries37315 | Mar 18, 2020 |
Any book with the title "Discovering the City of Sodom: The Fascinating, True Account of the Discovery of the Old Testament’s Most Infamous City" promises to be a sensational read. But a book about discovering the biblical city of Sodom must surely be just another crackpot’s wild theory, right? Wrong. Dr. Steven Collins is a veteran archeologist and he has plenty to say against the crackpots and misguided adventurers whose escapades in the Middle East pose as archeological discoveries. And while his claim that Sodom has been found is controversial, he does his best not to be overly sensational and claim more than the evidence warrants. Collins is not without his skeptics, but the case he builds, I believe, is painstakingly thorough, and in the end convincing.

I listened to an audio version of this book, read by Sean Runnette, available at ChristianAudio.com. And even without pictures and maps, I was enthralled by the tale. Collins, with the help of co-writer Latayne Scott, a professional writer, uses a variety of literary technicques to make a nearly decade-long project of digging holes in the sand sound interesting and engaging. He walks us through a day in a typical dig, describing the personality types and theological motives (or lack thereof) that people bring to such an undertaking. He uses flashback and personal anecdote, and then puts on his teacher’s hat as he assembles facts about archeology, dating, and the history of the Levant (the archeological term for Palestine).

I was struck by Collins’ faith, and how he is unashamed to use the Bible as a souce alongside other ancient Near Eastern texts, in his scientific method. And with the Bible being the sole historical record of the city of Sodom, Collins surveys in detail the various aspects of the Biblical record and applies that to his research. His attention to the text with its many geographical details, ultimately is what convinces me that Tall el Hammam in modern-day Jordan, is the site of the biblical Sodom.

Collins makes a convincing argument that Sodom and its sister city Gomorrah was located on the Kikkar, a plain near the Jordan river just to the north of the Dead Sea. And while he doesn’t find mysterious sulfer balls of the kind that lead to wild tales of supposed discovery, he does find an area bereft of any human civilization for 700 years after a sudden fiery end to what was a prominent culture.

There are problems and puzzling sides to his story, however. He defends a date which will not fit with an early date for the Exodus. Anyone familiar with OT evangelical theology should know that the question of dating the Exodus is not as simple as it may seem. Collins dates the fall of Sodom to around 1650 B.C. Now with some work, his date could fit with a late date for the Exodus, as accepted by many scholars. However his own advocacy of a middle date for the Exodus, based on historical synchronisms with the text makes the problem even thornier for Collins himself. In the context of his grappling with the chronology of his finds, he makes what I believe is an important observation. And in this particular case, I believe he may well be right.

"Geography trumps chronology when you’re dealing with the ancient Near East and the Bible. That’s because there are a lot of variations in Near Eastern chronologies–with high, middle, and low versions that can vary thirty to fifty years at given points…. By comparison, geography is quite static. With few exceptions, it doesn’t move around…. Again, we begin with the text, and that’s how, using all the geographical markers in the story of Abraham, you invariably find Sodom located in the Kikkar of the Jordan, because that’s what Abraham and Lot saw when they were dividing the land between them." (pg. 130)

He goes on to argue for honorrific or symbolic numbers when it comes to the age of the patriarchs, but he also presents alternative views which could reconcile the dating with his find. He argues in the end that we cannot take the Bible “only literally” but must read it “authentically.”

Whether one agrees with his take on biblical chronology or not, you will have to grapple with the impressive geographical evidence that Collins marshalls from the text. It is clear that he respects and listens to the Bible’s text, and this very fact makes him a target of liberal scholars for his audacity to believe the Bible’s record could be true. By the end of the book it is clear that Collins isn’t out to make friends but to pursue the truth, and he believes his work has provided concrete evidence bolstering the belief that the Bible’s account of the destruction of Sodom is grounded in historical truth.

Collins explains why others have not looked for Sodom in this locale. It is chiefly due to theories that Sodom was under the Dead Sea or to be found on its southern shores. Ultimately these theories were based less on evidence than on unsubstantiated educated guesses from earlier and still renowned biblical archeologists. Further data has contradicted the assumption that Sodom was in the barren wasteland of the southern Dead Sea – which was never (during the time of the Biblical sodom) an Edenic paradise that was to woo Lot to pitch his tent there. And the fact that the Dead Sea is at its lowest depth in the last four thousand years, aruges against the idea that the cities are to be found in its depths.

The book ends with the most exciting find of all: pottery shards that are superheated to glass on one side, yet are perfectly normal pottery on the other. The conclusion of experts is that the shards were super heated and then cooled far too rapidly than would be expected by any typical human furnace or heating method known in ancient times. Extensive, independent research compares this to molten sand left over after nuclear experiments and the green glass found in the desert at times due to meteoric events. The best physical explanation is a meteor that burned up in the atmosphere leaving no crater, but still sending a fireball to earth (as in a documented case in Sieberia in the early 1900s). This may very well be concrete proof that the story of Sodom’s fiery demise as recounted in the Bible is true.

Collins hesitates to say more than what science can affirm, but he holds the biblical record to be true by faith. Along the way he presents an excellent example of how to hold true to Scripture and yet still seek to pursue a path of valid scientific inquiry.

The book reads well–mystery and history interwoven with the science of archeology. It will interest amateur archeologists and bible geeks, as well as history buffs. It can be understood by high schoolers as well and may spark an interest in biblical archeology in younger readers.

The audio quality on the ChristianAudio.com recording was superb. Downloading the book in any format is a breeze. And the narrator does an excellent job keeping the story fresh and alive, rather than dull and boring. And kudos to him for pronouncing all the difficult words with ease. A simple search at Amazon will supply many of the charts and maps that are missing in the audio book experience. I am sure you’ll find the audio book as much fun as the hardback version. Of course, like me, you may be enticed to purchase both versions after listening to the audio reading of the book.

Disclaimer: This book was provided by ChristianAudio.com. The reviewer was under no obligation to offer a positive review.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
bobhayton | 4 outras críticas | Jul 3, 2013 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
10
Membros
125
Popularidade
#160,151
Avaliação
4.1
Críticas
6
ISBN
53

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