JORDAN (in, always with the article in prose, ; 'lopScivns ; Yordanis), the chief and most celebrated river of Palestine, flowing through a deep valley down the centre of the country from north to south.
The name.—yordan may be rendered I Me de scender,' from the root to descend '—a name most applicable to it, whether we consider the rapidity of its current, or the great depth of the valley through which it runs. From whatever part of the country its banks are approached, the descent' is long and steep. That this is the true etymology of the word seems evident from an incidental remark in Josh. iii. 16, where, in de scribing the effect of the opening of a passage for 1 the Israelites, the word used tor the coming down' of the waters (trillnl DIOri) is exactly the same as the name of the river (rn,ri ; see Stanley, S. and P., 279, note). Other derivations have been given. Some say it is compounded of a river,' and 11, the name of the city where it rises, but this etymology is impossible, for the word r.111 has no relation to the name of the city (Reland, Pal., p. 270. Another view is, that the river having two sources, the name of the one was yor, and of the other Dan ; hence the united stream is called yordan. So Jerome, Jordanes oritur ad radices Libani ; et habet duos fontes, unum nomine yor, et alterum Dan ; qui simul mixti Jordanis nomen efficiunt ' (Comm. in Matt. xvi. 13). This theory has been copied by Adam nanus (De Loc. Sanct. 19), William of Tyre (xiii. IS), Brocardus (3), Adrichomius (p. tog), and others ; and the etymology seems to have spread amon,g the Christians in Palestine, front whom Burckhardt heard it (Travels in Syria, pp. 42, 43 ; see Robinson, B. R., iii. 412, note). The Greeks called the river 'Iopocimis ; but Pausanias has VpSavos. Arab geographers call it either (El-Urdon), which is equivalent to the Hebrew rpri ; or il,,‘„,/,^,j1 (Esh-sheriah), which signifies the watering-place ;' and this latter is the name almost universally given to it by the modern Syrians, who sometimes attach the appellative Kebtr, the great,' by way of distinction.
&amts.—The snows that deeply cover Hermon during the whole winter, and that still cap its glittering summit during the hottest days of summer, are the real sources of the Jordan. They feed its
perennial fountains ; and they supply from a thou sand channels those superabundant waters which make the river ` overflow all its banks in harvest time' Gosh. iii. 15). 'The Jordan has two hirtorical sources. In the midst of a rich but marshy plain, lying between the southern prolongation of Her mon and the mountains of Naphtah, is a low cup shaped hill, thickly covered with shrubs. On it once stood Dan, the northern border-city of Pales tine ; and from its western base gushes forth the great fountain of the Jordan. The waters at once form a large pond encircled with rank grass and jungle—now the home of the wild boar—and then flow off southward. Within the rim of the cup, beneath the spreading branches of a gigantic oak, is a smaller spring. It is fed doubtless by the same source ; and its stream, breaking through the rim, joins its sister and forms a river some forty feet wide, deep and' rapid. The modern name of the hill is Tell el-Kady, the hill of the judge ;' and both fountain and river are called Leddan— evidently the name Dan corrupted by a double article, .E1-ed-Dzn (Robinson, B. R., 394 ; Thomson, The Land and the Bach, p. 214 ; and in Bibliotheca Sac. for 1846, p. 196). Josephus calls this stream Little Jordan ' (rov ALKpOv 'Iop Scipuv, Bell. yvta'. iv. 1. 1); but it is the principal source of the river, and the largest fountain in Syria.
Four miles east of Tell el-Kg.dy, on a lower terrace of Hermon, amid forests of oak, lie the ruins of Banias, the ancient Cxsarea-Philippi, ancl more ancient Panium. Beside the ruins is a lofty cliff of red limestone, having a large fountain at its base. Beneath the cliff there was formerly, as Josephus tells us, a gloomy cave, and within it a yawning abyss of unfathomable depth, filled with water. This was the other source of the Jordan (Bell. yita'. 1. 21. 3). A temple was erected over the cave by Herod, and its ruins now fill it and conceal the fountain. From it a foaming torrent still bursts, and dashes down to the plain through a narrow rocky ravine, and then glides swiftly on till it joins the other about four miles south of Tell el-Kady (Robinson, iii. 397 ; Handbook for S. ana' P., p. 446).