Healing of the cripple at the Pool of Bethesda
Now it is our turn. Taking their places in the pews, we began our own impromptu hymn fest:
We listened spellbound as the sound of our own voices echoed back to us. The golden stones and Gothic arches around us took our untrained voices and momentarily transformed us into the Robert Shaw Choral. Two more accapella hymns later, we too picked up our cameras and reverted to tourists, but the memory of the awesome experience lingered long afterwards. Someone commented that St. Anne's would be a perfect venue for Gregorian chant. Outside the church entrance we turn right. Crossing the courtyard we now stand above the sun-drenched remains of the Pools of Bethesda (foreground of above photo). Peering downward into the deep pits surrounded by stones, crumbling bricks and broken pillars, Doran says, "These pools are important to Christians because they are the setting for Jesus' miraculous healing of a man crippled for thirty-eight years, recorded only by John:
At the time of Jesus, the pool
"which in Aramaic is called Bethesda," was outside the city walls,
near the "Sheep Gate." In reality, the Pool of Bethesda ("house
of mercy" or "flowing water") was a pair of large rectangular
water reservoirs with steps going d Right, section of the model of 1st century AD Jerusalem at the Holyland Hotel showing the Pool of Bethesda with its "five covered colonnades;" also note the road entering the Sheep Gate and the Antonia Fortress, where the Roman garrison was stationed in Jerusalem. The meaning of the name Bethesda (Bethzatha in RSV) is not completely clear. Some say it comes from the Hebrew words bayith, meaning "house," and hesed, meaning "mercy." But others connect it to the 1st century when this area of the city and the olive groves beyond were part of a new suburb called "Bezetha" (from Hebrew bayith and zayith, "house of the olive"), that was developing to the north of the city walls. The pools were a kind of spa where healings were thought to take place, and many sick and crippled people gathered there in the hope of being cured. When Jesus asked the man if he wanted "to get well," he replied, "I have no-one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred." The use of this phrase suggests several things: that the pool was fed by a spring which gushed periodically; that its healing properties were thought to be greater when the water moved; that the Gospel was written to a Greek audience, because there was a common belief in the Greek world that moving water was associated with the gods and with healing (as you may recall from our earlier stop at Banias/Caesarea Philippi at one of the main sources of the Jordan River north of the Sea of Galilee). But, rather than help the man down into the pool, Jesus healed him with a simple command, proving his divine authority. Only after the healing are we told that it was the Sabbath and when the man appears at the Temple carrying his mat he is confronted by Jews (probably Pharisees) whose only concern is for the man's violation of strict regulations specified in the Mishnah forbidding all forms of labor on the Sabbath. The former cripple then escaped any guilt by passing the blame to Jesus who healed him, to which Jesus responded, "My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." (John 5:17) In John's Gospel this event marks a turning point in Jesus' life because the Jewish authorities became openly hostile toward him, even seeking to kill him, because he claimed to have a special relationship with God—a relationship so close as to make himself "equal with God." (John 5:18)
Right, looking down into the excavations of the Pools of Bethesda, with remains of later structures built on the site in later times. |
Clustered around our faithful guide
Doran, we find ourselves this morning walking up the fairly steep access
road leading to the Lions Gate (right). Today,
the only eastern entrance to the Old City, it is named for the relief carvings
of two pairs of lions, the emblems of the Mameluke sultan Baybars (260-1277
AD), which the architects of the Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent,
recycled, placing them on either side of the entrance arch. Built in 1538
AD, Suleiman called it Bab al-Ghor ("Jordan Gate"), but the name
never took hold. Various groups refer to it by other names. Some Christian
Arabs call it Bab Sittna Miriam ("the Gate of Our Lady Mary")
in reference to a tradition that it leads to the tomb of the Virgin Mary.
Christians also call it St. Stephen's Gate because tradition holds that
Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was stoned to death nearby; however,
the story and the name were originally attached to the Damascus Gate. Others
call it the Bab al-Riha, the Jericho Gate, because the road to Jericho begins
from here. At the time of Jeremiah, there was a gate at or nearby known
as the Gate of Benjamin, were the road to the territory of Benjamin began.
Somewhat to the west was the Sheep Gate of Jesus' day, where the sheep headed
for sacrificial slaughter in the Temple were brought for washing in the
nearby pools of Bethesda. Like the Jaffa Gate in the southern wall, it originally
had an L-shaped internal structure with a 90° bend to prevent a direct
breach by invaders. During the British Mandate it was opened to allow vehicle
access to the Austrian Hospital inside. The Lions Gate faces the Mount of
Olives and Gethsemane directly across the Kidron Valley and opens onto the
street leading to the first stations of the cross on the Via Dolorosa.
Just inside the gate,
we pass through a portal on our right into the tranquil courtyard of the
Church of St. Anne (right), built by Crusaders
in 1142 AD. Stepping inside the church we heard what sounded like the church's
chancel choir singing in English. Instead, we saw only a small group of
fellow Americans singing at the top of the lungs... "Hold thou thy
cross before my closing eyes, Shine through the gloom and point me to the
skies..." As they sang, their voices bounced off the walls and echoed
through the cavernous sanctuary. Their song completed, they reverted to
tourists and began snapping photos, before exiting into the courtyard to
resume their pilgrimage.
own into the water. John described it
as "surrounded by five covered colonnades," indicating that there
was a covered portico on each side of the pool, with a fifth running along
a wide rock partition between its two halves.
The "Sheep Gate" of John's Gospel no longer exists. Today,
the excavated site of the Pool of Bethesda (now dry) is within the city
walls, just inside the Lions Gate. It is one of a few places in Jerusalem
where we can say with absolute certainty that Jesus actually stood (albeit
at a lower level). Over the centuries since the time of Jesus, several structures
have been built on the site including a Roman temple dedicated to Asclepius
(the Greek god of healing), replaced in the 5th century by a Byzantine church
built by the Empress Eudoxia and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It was destroyed
in 1009 by Caliph al-Hakim. In the 12th century AD, the Crusaders built
the smaller Church of the Paralytic over what had been the northern nave
of the Byzantine church. The remains of these structures are identified
by various colored signs as you make the circuit around the excavations.
m
inside the perimeter of the city walls. Even by today's standards the tunnel
was an extraordinary engineering achievement and was dug by workers tunneling
with pickaxes from both ends simultaneously. It may be the pool referred
to as the "reservoir between the two walls" in Isaiah 22:9-11,
and referred to elsewhere as the "Upper Pool" (see 2Kings 18:17,
Isaiah 7:3 and Isaiah 36:2).
now marks the site was built in the 1890s. The present
pool lies deep in a narrow stone-lined pit, occupying only the central part
of the Byzantine pool. It still receives water from Hezekiah's Tunnel under
an arch at its north end. Moslems still recognize the pool as a holy place
and Arab women wash their cloths while their children play in the water.
We are told that on Fridays, you can sometimes see men and women in the
shadow of a minaret pouring water over themselves in hope of being healed
from some illness. Jews, too, visit the site on the Feast of the Tabernacles.
The
discovery puts a new spotlight on what is called the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a
trip that religious law required ancient Jews to make at least once a year, said
archaeologist Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa, who excavated the site.