Gates of Hell Discovered
It has been my contention that gas leaks and earthquakes have been almost totally overlooked when it comes to explaining supernatural phenomena in the ancient world. In my film “The Exodus Decoded”, I argued that the physical phenomena of the Biblical Exodus e.g., water turning blood red, darkness, the splitting of the sea etc. can be understood in the context of an “earthquake storm” that caused gas and other kinds of eruptions.
When it comes to Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments, some scholars have looked to volcanoes to explain the cloud of smoke over the mountain etc. Since there are no volcanoes in the Sinai Peninsula, they’ve moved the Biblical Exodus to Saudi Arabia where there are active volcanoes. The fact is that it’s very hard to stay close – as Moses and the Israelites did – to an erupting volcano. It makes much more sense to talk about the burning bush and the “clouds of glory” at the Biblical Mount Sinai in terms of gas leaks. More than this, gas leaks can explain all sorts of oracular activity in the ancient world. Where there’s a gas leak, there’s also fire, smoke and people dying and getting high. Gas can cause hallucinations and visions. It’s no wonder then that the famous oracle of the ancient world at Delphi in Greece lived in a cave that turns out to have a steady gas leak in it. It seems that under the earth at Delphi there is, to this day, a steady leak of methane and carbon dioxide, that created the hallucinations and visions of the oracle there.
More than this, writers like the Roman philosopher Cicero and the Greek geographer Strabo described a place in ancient Hierapolis, modern Turkey, as the “Gates of Hell”. Archaeologists have now discovered the very spot where a temple stood to mark the spot. As it turns out, there is an active gas leak there too. It can still kill animals that wander too close to the leak.
BTW, I’m not suggesting that there were no miracles at places such as Mount Sinai. That’s a theological question. All I’m saying is that the revelations involved physical phenomena, and many of these can be associated with gas leaks.
