Page 58 - Bible Geography and Near East Studies - Textbook w videos short

environmental crisis. The first hotels were built on the shoreline of the Dead Sea in 1960. Today, it takes
six miles of a man-made canal to bring the Dead Sea to En Bokek! Likewise, at the En Gedi spa hotel,
visitors are now transported half a mile to the water that was only a few steps away in 1970.

A 2013 agreement between Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority will provide a pipeline from the
Red Sea to the Dead Sea in an effort to put more water into the shrinking sea. As a side benefit, Israeli
desalinization technology will also turn the sea water into drinking water along the way. According to
the agreement, the first pipeline is due to be finished in 2021.

It’s highly likely that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were once located in the deep Rift Valley that is
now the Dead Sea. Some archaeological work has already pinpointed some ruins as the potential
location of these two notorious communities, but the work is inconclusive. Two factors would make it
very difficult to confirm the biblical communities of Sodom and Gomorrah. First, 4,000 years have
passed. Time, earthquakes and the corrosive nature of the soil itself would make it difficult to find
anything from that time period. Second, the Bible describes an extremely destructive event that
eliminated all life in the region very quickly. Such destruction would add to the difficulty of finding proof
of the original location of Sodom or Gomorrah. Even so, the Dead Sea basin is almost certainly the
location of the Genesis event.

En-gedi

En Gedi is an oasis along
the western shore of the
Dead Sea. The fresh-water
springs here have allowed
nearly continuous
inhabitation of this site
since the flood. It is
difficult to describe the
contrast of the vast Judean
Wilderness and the small
oasis of En Gedi.

In the rock-strewn,
sunbaked wilderness, there
are almost no fresh-water
sources. The Judean
Wilderness begins at the
northern end of the Dead
Sea and ends more than 40
miles later, giving way to
the even larger – and even
more harsh – Negev
Desert.
The cold, fresh water of En Gedi is remarkable because of its location in the Judean Wilderness,
But in the nearly-hidden within sight of the salt-saturated Dead Sea. Notice the stark contrast between the lush greenery
oasis of En Gedi, a rich and around the waterfall and the harsh, rocky soil that can’t reach the water. Almost all of the land from
En Gedi to the southern tip of Israel - a stretch of 160 miles - is rocky desert.
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