World Discoveries III: Dead Sea also shares the Dead Sea's Biblical history. Located on the border of Israel, King Herod used it as his spa, and King David made it his retreat. But more ominously, the Dead Sea is said to have witnessed the extreme, supernatural fire that violently destroyed the sinners in Sodom and Gomorrah. Centuries later the climate surround the Dead Sea is still arid and parched. The filmmaker asks how the blessed Jordan River, which the Hebrews crossed to get into the Promised Land and is surrounded by beautiful banana groves, could feed into this unholy, salty lake. Other documentaries concerning Israel:
Dead Sea Essenes settled on the Dead Sea's western shore; Pliny the Elder identifies their location with the words, "on the west side of the Dead Sea, away from the coast ... [above] the town of Engeda" ("Natural History", Bk 5.73); and it is therefore a hugely popular but contested hypothesis today, that same Essenes are identical with the settlers at Qumran and that "the Dead Sea Scrolls" discovered during the 20th century in the nearby caves had been their own library. Josephus identified the Dead Sea in geographic proximity to the ancient Biblical city of Sodom. However, he referred to the