I believe it to be literal. The ruins of S&G were discovered by Ron Wyatt in 1989.
The Remains of Sodom and Gomorrah (Documentary)
ah well i dodnt mean to imply that S&G was not a literal place, nor that the story is not based on some reality; but that after forty years of accepting the literal story as the whole story, i am now convinced it is like telling little kids that babies come from mommy's tummy or something...a shadow of the truth iow. A weak shadow even.
"
Sodom extended its hospitality to
Lot, the nephew of
Abraham, but the men of Sodom famously took their hospitality duties to allow the rape of Lot's visitors (Genesis 19:5). The proverbial "sin of Sodom," however, was not, as is often understood, of a sexual nature but rather that it had "abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy" (Ezekiel 16:49).
In the New Testament the name Sodom (Σοδομα,
Sodoma) appears either in illustrative recounts of the old story (
LUKE 17:29,
2 PETER 2:6,
JUDE 1:7) or else is evoked to illustrate sin that's bad nonetheless but still royally surpassed by the generation of
Christ (
MATTHEW 10:15,
11:23). The name
Sodom appears 10 times in the New Testament;
SEE FULL NEW TESTAMENT CONCORDANCE..."
The amazing name Sodom: meaning and etymology
"
Gomorrah is a city that went down with
Sodom,
Admah, and
Zeboiim (Genesis 19; Deuteronomy 29:23).
We hear first of Gomorrah in the War of Four Against Five Kings, when king
Amraphel of
Shinar and three of his royal friends waged war against king
Birsha of Gomorrah and four of his associates (Genesis 14:2).
In the New Testament, the city of Gomorrah (Γομορρα) is
mentioned 5 times in reference to its demise due to the evil that went on in there (
SEE FULL NEW TESTAMENT CONCORDANCE)..." which i guess really has all of the refs one needs to figure it out embedded...not meaning to be coy here, but it's just not a story one can blurt the conclusion out and be understood without understanding the situation then. But when it comes together, it comes all the way together imo
and while the Abarim are usually the spiritual bellwhethers interp-wise imo, they only offer hints in this case, not sure why. Ha well i guess for the same reason i am not giving it away lol. They have phrased the opening of "Sodom" ideally though i guess.
Note bolded, mine, and i really wouldnt wanna discuss (argue) this too much further until we have established that 10 and 5 have symbolic meaning, and what that meaning is, etc, and have also come to a basic understanding of the war of 4 against 5, but briefly the "angels" have a corrollary irl, as do the "hosts," and obv "blindness" and even "stumbling at the door" might be metaphorical, etc.