When portions of a transform fault lock up, the surrounding terrain may be warped up or down by the stresses. The Jordan Valley lies along The Dead Sea Transform Fault Zone, (DSTFZ) where the African and Arabian tectonic plates move laterally with respect to each other in a motion very similar to that along the San Andreas Fault of California. The Dead Sea basin formed because of regional-scale tectonic activity. That is a drop of 620 feet in 70 miles, or about 1 foot every 600 ft. About 70 miles downstream it enters the Dead Sea (Salt Sea or Sea of Arabah) at an elevation of about 1300 feet below MSL, the lowest dry land on earth. That portion of the Jordan River flows out of the Sea of Galilee at an elevation of 682 feet below mean sea level (MSL). The name “Jordan” means “descender”, alluding to the relatively steep gradient of the Jordan River valley in the region. You see, God was not just working upstream physically, but He was also working upstream in time.Ī little geographical and geological background will help set the stage. And He would have had to spend centuries, if not millennia, preparing the necessary conditions. Instead, I marvel at the precisely timed sequence of events that God would have had to execute to make it happen the way it did by natural processes. Some object, saying that such natural explanations rob God of the glory of a miracle. Was this the mechanism God used to “pile up the waters” at Adam while the Israelites crossed the Jordan miles downstream? At least seven historical earthquakes precipitated landslides that dammed the Jordan River near Damiya:ġ927 AD (July 11 – stopped flow for 22 hours)1906 AD (stopped flow for 24 hours)1834 AD1546 AD (Jan 14 – stopped flow for two days)1534 AD1267 AD (December 8 – stopped flow for 10 hours)1160 AD Among his topics, he spoke about the crossing of the Jordan.Ībout 17 miles north of Jericho, at the site generally thought to have been the town of Adam (Tell ed-Damiyeh or modern-day Damiya), there is geological evidence that numerous landslides temporarily dammed the Jordan River at various times. A geologist from the Israeli Geological Survey spoke on Geology and the Bible. This brought back a lecture I heard while a graduate student in the Earth and Space Sciences Department at UCLA. God stopped the water upstream, at the town of Adam, at just the right time, so that as the priest stepped out, 15-20 miles downstream, the water ceased to flow where they were. So the people crossed over opposite Jericho. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zarethan, while the water flowing down to the Sea of the Arabah (the Salt Sea) was completely cut off. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water’s edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. So when the people broke camp to cross the Jordan, the priests carrying the ark of the covenant went ahead of them. In flood stage, due to the spring rains and snowmelt from Mount Hermon, the river comprised a formidable barrier to the conquest of Jericho and the rest of the Promised Land (up to a mile wide, up to 12 feet deep, and swift). Joshua 3:14-16 describes the fact that the Israelites crossed the Jordan River after 40 years in the wilderness. I am going to defer to our resident PITI scientist, Mark Marikos, for this fascinating answer. How did God part the waters of the Jordan when the Israelites crossed on dry land in Joshua 3:14-16? Was the river shallow, and they stepped carefully on the rocks? Is the passage a metaphor? Or was this a real miracle? Love, JNG
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