The city of Sodom (2 Nephi 13:9), according to one viewpoint, is thought to be one of the cities of the plain located north of the Dead Sea, where the Jordan Valley broadens into the “Circle” or “Plain” of the Jordan (Deuteronomy 34:3), the evidence being "that Abraham and Lot looked upon the cities from near Bethel (Genesis 13:10).
On the other hand, there is a view that Sodom lies buried beneath the shallow waters of the southern tip of the Dead Sea.
As Lot saw it, the Circle of the Jordan was supremely attractive from every material viewpoint (Genesis 13:10), but it was to become desolate. The efficient cause of this destruction of the cities was probably an earthquake, with an accompanying release and explosion of gaseous deposits. Biblically and fundamentally it was God’s judgment, remembered again and again throughout the Bible (Deuteronomy 29:23; Isaiah 1:9; Jeremiah 49:18; etc.) and Sodom became synonymous with brazen sin (Isaiah 3:9; Lamentations 4:6; Jude 7). Whereas Ezekiel 16:49-51 lists the sins of Sodom as pride, prosperous complacency and “abomination”, Genesis 19:4-5 concentrates on sexual perversion, particularly homosexuality. [Tyndale House, The Illustrated Bible Dictionary , Vol. 3, p. 1237] [See 2 Nephi 23:19]
“Sodom”
According to Walter Kaiser, the five sites of the plain, Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zoar and Zeboiim, were located along the southern portion of the Jordan Valley (Genesis 13:10-11). But these same five cities were overthrown by a cataclysmic destruction of unusual proportions according to the biblical description (Genesis 19:18-20; 19:1-13). God sent a conflagration of “fire and brimstone” on all five of these cities for their reputation as centers for gross sin.
So significant was this divine act of destruction that the two cities of Sodom and Gomorrah became a byword among the authors of Scripture. Even nonbiblical authors wrote about Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction in a way that indicated they regarded it as a real event. For instance, the first-century A.D. historian Flavius Josephus devoted a large section of his work to this destruction as did Philo. Some of these authors even claimed that the results of the destruction could be seen up to their own day.
But where are these cities, precisely? At first it was held that these cities were to be located at the bottom of the southern end of the Dead Sea where the sea floor (even in wet years) is not more than ten or twenty feet deep in the area below the “tongue” or Lisan that protrudes out from the southeastern shore of Transjordan. In 1960 Ralph Baney explored the floor of the sea and found trees standing in water down tot he twenty-three-foot level at that time. This proved Albright’s theory that the water level had risen, submerging ancient structures, but it did not show that any of them were any of the famous five cities of the plain.
In the course of time, the search focused on the eastern shore of Transjordan at, and just south of, the Lisan. One site, known as Bab edh-Dhra, contains the remains of a heavily fortified and settled community, dating from 3150 to 2200 B.C.
In 1965 and 1967, Paul Lapp began his excavation of the site of Bab edh-Dhra. These explorations were continued by Walter Rast and Thomas Schaub in 1973. The excavations revealed a huge fortification wall some twenty-three feet thick surrounding the city, with mud-brick houses and a Canaanite temple inside the walls. But what startled the excavators was the huge layers of ash reaching many feet in its depths. Moreover, so hot and intense had been the flames that destroyed this site that the bricks had turned red permanently from the intense heat. Bryant Wood concluded that:
the evidence would suggest that this site of Bab edh-Dhra is the biblical city of Sodom… . What [the first archaeologists who excavated buildings related to this site] discovered was that the fire started on the roof of the building, then the roof burned through, collapsed into the interior, and then the fire spread inside the building. And this was the case in every single charnel house that they excavated. Now this is something that is quite difficult to explain naturally … How do you explain the burning of these charnel houses in a cemetery located some distance from the town?
The biblical account that God had rained down fire and brimstone on these five cities of the plain finds strong confirmation in the archaeological evidence. Rast and Schaub’s investigations found other sites in addition to the proposed location of Sodom at Bab edh-Dhra (in the Wadi Kerak) just east of the Lisan, or “Tongue” that protrudes out into the Dead Sea. They were Numeria, in the Wadi Numeria (perhaps the site of Gomorrah); es Safi, in the Wadi Hesa (probably the site of Zoar); Feifa, in the Wadi Feifa (maybe the site of Admah); and Khanazir, near the Wadi Khanazir (perhaps the site of Zeboiim). All these sites were destroyed or abandoned at about the same time, about 2450-2350 B.C., according to the archaeologists’ dating. Four of them exhibit the same huge ash layers that were found at Bab edh-Dhra. At Numeria, this heavily fortified city had an ash layer that topped seven feet.
While we await final identification and confirmation, it does appear that we are very close to confirming what the Bible had disclosed about these sites that became legends in their own times. [Water C. Kaiser Jr., The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable & Relevant?, pp. 91-94]