LiTERATDRE.— Robinson, SnP^ i. 431^33 ; Guirin, Palestine,
LUCIEN Gautier.
BETHANY.— 2. See Bethabara.
EETHESDA.- Jn 5^ ' Now there is in Jeru.salem by the sheep-ga^e (iirl rrj wpo^ariKji) a pool, which is called iu Hebrew Bethesda, having live porches'
194
BETHESDA
BETHESDA
(RV). Instead of BTjeeo-Si (TK), the most ancient authorities have other spellings, as X BijeiaBd, L and Eus. Bijfaed (? for 6776^01*0 = Ko:! n'3 'house of the olive'), B B7)e<rai3d, D BeX^eBd. As to tlie deriva- tion, Delitzsch suggests peox n'3 ' house of pillars,' and Calvin Njjifix n"3 ' house of outpouring ' ; but the most natural'etymology is n^pn n'3 'house of mercy,' possibly in allusion to the munificence of some charitable person who had these porches built to shelter the sick, or to the goodness of God in pro- viding this healing spring.
As the adjective Trpo/SaTiKJj, ^pertaining to sheep,' requires some substantive to be introduced, the A V supplies ' market,' the RV ' gate.' Since there is no reference to any sheep-market in the OT, while the sheep - gate is repeatedly referred to (Neh 3'- '■>■■ 12»»), the latter method of supplying the sense is the more probable one. Now the sheep- gate is known to have been north of the Temple, and, as Bovet says, ' the small cattle which entered Jerusalem came there certainly by the east ; for it is on this side that the immense pastures of the wilderness of Judaea lie.' The modern St. Stephen's Gate answers to these data. It is at the northeast angle of the Temple area, and is the gate through which the Bedawln still lead their nocks to Jerusalem for sale. We must therefore look for the Pool of Bethesda in this vicinity, and may at once eliminate several proposed identifica- tions elsewhere, such as the Hainmdm esh-Shifd, near the 'Gate of the Cotton Merchants,' about the middle of the west side of the Temple area, where there is a pool with pillars and masonry, some sixty feet below the present surface, the waters of which are still supposed to possess heal- ing properties (Furrer) ; and the Pool of Siloam, where the remains of four columns in the east wall, with four others in the centre, ' show that a structure with five openings or porches might easily have been erected ' ( Alford) ; and the Foun- tain of the Virgin, the intermittent spring at the bottom of a deep cavern at the foot of the Ophel slope southeast of the Temple (Robinson). These are all too far from the sheep-gate as probably identified above.
Conder, who adopts the suggestion of Robinson that Bethesda was at the present Fountain of the Virgin, says, ' This answers the requirements that it still presents the phenomenon of intermittent " troubling of the water, ' which overflows from a natural syphon under the cave, and that it is still the custom of the Jews to batlie in the waters of the cave, when this overflow occurs, for the cure of rheumatism and of other disorders.' Against this view Grove (Smith's DB^, art. 'Bethesda') and Barclay (City of the Great King, 325) urge the inaccessibility of the deep subterranean water to invalids, the confined size of the pool, and the difficulty of finding room for the five porches capable of accommodating ' a multitude ' ; and to the present writer, examining the cave in person, these objections seemed conclusive, apart from the difficulty of the locality.
Turning now to the neighbourhood of the sheep- gate, we find three proposed identifications. (1) Modern tradition identifies Bethesda with the Birket Israil, an empty reservoir, 360 feet long, 120 feet wide, and 80 "feet deep, half filled with rubbish, whicli lies close to St. Stephen's Gate and under the north-east wall of the Haram area.
(2) Warren and others would place Bethesda at the so-called Twin Pools, in the ditch at the north- west angle of Antonia, under the convent of the Sisters of Zion. Neither of these can be the true site, as both the Birket Israil and the Twin Pools were constructed after the events narrated in Jn 5.
(3) In 1872 it was pointed out by M. Clermont- Ganneau that ' the Pool of Bethesda should be
sought near the Church of St. Anne, where an old tradition has placed the house of the mother of Mary, calling it Beit Hanna, " House of Anne." This expression is exactly identical with Bethesda, both expressions signifying "house of mercy, or compassion." ' Sixteen years later this anticipation was verified by the discovery of what is now very generally conceded to be the ancient Pool of Bethesda, a short distance north-west of the pre- sent Church of St. Anne. In the autumn of 1888, ' certain works carried on by the Algerian monks laid bare a large tank or cistern cut in the rock to a depth of 30 feet, and Herr Schick recognized this as the Pool of Bethesda. It is 55 feet long from east to west, and measures 12J feet in breadth. A flight of twenty-four steps leads down into the pool from the eastern scarp of rock. Herr Schick, who at once saw the great interest of this dis- covery, soon found a sister-pool, lying end to end, 60 feet long, and of the same breadth as the first. The first pool was arched in by five arches, while five corresponding porches ran along the side of the pool. At a later period a church was built over the pool by the Crusaders, and they seem to have been so far impressed by the fact of five arches below that they shaped their crypt into five arches in imitation. They left an opening for getting down to the water ; and further, as the crowning proof that they regarded the pool as Bethesda, they painted on the wall of the crypt a fresco representing the angel troubling the water of the pool.' (Geo. St. Clair, Buried Cities and Bible Countries, 327-328. See also PEFSt, July 1888 and Jan. 1891).