JOPPA
501
JORDANIS
ber Surgeons' Hall (almost entirely destroyed now),
Lindsey House, Shaftesbury House, etc. The
Grange, Hants, and other country mansions at Coles-
hill, Berks, Araesbury, Wilts, Wilton and Raynham
Hall, Norfolk. He designed the garden front of St.
John's College, O.xford, and laid out Lincoln's Inn (the
first of the London squares) . Jones's later days were
filled with adversity, and he died worn out with grief
and disappointment. Of his genius as an architect
there can be no question, nor can there be any as to
his vast influence on the course of architecture in
England ; but as to the quality of his work and the
effect of his influence, opinions differ very widely. His
theory of architecture was that "it should be solid,
proportional according to the rules, masculine and
unaffected ". Much of his work, however, is classed as
theatrical ani.1 his designs were never truly classical. At
the request of the king, Jones wrote a book entitled
"Stone-Hong Restored" in which he reaches the as-
tonishing conclusion that Stonehenge is the remains
of a Roman Temple of the Tuscan order.
Blomfield. .-1 short History of Renaissance Architecture in England (London, ItiOO): Moore, Cftaracterof Renaissance Archi- tecture {New York, 1905): Belcher-Macartney, Later Renais- sance Architecture in England (London); Gotch, Architecture of the Renaissance in England (London, 1891-94).
Thomas H. Poole. Joppa (Joppe). See Jaffa.
Jordan, The (in Hebrew Ydrden, from the root Y6r/ld, to descend). — The difference of elevation be- tween the highest point of this river (1847 feet above the sea-level) and its lowest (12S6 feet below the sea- level) is 3133 feet. It issues from the side of Mount Hermon by three principal sources: the Nalir el Has- bani, coming from Hasbeya; the Nahr el Leddan, which rises at Tell el Qadi (the ancient Lais-Dan) ; and the Nahr Banias, the glory of what was Cajsarea Philippi. Formed at a point about five and a half miles below Banias, by the jimction of these three streams, the Jordan enters Lake Hiileh about nine and a third miles lower down. This lake, which is prob- ably "the waters of Meroin", is rather more than three and a half miles in length. Between the Bal.irat el Hllleh and the Lake of Tiberias, nearly ten miles, the Jordan is clear, and in some places reaches a width of over twenty yards and a depth of nearly seventeen feet. It is crossed by a bridge which connects Da- mascus with Galilee, the Jisr Benat Yaqtib. Near et Tell, which is Bethsaida Julias, the river enters the Sea of Genesareth, which is 682 feet below the level of the Mediterranean and is more than thirteen miles in length. Leaving the lake towards Samakh, the Jor- dan commences its inninncrable wanderings. The di- rect distance from the Lake of Tiberias to the Dead Sea is sixty-five miles, but the Jordan, owing to its sinuosities, has a course of 200 miles. At a little dis- tance from where it leaves the lake there are remains of two bridges, Jisr es Semakh and Jisr es Sidd, and in this reach of the river it is still fordableat many points. At about sbi and a quarter miles from the lake, after receiving the Yarmuk, it passes under an old Arab basalt bridge, the Jisr el Mddjamieh, and the bridge of the railroad from Caiffa to Damascus.
