by the Rev. David B. Smith

People in Chicago like to joke that they have just two seasons: winter and road construction. But around the world, cities take advantage of warm summer weather to repair roads.

That's exactly what was going on in June 2004 in the Holy Land. The city of Jerusalem needed to repair a drainage pipe before the fall rains came. City engineers sent out a team of workers with heavy equipment to dig up the damaged pipe and replace it. In Jerusalem no one does any digging without an archaeologist standing close by.

As the city workers dug, they soon uncovered two sets of stone steps. The digging stopped immediately. Archaeologists Eli Shukrun and Ronny Reich evaluated the site and found it to be the Pool of Siloam from the time of Jesus.

Miracle Pool

Maybe you remember hearing about the Pool of Siloam in the Bible. The Gospel of John tells the story of Jesus healing the man born blind. Jesus made clay by spitting on the ground. Then He rubbed the clay on the blind man's eyes. Finally, Jesus told the man to go wash in the Pool of Siloam. The blind man followed Jesus' instructions and went home seeing (John 9:7,11).

With such an important find, the city of Jerusalem gave Shukrun and Reich permission to excavate the site. The archaeologists had to hurry because the rains were coming, and the pipe still had to be fixed. Throughout the centuries, these same rains had filled the pool with as much as 10 feet of mud.

Working as fast as they could, Shukrun and Reich discovered three separate sets of stairs leading into the pool. Each set contained five steps that ended at a landing. A last set of steps descended into the bottom of the pool.

The archaeologists uncovered one complete side and found it was 225 feet long. That's as long as one-and-a- half Olympic-sized swimming pools. Estimating the depth of the pool at about 6 feet, they discovered it would hold nearly 1 million gallons of water.

So what was the Pool of Siloam used for? No one knows for sure. Filled by the Gihon spring by two aqueducts, including Hezekiah's Tunnel (see “Bible Records”), the pool may have provided water for pilgrims who came to Jerusalem every year for Passover and other holidays.

Pooling Facts

In addition to carefully uncovering a discovery, archaeologists must try to accurately date what they find. They start by looking for clues.

Shukrun and Reich pulled out metal detectors and started searching. They found four coins in the plaster beneath the steps that dated the pool to the time of its construction. The coins were minted during the reign of Alexander Janus—one of the last Jewish kings before Rome took over Jerusalem. Pottery and more coins pointed to how long the pool was in use. They dated to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

That means the pool was built about 80 years before Jesus' birth and remained in use until the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem.

After Jerusalem's destruction, this part of the city wasn't lived in for hundreds of years and rains slowly filled the pool with mud.

Christians eventually returned to the area but couldn't find the pool. They constructed another one at the end of Hezekiah's tunnel and called it Siloam. They even built a church near it. From then until now, the Pool of Siloam remained hidden under the mud.

But three years ago, the real pool was discovered. Some experts feel it may be the archaeological discovery of the decade. And it certainly adds a splash of credibility to the truth found in the Bible.

Bible Records

The Pool of Siloam is first mentioned in 2 Kings 20:20 and 2 Chronicles 32:30. Second Kings says King Hezekiah built a pool and the passage in Chronicles gives the location—the west side of the City of David. The prophet Isaiah, who lived at the same time as Hezekiah, mentions the waters of Shiloah (Siloam) in Isaiah 8:6.

When the Israelites returned from Babylon, Nehemiah and Ezra led them to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. In Nehemiah 3:15, it says Shallun rebuilt the fountain gate and the wall of the Pool of Siloam. This is the same location mentioned in 2 Chronicles and is close to the area where the pool of Jesus' day was located.

In the New Testament, John's Gospel is the only place where the Pool of Siloam is mentioned.

	Q: Why did the basketball player put his cookie in the milk? A: Because he loved to dunk. Jacob P., 5, Michigan Clubhouse Jr. Click here to subscribe