River Jordan and the Dead Sea

The Lake of Galilee lies in a deep hollow 682 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and round it the mountains rise, some of them to a height of 2,000 feet above its surface.  From the southern end of the Lake the River Jordan flows on its way down the Jordan Valley to the Dead Sea, also known as the Salt Sea.  The distance as the crow flies is only 65 miles, but the river twists and turns so many times that its own length is 200 miles.  Its banks are thick with reeds and willows and tamarisks and oleander.

The Jordan Valley is not like any valley we can imagine.  It is a great gash in the earth’s crust, splitting the country open from top to bottom, and by the time the Dead Sea is reached it has already dropped another 600 feet.

This is a salt lake, the most salty in the world. (6) This means that fish and other creatures cannot live in it – this is why it is called ‘Dead’.  It lies 1,292 feet below the Mediterranean.   Five miles north is Jericho.  Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves on the western shore of the Dead Sea.  The Scrolls are very important, not least because they comprise the oldest copies of the Bible in existence.  For example, the Qumran scrolls date from around 250 B.C. to about 65 AD. (7)

About five miles north of the Dead Sea is the place where the Israelites under Joshua crossed the Jordan when they entered Palestine. (8) The ford in this area is believed to be the place where Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist. (9) The valley itself at this point is an enormous trench, 15 miles wide, its sides formed by the grim walls of the mountains of Judea and the mountains of Moab which tower up from 3,000 to 4,000 feet above it.

Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine, is about 25 miles to the west and in that distance the road climbs over 3,700 feet.  The first town you come to is Jericho, about five miles from the Jordan.  After that, for the remaining 20 miles, the road passes through the Wilderness of Judea. Here it was that after his Baptism Jesus was tempted by the Devil.  It is a place of unspeakable dreariness, quivering pitilessly with the heat, a brown, barren waste of mountains and gorges, the whole land twisted into strange, tortured shapes by the cooling of the earth’s crust millions of years ago.