Nowadays, considering that no
more
human sacrifice and
sadistic idol worship
goes on there now,
it's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
I actually went to a
concert that was in a
valley or two
over. It was
outdoors, and they even had
fireworks coming from the
Old City.
More to the point, there are a few stories about how this particular valley in the Levant got its name. There was, supposedly, a cult that
used to hold sacrifices in that area (including, occasionaly, their
own children), ond at one point it might have been a burning heap a trash (a biblical
incinerator, perhaps). Its demonic and firey connotations earned its epithet of "the valley of
the shadow of death" as well as its metaphoric usage in
religious literature as the opening or path to Gehennah or Hell.