GEOLOGICAL AND TRIBULATION FEATURES ON ISRAELI TOUR PATHS
PART 5A
Dead Sea – Masada – Ein Gedi – Qumran – Jericho – Jerusalem – Normal Fifth Day of Tours
Part 1 of 2 Parts of Fifth Day
The Dead Sea
It’s called the Dead Sea because nothing lives in it. It is some of the saltiest water anywhere in the world, almost six times as salty as the ocean! The Dead Sea is completely landlocked and it gets saltier with increasing depth. The surface, fed by the River Jordan, is the least saline. Down to about 130 feet (40 meters), the seawater comprises about 300 grams of salt per kilogram of seawater. That’s about ten times the salinity of the oceans. Below 300 feet, though, the sea has 332 grams of salt per kilogram of seawater and is saturated. Salt precipitates out and piles up on the bottom of the sea.
What Caused the Dead Sea to Form?
This lesson takes us back to the subject of plate tectonics.
In this part of the world there is a rift forming where two crustal plates are spreading apart. The East Rift Valley runs through most of Africa, but it starts north of the Dead Sea and runs south along the eastern side of the continent. The Sea is located right along the Rift Valley where the earth’s crust is being stretched thin. To get an idea of how this “crustal spreading” thing works, take a bar of taffy, or taffy-like candy and try to pull it apart. You’ll see where the candy starts to come apart it gets really thin just before it breaks. That’s what is happening to the earth’s crust in the Rift Valley. Where the earth’s crust gets thin, that part of the surface sinks downward. Look at the picture at left to see how the rift forms, sinking downward where the crust is stretched thin. You know what? The Dead Sea is still sinking lower, even today. Scientists figure that the Dead Sea lowers by as much as 13 inches per year. On a geologic time scale that’s incredibly fast!
Why is the Dead Sea so Salty?
Anyway, back to the formation of the Dead Sea. We talked about how the surface of the Sea got down so low in elevation, but why is it so salty? All roads lead to the Sea when it comes to the rivers in the area. The Dead Sea is continually fed water from the rivers and streams coming down off the mountains that surround it.
But the kicker is this….no rivers drain out of the Dead Sea. The only way water gets out of the Sea is through evaporation.
And boy does it evaporate! This part of the world gets plenty hot. When the water evaporates, it leaves behind all the dissolved minerals in the Sea, just making it saltier. In fact, it’s through the dual action of; 1) continuing evaporation and 2) minerals salts carried into the Sea from the local rivers, which makes the Sea so salty. The fact that the water doesn’t escape the Sea just traps the salts within its shores. There’s nothing living in the Dead Sea because it got so salty, so quickly.
There’s no seaweed or plants of any kind in or around the water. There are no fish or any kind of swimming, squirming creatures living in or near the water. As a matter of fact, what you’ll see on the shores of the Sea is white, crystals of salt covering EVERYTHING. And this is no ordinary table salt, either.
The salts found in the Dead Sea are mineral salts, just like you find in the oceans of the world, only in extreme concentrations. The water in the Dead Sea is deadly to living things.
Fish accidentally swimming into the waters from one of the several freshwater streams that feed the Sea are killed instantly, their bodies quickly coated with a preserving layer of salt crystals and then tossed onto shore by the wind and waves.
Brutal!
We can swim in the Dead Sea, just like we can swim in the ocean. Well, people don’t really “swim” in the Dead Sea – they just “hang out”. That’s what’s so cool about the Dead Sea. Because of the extremely high concentration of dissolved mineral salts in the water its density is way more than that of plain old fresh water. What this means is our bodies are more buoyant in the Dead Sea – so you bob like a cork.
In fact, people are so buoyant in this water, it makes it kinda tough to actually swim.
Masada
Site of Jewish revolt and martyrdom, 74C.E.
Masada was turned by King Herod the Great of Judea (37 – 34 B.C.) into a major stronghold.
In 66 A.D., at the onset of the Jewish revolt against Rome, the extremist Sicarii (“dagger-men”) captured Masada; after the revolt’s suppression, it remained the last Jewish fortress to hold out. When the Romans were about to storm its walls in the spring of 74 A.D., the defenders, preferring death to slavery, decided to commit collective suicide. Men slew their women and children, then killed one another – thus relates Flavius Josephus, the only historian to describe these events.
The story of the mass suicide is supported by comparable occurrences in the Greco-Roman world.
