The rapid waters of the Jordan swirl and twist as though trying to escape the destiny that awaits them in the Dead Sea. As one goes further south the valley narrows. It is still heavily thicketed and is called in Arabic ez-Zor (the thicket). The river itself has cut a deep channel through this alluvial deposit, and here in the "river bottom" one finds a sort of jungle inhabited by wild life, which in ancient times included large animals such as the lion (Jer 49.19). The valley is now called by the Arabs el-Ghor, which may best be translated as "the canyon." In the central strip the ancient sea bed lies exposed and has been severely eroded, so that qa ṭ ṭarah hills (mounds and gullies of whitish –gray marl and clay) create the very real effect of typical badlands. Leaving the lake and the verdant Galilean countryside the Jordan descends swiftly again. This beautiful lake, which for the Christian evokes such vivid memories of the Master and his fishermen Disciples, measures 13 miles long and about seven miles wide. The river tumbles and cascades vigorously, cutting a gorge in the black basalt rock left by volcanic activity of previous ages and then flows through a delta into the Sea of Galilee. Of Galilee, which lies 695 feet below sea level, is a distance of not more than ten miles. Although well known to Jesus and the Apostles, who traveled as far north as caesarea philippi (ancient Paneas), the lake is not mentioned in the Bible. Lake Huleh is a small, triangular body of water 230 feet above sea level it serves as the river's first pause on its rapid descent southward. The streams that cascade from the slopes and foothills of this majestic mountain meet in the marshy area approximately seven miles above Lake Huleh to form the Jordan proper. These bodies of water are of markedly different altitudes, and each is fed in turn by the waters of the Jordan River flowing into the valley from the region of Mount Hermon. After the last Pluvial period in Palestine, the water flooding the valley receded to the three natural basins of the valley floor, thus creating the present Lake Huleh, the Sea of galilee, and the Dead Sea. However, because of the elevation of the W ādi el- ’Arabah in the south it did not join with the Gulf of Aqaba. In Palestine a large inland sea formed, which for a time extended even into the trans –Jordan region. Some 30 million years ago, probably during the Miocene Age when the main mountain –forming changes occurred in the Near East, two parallel faults in the earth's crust developed, and as the hills shoved higher on either side, the depression between these faults continued sinking along the same line of weakness. The wide, arid Jordan depression is part of the larger geological trough known as the Great Rift Valley, which runs from northern Syria, through the Jordan Valley, the dead sea, the Araba in the south, down through the Gulf of Aqaba and the red sea, to Lake Nyasa in East Africa -a distance of more than 3,000 miles. The etymology of the word Jordan is uncertain some scholars favor an Indo-Aryan origin composed of yordon, "year –river," i.e., "perennial river," but most hold that it is derived from the Semitic y ārad, "to descend," which is more descriptive, for no valley or river descends deeper than the Jordan ( yard ēn in Hebrew). Forming one of the world's most remarkable watercourses, the Jordan Valley traverses the entire length of Palestine from north to south.
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