We have seen the origin of the Jordan; if we shall see [its] end, [then] from that [it] will easily be understood how far it flows. Now [it] is the common opinion of all the ancients, and of those who, among the more recent [writers], surveyed those regions, [that] it is carried into the Asphalt Lake, or Dead Sea, and there loses both [its] flow and [its] name. Pliny, in the cited place: “The Jordan, a pleasant river, and — as far as the situation of the places allows — winding [ambitiosus], offering itself to the dwellers-near, makes for the Asphalt Lake (dire by nature), as it were unwillingly, by which at last it is drunk up, and loses its praised waters, mingled with pestilent [ones].” Similar [things]—
(col. 421)
—Similar [things] Tacitus [says], bk. of the Histories: “Lebanon,” he says, “feeds and pours forth the river Jordan. Nor is the Jordan received by the sea, but flows entire through one and another whole lake, [and] is retained by a third — the Asphaltites.” Cassian (Conference 6): “The streams of the Jordan, having entered the Dead Sea, fail; and the ashes of Sodom [are] there spread out with the most ample extension.” But between this end [the Dead Sea] and the beginning of the Paneum, or Lebanon, Father Pererius (tome 2, on Gen. ch. 13, disp. 2) says [there are] about a hundred thousand paces interposed; but the numbers from which that [total] is gathered, he sets [as] these:
- From Lebanon itself to Lake Samochonitis, or the Waters of Merom — 135 stadia (= 15,000 paces)
- The Lake of the Waters of Merom itself, in length — 60 stadia
- From these to Lake Gennesaret — 102 stadia
- That [lake], in length — 100 stadia
- From it to the Asphaltites [Dead Sea] — 230 stadia
- [Total] — 645
But if — as is the custom — we give 8 stadia to each mile, [there] will arise 80 miles and 5 stadia, or [about] 80 miles. And therefore that same writer added, in his calculation, the particle “about.” But that Pliny either uses another calculation, or gives fewer stadia to one mile, appears from this — that (bk. 5 ch. 15) he gives to the same Lake Gennesaret 6 thousand paces in breadth, and 16 in length; whereas, according to Josephus in the cited place (that is, bk. 3 of the Captivity ch. 35), the stadia of the breadth are only 40, of the length 100 — of which the former give only 5 miles, but the latter only 12. But if, from Lebanon, or the Paneum, we ascend higher, toward Phiala — whence I said (in the preceding question) [that] the Jordan rises by a hidden channel — [there] will have to be added, according to the same Josephus, 102 stadia, that is, 13 thousand paces; and thus, from Phiala to the Asphaltites, [there] will be 39 [thousand paces] — to which sum that “about” still better agrees. Burchard: “[It is] to be known,” he says, “that from the origin of the Jordan below Mount Lebanon, as far as the desert Pharan, for nearly a hundred miles, the Jordan itself has, on both banks, broad and pleasant fields, and green meadows — very high mountains being set here and there, in which these fields end, and which are extended, even to the Dead Sea, alongside the stream of the Jordan.”
But since the Jordan is buried in the Asphaltites, the question is: whither does it go [away]? Some think [there] are certain channels in the lake itself, through which it slips-under either into the Red [Sea], or into a subterranean sea. And this can be confirmed: 1. because this is now wont to be taught, in the Meteorologics, of all rivers whose course into the sea is not open — as I was saying about the origin of the same rivers (quest. 3). 2. since this river rolls down so much water assiduously into that sea, how would it not sometimes overflow, unless those [waters] were diverted elsewhere by certain hidden abysses [voragines] or channels? Burchard indeed says [that] it swells from the melting of the mountain snows, yet does not flood — but why not? 3. because the spring which was called Capharnaum, some in Josephus (in the said place) thought to be a vein of the Nile — as if there were subterranean passages of those waters. 4. Since [the Jordan], when it runs down from Phiala into the Paneum, that course of it is hidden under the earth: therefore, in the Asphaltites too, it can similarly plunge itself into some subterranean pipes [tubi]. Whence, in that question in which [it] is asked, before — from the burning of Sodom — the Dead Sea [came to be]—
(col. 422)
—[before the Dead Sea] came to be (as [on] Gen. 19, I was saying): how did the Jordan behave — [whether,] flowing down over the earth, it precipitated into some sea, or not? Our Pererius indeed thinks (in the cited place) [that] it flowed down over the earth; and [that], in the destruction of that sulphurous region, the earth subsided in some vast chasm; and [that] the Jordan, absorbed there, having found a subterranean route, directed [its] course to the sea — either the Red or the Mediterranean. But I reckon [that] the Jordan itself was indeed swallowed always in the same place, and at length hidden, and did not flow through further; but [that], in the burning of Sodom, that Dead Sea alone came into being, and reached the last, as it were, out-flow of the Jordan, and infected the same with all its dreadfulness, and, [thus] infected, sent [it] down into the usual subterranean places. For thus — since a fitting reason or conjecture, which would establish a new miracle, cannot be brought — [there] is less departure from the pristine state of nature. And indeed, while I ponder within my mind [that] that whole Sodomitic valley was, before that punishment, irrigated by the Jordan — like a paradise and an Egypt, as [it] is written (Gen. 13 v. 20) — I would dare then to suspect, of the Jordan, what Strabo (bk. 16) hands down of the most noble river of the Damascenes, Chrysorrhoas: [that] it, by irrigating a great and deep tract of land, is consumed into various streams, as if into Euripi [channels]. “The Saracens told me,” says Burchard, “[that] the Jordan enters the Dead Sea, and again goes out; but, after a small interval, is absorbed by the earth.”