In traditional Judaism, Masada went largely un-mentioned for centuries. Only with the advent of Zionism did it gain prominence, with the defenders portrayed as freedom-loving heroes and their stance hailed as an example to live by.
In Yitzhak Lamdan’s influential poem of 1927, Masada came to symbolize the entire Zionist enterprise, with the most famous line announcing, “Masada shall not fall again.” From the 1940s, Masada became the goal of ritual treks organized by Zionist youth movements; from the 1950s, recruits of Israel’s army swore their oath of allegiance in ceremonies atop Masada.
The excavation of the fortress in the 1960s enhanced still further its salience in Israeli consciousness.
The veneration of Masada was never total; for instance, in 1946 David Ben-Gurion coined the slogan “Neither Masada nor Vichy.” From the 1970s onward, the Masada myth repeatedly came under attack.
The credibility of Josephus’s account was questioned; the cruelty of Masada’s “dagger-men” toward other Jews was emphasized; and the portrayal of the perpetrators of a group suicide as national heroes was decried as incongruent with Judaism’s teachings and educationally misguided. Hard-line Israeli leaders were accused of being possessed by a “Masada complex” – that is, of so identifying with Masada’s desperate situation that they were no longer reacting to the reality of their own times.
In 2002 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) proclamation of Masada as a World Heritage Site entailed another round of exchanges between Masada’s admirers and detractors.
The Ein Gedi Oasis
Ein Gedi is an oasis in Israel, located west of the Dead Sea, close to Masada and the caves of Qumran.
It is known for its caves, springs, and
its rich diversity of flora and fauna.
Ein Gedi is mentioned several times in biblical writings, for example, in the Song of Songs; “My beloved is unto me as a cluster of henna flowers in the vineyards of Ein Gedi” (1:14). According to Jewish tradition, David hid from Saul in the caves here; “And David went up from thence, and dwelt in the strongholds of Ein Gedi” (1 Samuel 24:1).
A kibbutz, founded in 1956, is located about a kilometer from the oasis. It offers various tourist attractions and takes advantage of the local weather patterns and the abundance of natural water to cultivate out-of-season produce. Prior to the founding of the kibbutz, the Ein Gedi area had not been permanently inhabited for 500 years.
Ein Gedi National Park
Ein Gedi National Park was founded in 1972 and is one of the most important reserves in Israel. The park is situated on the eastern border of the Judean Desert, on the Dead Sea coast, and covers an area of 6,250 acres (25 km2). The elevation of the land ranges from the level of the Dead Sea at 418 meters (1,371 ft) below sea level to the plateau of the Judean Desert at 200 meters above sea level.
Ein Gedi National Park includes two spring-fed streams with flowing water year-round: Nachal David (David Stream) and Nachal Arugot (Arugot Stream). Two other spr ings, the Shulamit and E
in Gedi springs, also flow in the reserve. Together, the springs generate approximately three million cubic meters of water per year. Much of the water is used for agriculture or is bottled for consumption.
The park is a sanctuary for many types of plant, bird and animal species.
The vegetation includes plants and trees from the tropical, desert, Mediterranean, and steppian regions, such as Sodom apple, acacia, jujube, and poplar. The many species of resident birds are supplemented by over 200 additional species during the migration periods in the spring and fall. Mammal species include the ibex and the hyrax.
In the summer of 2005, nearly two-thirds of the oasis burned to the ground after a tourist dropped a lit cigarette onto the park grounds.
The Botanical Garden at kibbutz Ein Gedi
The kibbutz area contains an internationally acclaimed botanical garden covering an area of 100 dunams (10 ha, 24.7 acres). There one can find more than 900 species of plants from all over the world.
Biblical mentions
In Second Book of Chronicles it is identified with Asasonthamar (Cutting of the Pain), the city of the Amorrhean, smitten by Chedorlaomer in his war against the cities of the plain. Book of Joshua enumerates Ein Gedi among the cities of the Tribe of Judah in the desert Betharaba, but the Book of Ezekiel shows that it was also a fisherman’s town. Later on, King David hides in the desert of Engeddi and King Saul seeks him “even upon the most craggy rocks, which are accessible only to wild goats”. Again, it is in Ein Gedi that the Moabites and Ammonites gather in order to fight against Josaphat and to advance against Jerusalem “by the ascent named Sis”. Finally, Song of Solomon speaks of the “vineyards of Engaddi”; the words, “I was exalted like a palm tree in Cades” (’en aígialoîs), which occur in Ecclus., xxiv, 18, may perhaps be understood of the palm trees of Ein Gedi.
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