What was pool of bethesda

Pick up your mat and walk. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath. This article will not be about the man who was healed by Jesus. The Greeks were the first people who knew the healing benefits of springs with sulphur in them. They encouraged others to go to those springs for the healing of muscular or joint pain and skin diseases. An underwater spring caused the pool to bubble occasionally.

They also believed that the first person to touch the water after the angel did would be healed. Did healing occur? But I do know crowds of invalids came to give it a try. Picture a battleground strewn with wounded bodies, and you see Bethesda. Imagine a nursing home overcrowded and understaffed, and you see the pool.

Call to mind the orphans in Bangladesh or the abandoned in New Delhi, and you will see what people saw when they passed Bethesda. As they passed, what did they hear? An endless wave of groans. What did they witness? A field of faceless need. What did they do? Did Jesus Exist? The world of the Bible is knowable.

We can learn about the society where the ancient Israelites, and later Jesus and the Apostles, lived through the modern discoveries that provide us clues.

Biblical Archaeology Review is the guide on that fascinating journey. Here is your ticket to join us as we discover more and more about the biblical world and its people.

Each issue of Biblical Archaeology Review features lavishly illustrated and easy-to-understand articles such as:. The All-Access membership pass is the way to get to know the Bible through biblical archaeology. The Pool of Bethesda was not a mikveh. It was an asclepion, as stated by several other comments above. The Jewish man should never have been there if he trusted in Adonai, hence the rebuttal by Yeshua to not sin again.

This site really needs to do some historical home work. It wasnt a Jewish Mikveh at all. It was a Roman scam to glen money from the poor. It is the site of the temple of the Greek God of healing serapis, If you go there today there is a big sign detailing all about it. There was no angel and the one that was rumored to be there was an angel of serapis, the swirling was when the water overflowed from the main pool That is 40 feet deep into the small pool on the other side, the first person to get healed was a Roman plant!

When John describes the pool of Bethesda, he uses the present tense, as if when he was writing it still existed. But I understand it with its 5 porticoes was effectively demolished during the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in AD Could that imply John wrote his Gospel pre-AD 70?

I have long studied the King James text, and lightly have read from modern texts. I find errors in them, and none in the King James. Gene, it was once believed that the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus predated the Textus Receptus, which was used to translate the Bible into English in Since then, within very recent times, they have discovered more Textus Receptus which predate the Codexii.

If you study the history of those Codexii, they were created by the Alexandrians which did not believe Jesus is God. They removed such parts that they did not like from the Bible.

The Textus Receptus is faithful to the original copies. I trust the King James Version and have knowledge enough to see the differences in the various texts. The last seven words of verse 3 as found in the King James Version and verse 4 of this chapter, attributing the disturbing of the waters to an angel, are not found in some of the oldest Greek manuscripts and are viewed as an interpolation. A learned man is decieved by the shallowness of the books he recites, the lessons are in the spaces between the words and pages.

There is, in the Epistle of John, an account that speaks of the healing of an ailing man at the pool of Bethesda. Ch5: This account is not cited in any other writing. John did not include extensive particulars about the pool or the traditions, since this would have been common knowledge. This is a curious account, in that the pool is not identified by its Greek name, an angel or messenger participates, the prescription for curing is not in accord to Levitical methods, and other ways that will be discussed herein.

There is also an issue with the various sources used for interpretation, in that the end of verse 3 and all of verse 4 are included in some Bibles but not in others. So the Biblical scholars and expositors have had a challenge in making this account come into alignment with interpretative methods, and many volumes have been written to apply man-made explanations.

In many cases the relatively recent archeological evidence and the history that has been made evident connected with those discoveries does not support the expositors accounts, or at least leads us to reevaluate the conclusions. And that day was the Sabbath. When we look at the history of the pool during the time of Jesus we discover that its purpose and use was not for Jewish cleansing but for pagan worship, particularly Greco-Roman deities of healing, Asclepius, and the Egyptian god Serappis.

After Herod the Great re-built the temple, the pool water had been used in the holy temple. In the year 44 BC, Herod Agrippa built near Bethesda a new wall, which stopped the water supply for the pool. Few years later, the Romans built near it a pagan temple, dedicated to the god Asclepius, a Greek hero — the god of medicine and healing, and to the Egyptian god Serapes. Romans reconfigured the pool as healing baths for Roman soldiers and officials.

But the biblical scholars and expositors have tried to reconcile the account as being at a Jewish controlled site under the watch of God and his angels, for the purpose of divine healing. Some of the Biblical interpretations even go so far as to add words after angel or messenger of the Lord in verse 4. When one realizes that this is a pagan god worshiping pool one can easily reason that the angel or messenger would not be of God but would be of the fallen angel, or a demon conjured by a satanic inspired pagan priest.

That is, if it the water was troubled stirred by an divine source at all, because there is evidence that it could have been under the direct control of pool management, there being ducts to channel water from the upper pool to the lower pool. How would people have come to be informed of the tradition and to believe the tradition of the stirred or troubled waters and subsequent healing? Were they partaking in the pagan practices or were they lying in wait to catch someone being healed on the Sabbath?

In this account Jesus entered the pagan worship area in direct confrontation to the Roman officials and priests. Jesus addressed the most long standing case, the man who had been ill for 38 years.

Perhaps it was an appeal that Jesus might help him into the pool. Certainly, Jesus has the ability to heal, but did he have to heal in this instance. What followed this incident is the more important part of scripture.

Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form. We were in Israel a few months ago and when we came to Bethesda I recognized it from my readings in BAR but also found the real thing much easier to understand. It is a complicated site and for once the church building associated with it St.

It had the finest acoustics I have ever heard. It turned our tour group into a world- class choir! Also you need to appreciate how you are right outside the north walls of the Temple Mount.