<P> The modern Hebrew name, Kinneret, comes from the Hebrew Bible, the main source of the Christian Old Testament, where it appears as the "sea of Kinneret" in Numbers 34: 11 and Joshua 13: 27, spelled כנרות "Kinnerot" in Hebrew in Joshua 11: 2 . This name was also found in the scripts of Ugarit, in the Aqhat Epic . Kinneret was listed among the "fenced cities" in Joshua 19: 35 . A persistent, though likely erroneous, popular etymology of the name presumes that the name Kinneret may originate from the Hebrew word kinnor ("harp" or "lyre") in view of the shape of the lake . The scholarly consensus, however, is that the origin of the name lies with the important Bronze and Iron Age city of Kinneret, excavated at Tell el -' Oreimeh . However, there is no evidence that the city of Kinneret itself was not named after the body of water rather than vice versa, or for the origin of the town's name . </P> <P> All Old and New Testament writers use the term "sea" (Hebrew יָם yam, Greek θάλασσα), with the exception of Luke who calls it "the Lake of Gennesaret" (Luke 5: 1), from the Greek λίμνη Γεννησαρέτ (limnē Gennēsaret), the "Grecized form of Chinnereth" according to Easton (1897). </P> <P> The Babylonian Talmud, as well as Flavius Josephus mention the sea by the name "Sea of Ginosar" after the small fertile plain of Ginosar that lies on its western side . Ginosar is yet another name derived from "Kinneret". </P> <P> In the New Testament, the term "sea of Galilee" (Greek: θάλασσαν τῆς Γαλιλαίας, thalassan tēs Galilaias) is used in the gospel of Matthew 4: 18; 15: 29, the gospel of Mark 1: 16; 7: 31, and in the gospel of John 6: 1 as "the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias" (θαλάσσης τῆς Γαλιλαίας τῆς Τιβεριάδος, thalassēs tēs Galilaias tēs Tiberiados), the late 1st century CE name . Sea of Tiberias is also the name mentioned in Roman texts and in the Jerusalem Talmud, and was adopted into Arabic as Buhairet Tabariyya (help info) (بحيرة طبريا), "Lake Tiberias". </P>

What river connects the sea of galilee with the dead sea