Jerusalem - Pool of Bethesda

The Pool of Bethesda lies in an excavated area immediately northeast of St Anne's Church in Jerusalem. Here Jesus, who had come to the city for a Jewish feast, healed a man who had had an infirmity for 38 years (John, 5,1-9): "Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. And immediately the man was made whole." Jesus thus incurred the wrath of the pious Jews, for this took place on the Sabbath.

The pool by which the sick man lay was close to the Sheep Gate and was therefore known as the Sheep Pool (Piscina Probatica). John's reference to "five porches" at the pool seems to indicate that there was a portico on each side of the pool and a fifth on a rock division between its two halves, each 50m/165ft square and 13m/43ft deep. The water was credited with healing powers, and "an angel went down at a certain season into the pool and troubled the water", suggesting that the pool was fed by an intermittent spring. By the pool, which no doubt originally served as a reservoir of water for the Temple precinct and in the time of Jesus was frequented by the sick and crippled, a temple of Aesculapius, the god of healing whose cult had spread from Epidaurus throughout the ancient world, was built in the second century. The excavations which began in 1871 brought to light several votive offerings to the god, including a relief depicting the snake of Aesculapius and a model of a foot offered by a woman named Pompeia Lucilia. In the fifth century the Byzantines built a three-aisled basilica here. The west end stood on the rock between the two halves of the pool, which was enlarged for the purpose by tall substructures, the east end on solid ground. This church was destroyed in the early 11th century; then in the 12th century the Crusaders built a chapel in the ruins of the north aisle. The excavations have confirmed the topography as described in the New Testament and revealed remains of the various different periods: the two halves of the pool (now dry) and fragments of the rock division between the two halves, columns from the Roman temple of Aesculapius, the substructures and an arch from the facade of the Byzantine church, a mosaic with a representation of a gemmate cross from the martyrium in the church, etc. A general plan of the site, which is looked after by the French order of White Fathers, and labeling in French help visitors to find their way about.