Place · Landmark
Bethesda
Named in 1 verse, first in John 5:2.
In the Bible
All 1 verse, in Bible order. Text from the Berean Standard Bible; verse numbers follow the KJV.
John
- John 5:2
Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool with five covered colonnades, which in Hebrew is called Bethesda.
Events here
Events the dataset sets at Bethesda. Dates follow its Ussher–Jones reckoning (one of several traditional counts), not established history.
- c. AD 28Bethesda pool healing
Dictionary
From Easton’s Bible Dictionary (1897), as attached to this record by Theographic. Its geography and “modern” descriptions date from the 1890s. Easton wrote in 1897, and some of his views are now debated.
Read Easton’s entry
House of mercy, a reservoir (Gr. kolumbethra, “a swimming bath”) with five porches, close to the sheep-gate or market (Neh. 3:1; John 5:2). Eusebius the historian (A.D. 330) calls it “the sheep-pool.” It is also called “Bethsaida” and “Beth-zatha” (John 5:2, R.V. marg.). Under these “porches” or colonnades were usually a large number of infirm people waiting for the “troubling of the water.” It is usually identified with the modern so-called Fountain of the Virgin, in the valley of the Kidron, and not far from the Pool of Siloam (q.v.); and also with the Birket Israel, a pool near the mouth of the valley which runs into the Kidron south of “St. Stephen’s Gate.” Others again identify it with the twin pools called the “Souterrains,” under the convent of the Sisters of Zion, situated in what must have been the rock-hewn ditch between Bezetha and the fortress of Antonia. But quite recently Schick has discovered a large tank, as sketched here, situated about 100 feet north-west of St. Anne’s Church, which is, as he contends, very probably the Pool of Bethesda. No certainty as to its identification, however, has as yet been arrived at.