Beyond the Wadi 'Arab is the ford of Abarah, where some locate the Bethbera of the story of Ged- eon (Judges, vii, 24). At five and a half miles from the mouth of the Jakid, which passes Beisan (Scythopolis), the Jordan passes between Tell es Sdr- em (Salim) and Tabaqat 'Tahil (Pella). It receives, three and three-quarter miles from Salim, the water of such important springs as the Beda and 'Ain esh Shemsieh, where the first Christian tradition placed Ennon; "John also was baptizing in Ennon near Sa- lim" (John, iii, 23). Umm el .\mdan, which is very near, was supposed, in the fourth century, to be the Salem of Melchisedech. Over against these springs the W:uli Yabis rushes down precipitately, the name of which recalls Jabes Galaad, delivered by Saul (I
Kings, xi). From the lake to this point the whole val-
ley is cultivated; thence to Sartabeh, the mountains of
Samaria reach to the river. Opposite Sartabeh is the
confluence of the Nahr ez Zerqa (Jabbok), and just
below are to be seen the ruins of the Roman bridge of
Damieh and the ford of the .same name which must
have played a part in the well-known epi-sode of Sib-
boleth (Judges, xii, 5,6). The utensils and the columns
of the Temple of Solomon were cast near here (III
Kings, vii, 46). From Damieh onwards the valley
ceases to be cultivated; the waters of the Jordan, dis-
turbed by rapids, become yellow and muddy. A two-
hours' journey north-east of Jericho are to be found
the wooden bridge and the ford of Ghoranieh, where
the great highways of Galaad and Moab meet. The
Greek monastery of Qar§ el Yehiid, two and a half
miles farther down the river, marks the traditional
scene of the passage of the Hebrews (Jos., iii, 9-13)
and of the baptism of Christ (Matt., iii). The scene of
the ministrations of St. John the Baptist, however,
has been very plausibly placed at the ford of the
Ghoranieh, which has always been more frequented.
In its lower portion the river is swelled by many afflu-
ents, which formerly watered a part of the Kikkar,
whither Lot came when he parted from Abraham;
these affluents are the Wadi Kelt, the Wadi Kefren,
and the Wadi Nimrin.
The Jordan, called by the Arabs esh Sheriat el Ke- bir (the great drinking-place), flows between steep banks of rather brittle clay. The lower part of its basin is calletl the Zor, the bottom of the valley is the Ghor. It is fringed with trees and shrubs — poplar, tamarisk, rhododendron, agnus castus, apple of Sodom — and its waters contain a great many fish — various species of capocta, the barbus canis, the cyprinodon, and a kind of catfish (siturus). Vipers, scorpions, porcupines, jackals, wild boars, ibexes, panthers (nimr), and a great variety of birds are found in the neighbouring thickets. A tropical temperature pre- dominates. The water of the Jordan contains a sa- line residuum, chlorine, sodium, sulphuric acid, and magnesia. The floods of the river occur from Febru- ary to May. Its width is very variable: at Ghoranieh scarcely more than twenty-seven yards; at the ford of el Henfl as much as forty-five to fifty-five yards; at its mouth about eighty yards. The volume of water brought to the Dead Sea by the Jordan is calculated to be, on the average, 883 cubic feet per second.
Lynch, Narrative of the United States Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea (6th ed., Philadelphia, 1869); Robin- son, Biblical Researches (Boston, 1886); Lortet. La Syrie d'aujourd'hui (Paris, 1886); L.artet, Exploration geologique de lamer Morte (Paris, 1878); Blanckenhorn. iS^w/ien w6er (/as Klirna des Jordantals in Zd DPV (1909); Survey of Western Palestine, Memoirs, III (London, 1883); Vincent, Canaan d'apri^s I' exploration recente (Paris, 1907).
F. M. Abel.
Jordanis or Jornande.s, historian, lived about the middle of the sixth century in the Eastern Roman Empire. His family was of high standing, either Goth or Alanic, and his granilfather was notary to Candac, King of the Alani in Moesia. He himself held for a time the office of notary, though under what cir- cumstances is not well known. He was later "con- verted " , that is, he took orders. Everything else that is reported of his life rests on more or less plausible conjecture. It is not really proven, for example, that he bore "before his conversion" the martial name of Jornandes (i. e. bold as a boar) , nor that after this con- version he became a monk in "Thrace or in Moesia. It is also uncertain whether he was Bishop of Croton, and whether the Vigilius, to whom he dedicated his second work, was Pope Vigilius, who from 547 to 554 lived in exile, chiefly at Constantinople. Two of his historical works have come down to us. The one is a history of the Goths, or, perhaps it would be better to say, of Moesia. It is now com- monly entitled: "De origine actibusque Getarum",
