This passage seems clearly to place Megiddo in the vicinity of Beisân, where the important ruin of Mujedd'a is now found. The term Bikath Megiddon, which is rendered "Valley of Megiddonâ (Zech. xii. 11), and has generally been supposed to refer to the plain of Esdraelon, may very properly be applied to the broad basin of the Jordan Valley in the vicinity of Mujedd'a, just as the word Bikath is applied in another passage (Deut. xxxiv. 3) to the plains of Jericho. No name at all approaching to that of Megiddo was found by the Survey party in any other suitable position.
A third place of importance is the Spring of Harod, where Gideon divided his troops. This appears, according to Josephus, to have been near Jordan, while from the Bible we gather it to have been in the neighbourhood of Gilboa, being towards the south of the Valley of Jezreel, and opposite the Midianite host (Judg. vi. 33; vii. 1). The Mount Gilead of the passage is very possibly the name of part of the chain above the river now called Jalûd (see Judg. vii. 3). It is very striking to find in this position a large spring with the name 'Ain el Jem'aîn, or "fountain of the two troops,â and there seems no valid objection to the view that this is the Spring of Harod.
Beisân itself, where we were now encamped, is a miserable hamlet of mud hovels, amid the ruins of the important town of Scythopolis, which was a bishopric, from the fifth century, until the change of the see to Nazareth, in the twelfth century. In the Bible it is famous as the place where the body of Saul was fastened to the wall (1 Sam. xxxi. 10), but the remains of a theatre, hippodrome, and temple, of fine structural tombs, and baths, with a Crusading fortress and bridge, are among the best preserved antiquities of western Palestine. Christian martyrs, in the fourth century, here fought wild beasts in the theatre, and the cages with the sockets of the iron bars, and the narrow passages from the outside, are still intact in the ruined theatre of black basalt.
On the 14th of April Sergeant Black accompanied me on a flying expedition, to carry the work farther north, camping in the old Crusading castle of Belvoir, six miles nearer the Sea of Galilee.