As regards the geological explanation of this re- markable phenomenon, we may say that it was sup- plied in the 19th cent, in a very satisfactory manner by tlie experts who made a study of Palestine, and the valley of the Jordan and the Dead Sea in par- ticular : Fraa*, Hull, Lartet, and Blanckenhoin. The following is briefly the result of their labours. When, during the Eocene period, and even before it, during the Cretaceous period, successive strata of limestone had been deposited, there was pro- duced towards the end of the Eocene epoch, by the action of lateral (east and west) pressure, a falling away, i.e. a ' fault ' or fracture was formed in the earth's crust. This movement, however, was not of a convulsive nature, it was not a sudden cata- clysm, but a slow and gradual process, extending
JOEDAN
JORDAN
over a lon^' period of time. The result of it was the formation of the parallel chains of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, and further south that of the two ranges of hills which skirt the Jordan valley. The southern end of this depression is, from the point of view of the flow of Avater, a transverse rid>'e reaching 650 feet above the Red Sea and the Medi- terranean, and situated about 46 miles from Akabah and more than 73 miles from the Dead Sea.
At the end of the Miocene and the beginnin"; of the Pliocene period, the waters in the Jordan valley must have been just about at their present level. But the pluvial period (Pliocene) brought about a considerable raising of the aqueous surface enclosed ; the Jordan valley became a lake which must have been about 200 miles long and more than 2000 feet deep. The glacial period (post-Pliocene), during which the temperature sank considerably and the rainfall increased, only served to accentuate this state of afl'airs still more. Then, at the close of this ])eriod, the streams of water diminished, and also the lake, until things once more arrived at tlieir present state. On the lateral slopes of the valley traces of the heights to which the waters rose are still distinguishable ; some of the most notable of these traces are 1180, others 347, feet above the present level of the Dead Sea.
Alongside of this theory, held in common by those who liave studied this question, we must mention, as worthy of attention, the one which W. Libbey, Professor of Physical Geography in the University of Princeton, has recently published (Libbey and Hoskins, The Jordan Valley and Petra, ii. pp. 251-260).
The ancients were completely ignorant of the fact that the bottom of the Jordan valley lay be- low the level of the Mediterranean Sea. Nor were they aware at that time that the depression be- tween the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Akabah was intersected by a sort of natural barrier, forming two anticlinal slopes and making a dividing line for the waters. And even in the tirst part of the 19th cent, it was held by Carl Ritter, W. M. Leake, de Hott; Leon de Laborde, etc., that formerly— perhaps even in historical times before the catas- trophe of Sodom and Gomorrah— the Jordan passed through the Dead Sea, continued its southward course, and flowed into the Red Sea. Those are ideas which have had to be given up. It was in 1836-37 that two German scholars, von Schubert and Roth, and at the same time two Englishmen, G. H. Moore and W. G. Beke, discovered that the Jordan valley sank far down below tlie level of the sea. The Austrian Russegger, the Frencliman Jules de Bertou, and the Englishman Symonds soon confirmed this sensational discovery, as a consequence of explorations carried on in quite an independent way. Before them, famous travellers, such as Seetzen (1806-07), Burckhardt (1810-12), Irby and Mangles (1817-18), had visited those same parts without any suspicion of the strange phenomenon regarding the altitude.
The course of the Jordan is interrupted twice- first by the Lake of ^uleh, a description of which occurs later in the course of the present article, then by the Lake of Tiberias or Sea of Galilee (which see) ; we have not to examine this here. These interruptions quite naturally cause us to divide the next part of this article into three sec- tions : I" I till- sdiirces of the Jordan, (b) the Upper Joi« 1 ike Tiberias, (c) the Lower Jor-
d. ! .f Tiberias to the Dead Sea.
3. / the Jordan. — Just as in the
Al] I n il opinion of mountaineers does
not ulwiiy, show as the principal source of a river the one which tourists or even geographers would denote as such, so is it with the Jordan. The most northerly of its sources, the one which gives rise to
the stream which covers the longest distance, is found near Hasbeya, at 1846 feet above the sea, at the foot of the Great Hermon. The name Hasbrini is given to the river which starts there and flows towards the south, following a course parallel at tirst to that of the Litani ; between these twin vallej-s there is only a short distance and a ridge of mountains of moderate height ; so that one might quite well imagine the flasbani rejoining the Litani, and falling along with it into the Mediterranean. But, on the contrary, it remains faithful to its course from north to south, and is joined by a tributary, which some modem scholars would include among the sources of the Jordan — the Nahr-Bareighit (Flea River), ' the smallest of the four sources of tlie Jordan ' (Libbey and Hoskins, i. p. 89), but which is usually left aside, so that attention may be given only to the three other more important ones. These are, besides the ^asbani, the one which springs forth at Tell el-^tadi, and the one which emerges from the grotto of Banias. The Tell el-^^adi source is called the Leddan. This unexplained name is interpreted by some as containing an allusion to the city of Dan, situated in this region, and gener- ally (G. A. Smith, however, is an exception, UGHL pp. 480, 678) identified with Tell el-Kadi, Kadi, 'judge,' being considered the exact equivalent of the Heb. Dan. The source of Tell el-^adi is double, in the sense that it streams forth, at 500 feet above the sea, in two places close together under a hillock which is about 300 feet broad and covered with tall trees, and rises in a very striking manner from the plain, over which it towers about 60 feet. The stream which flows from it is the shortest but most copious of the sources of the Jordan ; it is not, therefore, on account of its abundance, but because of its short length, that Josephus calls it ' the little Jordan' (BJ IV. i. 1 ; Ant. Will. viii. 4), or 'the lesser Jordan' (Ant. v. iii. 1). Lastly, we find the 'river of Bania.s,' Nahr-Banias, which starts at 1200 feet above the sea from a grotto, the ancient shrine of the Semitic, and then of the Grjeco-Roman, gods, well known under the name of Paneion, and round which arose the city known under the names of CKsarea Philippi and Paneas, and now called Banias, a corruption of the latter name. Josephus mentions, under the name of Paneas, both the town and the district of which it wa,s the centre ; he also mentions the Paneion, and speaks of ' the famous fountain' (cf. BJ I. xxi. 3, III. x. 7 ; Ant. XV. X. 3, xvni. ii. 1). He adds that the water of the source comes from Lake Phiala, situated 120 stades from Csesarea; this is, undoubtedly, the small lake nowadays called Birket-Ram (cf. Schu- macher in ZDPV ix. [1886] p. 256 f.), but it is only 60 stades distant. There is, however, no subter- ranean communication between this lake, an ancient volcanic crater, and the Paneion source.