50 Fun Facts About Jordan River

Into which lake, almost ten times saltier than the ocean, does the Jordan River empty?

The Dead Sea has no outlet, so the Jordan River's water can only leave by evaporating, and the salts it carried in stay behind.

Which US state has its own Jordan River, named because it also drains a freshwater lake into a salty one?

Utah's Jordan River runs from Utah Lake to the Great Salt Lake, and Mormon settlers named it in 1847 after noticing the likeness to the biblical river.

Water from the Jordan River was used at the 2013 christening of which British royal baby?

Prince George was christened with it at St James's Palace because Jesus was baptised in the river, a custom Bulgaria's royal house also kept.

Which password did Gileadite guards at the Jordan River fords use to unmask fleeing Ephraimites who mispronounced it?

Shibboleth, a Hebrew word for an ear of grain, gave the Ephraimites away because their dialect changed its first sound. The word has since come to mean any test that marks outsiders.

Who made Jordan a popular first name in Europe by carrying Jordan River water home to baptise their children?

Crusaders and pilgrims brought the water back in containers for baptisms at home, and the river's name caught on for the children.

Jordan almonds probably take their name from the French word for what, rather than from the Jordan River?

Garden is 'jardin' in French, and a 'jardin almond' meant a cultivated nut rather than a wild one before English speakers turned the word into Jordan.

Which source overtook the Jordan River system as Israel's largest water supply in the early twenty-first century?

Desalinated seawater from the Mediterranean took over after years of drought, ending four decades in which the Sea of Galilee supplied Israel's coastal plain.

Which New Testament preacher drew crowds to the Jordan River before Herod Antipas had him beheaded?

John the Baptist immersed his followers in the river as a sign of repentance, and the Gospels say Jesus came to be baptised by him there.

Which successor to Moses led the Israelites across the Jordan River on dry ground into the Promised Land?

Joshua saw the Jordan's waters part as the Ark of the Covenant was carried across, echoing the Red Sea crossing a generation earlier.

Which territory got its modern name when the Kingdom of Jordan annexed it in 1950?

The West Bank got its name after Jordan annexed the land in 1950 and needed a label to tell it apart from the kingdom's territory east of the river.

Snowmelt from which mountain on Syria's border feeds the springs that become the Jordan River?

Mount Hermon keeps snow on its peaks for much of the year, and the meltwater seeps through the limestone to emerge as springs at its foot.

In which country does the Hasbani River, a main source of the Jordan River, rise from two springs?

Lebanon's Wazzani and Haqzbieh springs supply most of the Hasbani's water, and the stream runs some 40 km through the country before crossing the border.

Which headstream of the Jordan River, rising from springs beside an ancient city mound, carries the most water?

The Dan brings in about as much water as the other two main headstreams combined, all of it from springs at the mound of Tel Dan.

Which river, the largest tributary of the lower Jordan River, forms part of the Syria–Jordan border?

The Yarmouk also gave its name to a battle fought beside it in 636, when Arab armies defeated the Byzantine Empire and won control of Syria.

Under which biblical name does the Zarqa River, a tributary of the Jordan River, appear in the story of Jacob wrestling?

Jabbok is the stream Jacob forded on his way home to Canaan, on the night Genesis says he wrestled a mysterious stranger until daybreak.

The Jordan River flows along the northern stretch of which geological feature that runs on to Mozambique?

The Great Rift Valley puts the Jordan on the boundary where the African and Arabian plates slide past each other.

The Hula marshes on the upper Jordan River were drained in the 1950s partly to wipe out which disease?

Malaria-carrying mosquitoes bred in the swamp, but draining it harmed the ecosystem so badly that part of the valley was later flooded again.

The Jordan River holds which world record for a waterway, thanks to the deep trench it follows?

Lowest elevation is the Jordan's claim: it is already about 210 metres below sea level on leaving the Sea of Galilee and keeps dropping from there.

The upper Jordan River forms the western edge of which plateau that Israel captured from Syria?

The Golan Heights rise from the river's east side along the whole stretch north of the Sea of Galilee, where the Jordan drops fastest.

Which city near the Jordan River, among the oldest in the world, fell after the Israelites crossed the river?

Jericho was the first battle after the crossing, and digs there have uncovered more than twenty successive settlements going back some 11,000 years.

The prophet Elisha told the Syrian commander Naaman to bathe seven times in the Jordan River to cure which disease?

Leprosy left Naaman only after a servant persuaded the angry commander, who had been about to go home, to try the cure.

Which prophet parted the Jordan River with his rolled-up cloak shortly before a whirlwind carried him to heaven?

Elijah crossed on dry ground with Elisha, who picked up the cloak when it fell from his master as horses of fire appeared.

Which lost iron object did the prophet Elisha make float on the Jordan River by throwing in a stick?

An axe head had sunk while Elisha's followers were cutting timber beside the river, which the Bible pictures as thick woodland.

From which mountain east of the Jordan River does the Bible say Moses viewed the Promised Land before dying?

Mount Nebo rises about 700 metres above sea level in Jordan, and on a very clear day the view from its summit reaches Jerusalem.

Which nephew of Abraham chose the well-watered plain of the Jordan River and settled near Sodom?

Lot was offered first pick after his herdsmen quarrelled with his uncle's, and he took the greener country that led him to Sodom.

Which tribe of Israel split into two halves, one settling on each side of the Jordan River?

Manasseh's eastern half joined Reuben and Gad beyond the river, and together they built a great altar beside it as a witness to their kinship with the rest.

