River
Flumen Iordanis
Jordan
Listen to the story
Flumen Iordanis, the River Jordan, runs on the map from its source in the Anti-Lebanon mountains down to the Lacus Asphaltites, the asphalt lake that we call the Dead Sea. Oddly, its name stands near the mouth rather than the source, simply because there was no room to fit it well upstream. The Church father Jerome traced the river to two springs on Lebanon, called Jor and Dan, as if the name joined the two. In the Hebrew Bible the river is the Jarden.