ARCHAEOLOGY: THE POOL THAT WAS NOT ...

... supposed to be, turns out to be the pool that is! (I knew that!)

The Pool of Siloam, considered a metaphor in John's Gospel by some New Testament scholars, was in fact a huge basin at the lowest point in the city of Jerusalem.

As the old saying goes: every time an archaeologist turns some dirt, something in the bible is proven to be true ... but it doesn't stop the naysayers.

Recent excavations have uncovered two corners and one side of the pool that stretched for half the length of a football field.

I remember when King Sargon was considered a metaphor and not an historical monarch; then one of the researchers translating clay tablets found in an Ur library discovered not only the name of King Sargon I but also Sargon II ... and, like a good JW, the critics didn't even pause to take a breath, they just moved on to their next apparent biblical flaw.

Some Johannine experts have suggested the story in John 9 of the blind man whom Jesus healed and told to wash in the Pool of Siloam wasn't much more than a metaphor.

"To dismiss John as not historically important is absurd," [James Charlesworth, a professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary,] said. "Now it becomes clear that the Gospel of John does have reliable historical information. We have found there is such a pool, precisely as John describes it."

Tradition has always located the Pool of Siloam near the end of Hezekiah's water tunnel, which dates to the eighth century B.C. The pool under excavation is just a few yards from a much smaller Byzantine-era pool that visitors to the area had been calling the Pool of Siloam.

I love this stuff!

Archaeology; Bible; Biblical studies; Christianity; Gospel of John; Religion;