In the Gospel accounts of Jesus's baptism in the Jordan River, the Holy Spirit descends in the form of which bird?

A dove is named in the Gospels, and Luke stresses that the Spirit took the bird's bodily form rather than simply descending like one.

The Jordan River baptism site Al-Maghtas is officially named after which Gospel place 'Beyond the Jordan'?

Bethany Beyond the Jordan was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015, and Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis have all visited.

Which January feast do Eastern Christians keep for Jesus's baptism in the Jordan River rather than the Magi's visit?

Epiphany is also called Theophany in the East, and in Byzantine times a cross in the middle of the river marked the traditional baptism spot.

Which wartime hazard had to be cleared from the Jordan River baptism area around Qasr al-Yahud and Al-Maghtas?

Land mines were sown when both sides of the river became a front line in 1967. Jordan cleared its side after the 1994 peace treaty, and the HALO Trust later demined the western side.

Arab plans to divert the Jordan River's headwaters in the mid-1960s helped bring on which Arab–Israeli war?

The Six-Day War came after years of border clashes over the scheme, which threatened to cut Israel's overall water supply by about a tenth.

Which Israeli project, finished in 1964, links the Sea of Galilee to cities and farms in the dry south?

The National Water Carrier runs about 130 km through giant pipes, open canals and tunnels, and at first four-fifths of its water went to farms.

Which US president sent envoy Eric Johnston in 1953 to broker a plan for sharing the Jordan River's water?

Dwight D. Eisenhower's envoy modelled his plan on the Tennessee Valley Authority, and though the Arab League rejected it, Israel and Jordan both agreed to keep to its water shares.

Naharayim, the site of a 1930s hydroelectric plant on the Jordan River, has a Hebrew name meaning what?

Two rivers meet at the site, and Pinhas Rutenberg's plant there supplied much of the electricity used in British-ruled Palestine until 1948.

Jordan officially calls the Allenby Bridge over the Jordan River by the name of which king?

Hussein gives the bridge its Jordanian name, while the other recalls Edmund Allenby, the British general who built a crossing there in 1918.

Which country's navy sent Lieutenant William Lynch down the Jordan River in two metal boats in 1848?

The United States Navy party hauled one copper and one iron vessel overland by camel, then mapped 27 rapids and cascades on the way downstream.

In which kind of craft, named Rob Roy, did Victorian adventurer John MacGregor explore the upper Jordan River?

A canoe small enough to sleep in carried him to the marshes above Lake Hula, where villagers lifted him and his craft bodily out of the water.

The earliest known written mention of the Jordan River's name comes from a text of which civilisation?

Egyptian scribes wrote the name as Yardon in Papyrus Anastasi I, a satirical letter used to train scribes that probably dates from the time of Ramesses II.

Which term describes the Jordan River and the Volga, both of which drain to an inland lake instead of an ocean?

Endorheic joins Greek words for 'within' and 'flow', and about 18 per cent of the Earth's land drains to inland lakes or seas in this way.

Which fish, sold around the Sea of Galilee as St Peter's fish, is native to the Jordan River basin?

Tilapia of three species are native to the river system, while its carp, trout and mullet were all introduced by people.

Which Middle Eastern religion calls every river fit for its baptisms 'Yardena', after the Jordan River?

Mandaeism treats baptism as a weekly act of purification rather than a one-off rite, with full immersion in flowing water every Sunday.

Which Roman emperor planned to be baptised in the Jordan River but fell ill and died before he could?

Constantine I meant to stop at the river on his way to fight Persia in 337, but he sickened and was baptised on his deathbed by Eusebius of Nicomedia instead.

Banias, a spring that feeds the Jordan River, takes its name from which Greek god once worshipped in its cave?

Pan, god of the wild, had a sanctuary at the spring, and because Arabic has no 'p' sound the Greek name Paneas became Banias.

Which Jordanian town's sixth-century mosaic map shows fish in the Jordan River turning back before its salty mouth?

Madaba's church floor holds the oldest surviving map of the Holy Land, complete with bridges over the Jordan and a lion chasing a gazelle.

Which spiritual, sung by England rugby fans, has its singer look over the Jordan River and see angels?

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is credited to Wallace Willis, a Choctaw freedman said to have been reminded of the Jordan by the Red River in Oklahoma.

Which 1927 musical features Ol' Man River, a song that names the Jordan River as well as the Mississippi?

Show Boat gave the song to the character Joe, whose part the writers enlarged in the hope of casting the singer Paul Robeson.

Which 2013 film features the spiritual Roll, Jordan, Roll, sung by enslaved workers on a Louisiana plantation?

12 Years a Slave won the Oscar for Best Picture, and composer Nicholas Britell rearranged the old spiritual specially for the film.

Which composer's 1724 cantata is built on Martin Luther's hymn about Christ coming to the Jordan River?

Johann Sebastian Bach first performed it in Leipzig in June 1724, setting a hymn Luther had written in 1541 about the meaning of baptism.

Which pop star mentions the Jordan River in Will You Be There, the gospel-tinged hit from the film Free Willy?

Michael Jackson wrote and produced the song for his 1991 album Dangerous, and it came out as a single in 1993 when Free Willy used it.

Which freshwater reptile, native to the Jordan River, is thought to have been food for the region's Neanderthals?

Terrapins of the Balkan species live in the river, whose wildlife mixes African, Asian and Mediterranean stock.