There may in this instance, however, have been other reasons also for their silence. It has already been indicated that, during the summer of Christ's first Galilean ministry, when Capernaum was His centre of action, the disciples had returned to their homes and usual avocations, while Jesus moved about chiefly alone and unattended. This explains the circumstance of a second call, even to His most intimate and closest followers. It also accords best with that gradual development in Christ's activity, which commencing with the more private teaching of the new Preacher of Righteousness in the villages by the lake, or in the Synagogues, expanded into that publicity in which He at last appears, surrounded by His Apostles, attended by the loving ministry of those to whom He had brought healing of body or soul, and followed by a multitude which everywhere pressed around Him for teaching and help.
This more public activity commenced with the return of Jesus from the Unknown Feast' in Jerusalem. There He had, in answer to the challenge of the Jewish authorities, for the first time set forth His Messianic claims in all their fulness. And there, also, He had for the first time encountered that active persecution unto death, of which Golgotha was the logical outcome. This Feast, then, was the time of critical decision. Accordingly, as involving the separation from the old state and the commencement of a new condition of things, it was immediately followed by the call of His disciples to a new Apostleship. In this view, we can also better understand the briefness of the notices of His first Galilean ministry, and how, after Christ's return from that Feast, His teaching became more full, and the display of His miraculous power more constant and public.
It seems only congruous, accordant with all the great decisive steps of Him in Whose footprints the disciples trod, only after He had marked them, as it were, with His Blood, that He should have gone up to that Feast alone and unattended. That such had been the case, has been inferred by some from this, that the narrative of the healing of the impotent man reads so Jewish, that the account of it appears to have been derived by St. John from a Jew at Jerusalem. [2214] [2215] Others [2216] have come to the same conclusion from the meagreness of details about the event. But it seems implied in the narrative itself, and the marked and exceptional absence of any reference to disciples leads to the obvious conclusion, that they had not been with their Master.
But, if Jesus was alone and unattended at the Feast, the question arises, whence the report was derived of what He said in reply to the challenge of the Jews? Here the answer naturally suggests itself, that the Master Himself may, at some later period of His life - perhaps during His last stay in Jerusalem - have communicated to His disciples, or else to him who stood nearest to Him, the details of what had passed on the first occasion when the Jewish authorities had sought to extinguish His Messianic claims in His blood. If that communication was made when Jesus was about to be offered up, it would also account for what otherwise might seem a difficulty: the very developed form of expression in which His relation to the Father, and His own Office and Power, are presented. We can understand how, from the very first, all this should have been laid before the teachers of Israel. But in view of the organic development of Christ's teaching, we could scarcely expect it to have been expressed in such very full terms, till near the close of His Ministry. [2217]
But we are anticipating. The narrative transports us at once to what, at the time, seems to have been a well-known locality in Jerusalem, though all attempts to identify it, or even to explain the name Bethesda, have hitherto failed. All we know is, that it was a pool enclosed within five porches, by the sheep-market, presumably close to the Sheep-Gate.' [2218] This, as seems most likely, opened from the busy northern suburb of markets, bazaars, and workshops, eastwards upon the road which led over the Mount of Olives and Bethany to Jericho. [2219] In that case, most probability would attach to the identification of the Pool Bethesda with a pool somewhat north of the so-called Birket Israîl. At present it is wholly filled with rubbish, but in the time of the Crusaders it seems to have borne the name of the Sheep-pond, and, it was thought, traces of the five porches could still be detected. Be this as it may, it certainly bore in the Hebrew' - or rather Aramæan - tongue,' the name Bethesda. No doubt this name was designative, though the common explanations - Beth Chisda (so most modern writers, and Watkins) House of Mercy' (?), Beth Istebha ({hebrew}, Delitzsch), House of Porches,' and Beth Zeytha (Westcott) House of the Olive' - seem all unsatisfactory. More probability attaches to the rendering Beth Asutha (Wünsche), or Beth Asyatha, House of Healing.' But as this derivation offers linguistic difficulties, we would suggest that the second part of the name (Beth-Esda) was really a Greek word Aramaised. Here two different derivations suggest themselves. The root-word of Esda might either express to become well' - Beth sthai - or something akin to the Rabbinic Zit [2220] ({hebrew}=zthi). In that case, the designation would agree with an ancient reading of the name, Bethzatha. Or else, the name Bethesda might combine, according to a not uncommon Rabbinic practice, the Hebrew Beth with some Aramaised form derived from the Greek word zo, to boil' or bubble up' (subst. zsis); in which case it would mean the House of Bubbling-up,' viz. water. Any of the three derivations just suggested would not only give an apt designation for the pool, but explain why St. John, contrary to his usual practice, does not give a Greek equivalent for a Hebrew term.