The Gospel of John tells us about two healing miracles that Jesus performed at two different pools of water in Jerusalem. The first is the healing of a man who was lying on a mat because he had been unable to walk for 38 years. Jesus healed the man at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:2-9). The second healing is the giving of sight to a man born blind. In John 9:1-7, Jesus and the disciples encountered a man as they “went along” in Jerusalem. Jesus made mud with saliva and some dirt from the ground, put it on the man’s eyes, and instructed him to go to the Pool of Siloam to wash. The man did as Jesus told him and received his sight.
Parts of both of these pools have been excavated and are visible today. When Faith Connections Travel goes to the Holy Land, we usually visit both sites. They are archaeologically important and impressive, but they are complex and not easy to understand. For Christians, they are also significant as the places of two of the seven “miraculous signs” that John uses to point his readers to Jesus’ identity. He is the Christ (Messiah)—the Son of God in whom we are to place our faith.
Here on the blog, we will take a look at both of these locations and the healing stories of Jesus that are connected to them. Hopefully we can gain some understanding of the sites that will help us to understand and appreciate the details of the gospel stories that reveal Jesus the Healer to us.
To begin briefly, let’s notice in the account of the healing at the Pool of Bethesda that the pool was located near the Sheep Gate and was “surrounded by five covered colonnades” (or “porticoes,” John 5:2). This detail puzzled scholars for centuries because it suggests that the pool had five sides. A five-sided pool at that time was strange indeed. Therefore, many thought of the number as symbolic, such as representing the five books of the Torah which Jesus’ ministry of miracles had come to answer or to supersede. Archaeology has since discovered that the Pool of Bethesda had two sections, or basins, separated by a central wall. With porticoes around the four-sided perimeter of the pool and a fifth portico along the central wall separating the northern and southern basins, the pool did indeed have five “sides.”
As we look at the pool today (which visitors will remember as being alongside of the Church of St. Anne and not far from St. Stephen’s Gate), it is hard to see its original shape. Given the importance of the site to Christians, we are not surprised to find a Byzantine church built over the pool’s eastern end and a Crusader chapel built over the central wall between the original basins. The later Crusader structure overlaps part of the Byzantine remains. Just to the east of the pools are several pagan baths dedicated to Asclepius, the Roman god of medicine and healing. To the southeast of the pool is a large Crusader church that is still in use by Christians. With all of this intertwined in a single site, getting a clear sense of the Pool of Bethesda’s location and shape can be a challenge to pilgrims standing on its edge taking in the setting.
We will continue our look at the Pool of Bethesda and its significance in future posts. We will also examine the Pool of Siloam as another healing place brought front and center in John’s accounts of Christ’s miracles that make people whole.
Featured Image “Murillo, Christ Healing the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda” by Jean Louis Mazieres is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
