[285] “Ant.,” XX. ix. 7; John ii. 20. This date would be 24 or 27 A. D., reckoning from foundation.

CHAPTER VII
THE GOSPEL SITES

Passover being finished, and the Galileans having set out in a pilgrim caravan for their homes in the north, the Temple courts were no longer crowded, and the rabbis sat in the spring sunshine on the steps of the great Gate Nicanor, teaching their pupils as usual.[286] But with them sate that wondrous Child “in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions.” Across the broad “Court of the Women” came the anxious mother, to the gate where twelve years before she had offered “a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord: a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons,” and where the Babe was held in the arms of Simeon, son of the famous Hillel. The gentle reproach, “Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing,” received the gentle answer, “How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be among my father’s people?”

This scene in the Temple court is one of the very few as to which we can have no doubt, though the steps of Nicanor are hidden from us, under the platform, to-day. Speaking generally, it is notable that the Gospels do not define the exact position of places, in and near Jerusalem, to which they refer in passing. The first Christians turned their eyes up to heaven, not down to earth. They thought of the return of their Master, not of the Way of Sorrow, the Place of the Skull, or the empty tomb. They knew, and their first readers knew, where these were, but to us they have left no indication. We do not know where was the “upper chamber” in which our Lord ate His last supper of the Passover. We do not know where was the little “farm” Gethsemane—the “oil-press”—except that it was a “garden” beyond the valley of the Kidron. We can only conjecture the sites of the Prætorium, or of the palaces where Annas and Caiaphas lived, and where Herod Antipas lodged as a Galilean visitor at the time of the Passover. We are uncertain as to where the Pool of Bethesda may have been, and we dispute as to the Way of Sorrow, the Mount of Calvary, and the Sepulchre. It is well that we should not know; and that we should not localise at any footprint, or on any rock, that which was meant to be for all the world. Yet we cannot help guessing and searching, if by any means we may really find the places where the feet of Jesus must have trodden the hard, rough rocks, or the smooth pavement of Antonia. We experience the same doubts and difficulties which early pilgrims felt, and we must not forget that they had no more to guide them than we have when we study the Gospels. They had indeed less knowledge, because they did not see, as we do, that the valleys had been filled by the ruins of the ancient city long before their day. Some thought that the Prætorium was Antonia, others thought later that it was on Zion. They changed the site of Bethesda more than once. They always thought it necessary to suppose that the city must have been much increased in size by Hadrian, because their bishops showed them the holy tomb and Calvary within the Jerusalem of their own time.

KNOWN SITES

There are some places mentioned in the Gospels as to which we have roughly some idea of position. We know that the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of those that sold doves, were somewhere in the outer court of the Temple. The “treasury” was one of those boxes, placed in the Court of the Women, where offerings of money—even the two mites of the widow—might be made. “Solomon’s Porch” was apparently the cloister on the eastern wall, and is not to be confused with the “Beautiful Gate” (Kîpunos) on the west.[287] We can also picture to ourselves the view of Jerusalem seen from Olivet when the disciples pointed to the mighty masonry of the Holy House, of which not one stone is left standing on another.[288] “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee.... Behold, your House is left unto you desolate.” But it is because of the history of that day of sin and sorrow, when the three crosses were raised in the cold morning after Passover night, that we now read and write so much about the Holy City; and our present inquiry is the most important of all.

The white chalky slopes of Olivet were terraced and dotted with grey olive trees then as now, with here and there a fig garden and a solitary palm. But looking west there was only hard rock under grey walls—hard and stubborn as the hearts of the people, and as unlike the purple copses and dove-haunted oak woods of Galilee as was the sacerdotalism of priests to the teaching of the Son of Man. Above the mighty ramparts the great “wing wall” (not a “pinnacle”) of the House itself towered 150 feet over the gate towers and cloisters of the inner court. The black smoke of the fig-tree logs rose high above the great Altar. The scarps of Antonia frowned down on the Temple from the north. Beyond these great buildings were the white-washed domes of the city, and farther yet the great square towers by Herod’s palace. Perhaps a glimpse might be caught of the trees in its gardens, and of the wicked bronze statues from which its fountains poured; of the great halls, and cloisters, and fluttering doves. And outside, to the north, was the precipice and rounded summit of the Place of a Skull. Below the feet of the disciples was the Kidron gorge, the sepulchre of King Alexander cut in its cliff, and perhaps hard by in the flatter ground to its north the olive-yard of Gethsemane, and the rocky slope of the Agony to come; while on the western side was the spring of Bethesda, with its great reservoir in front, and its five cloisters, near the “Sheep Place,” where the flocks were gathered to the watering.

BETHESDA

As regards this last site there is, of course, much difference of opinion. Bethesda could not be at Siloam, for that pool is mentioned by its old name in the same Gospel.[289] Bethesda in Hebrew means “the house of the stream,” and all we know about it is that it was near the “Sheep Place,” and that it had “five cloisters.” Here the blind, halt, and withered lay “waiting for the disturbance of the waters.” It is remarkable that the text of the three oldest manuscripts of the fourth Gospel—the Alexandrian, Vatican, and Sinaitic uncials—here differs in several respects from that of later copies; and the three differ from one another. The Alexandrian alone has the words, “for an angel of the Lord washed at a certain season in the pool,” instead of the verse as it stands in our English Bible. The Sinaitic text calls it “a sheep pool,” and names it Bethzatha. The Vatican reads Bethsaida; and, strangely enough, all three uncials omit the words “waiting for the disturbance of the water,” for it is very unlikely that this remarkable indication was not given in the original. It evidently existed in some text as early as 330 A. D. (that is, earlier than either of the uncials), for the first pilgrim, who places Bethsaida at the “Twin Pools,” says that “they have five porches where those who had been ill for many years were healed, and the water was perturbed as though boiling.” A fifth-century writer speaks of the water as being red, and probably follows Eusebius and Jerome, who say: “Twin pools are shown, one of which is usually filled by the winter rains, but the other in wondrous wise is red, as though the bloody water testified to the ancient use; for they say that the victims used to be washed therein by the priests, for which cause it was named”—that is, “the Sheep Pool.”[290]

It is beyond dispute that the Twin Pools in the Antonia fosse—perhaps the Strouthios, or “Bird’s Pool” of Josephus, already cut by Herod—were those to which the fourth-century tradition pointed, and their claims are thus superior to those of the twelfth-century site farther north, or of the Templars’ site—the modern Birket Isrâîl—to the east. The latter pretty certainly did not exist till the time of Hadrian at earliest. It is also clear that the eastern of the two pools might depend on the rains, and that the western, which was fed by the aqueduct that led from outside the city walls where, on the north-west, the rain-water of the northern fosse was collected, may have been red and muddy from the red surface soil washed down. But this hardly describes the sudden “disturbance” for which the sick waited. It has been supposed that the Twin Pools were adorned by pillars, on four sides and on the central rock wall which divides them; but no remains of such pillars exist now on the site, and the central wall is less than 6 feet wide, and would therefore only serve to support a single line of columns, which does not represent a stoa, or “cloister,” such as is mentioned in the Gospel. Thus even the oldest traditional site does not fully meet all requirements. There is only one place which seems to do so—namely, the Kidron spring, now called by Christians “the Virgin’s Well,” and by Arabs “the Mother of Steps.” Here, as already described, occurs an intermittent “disturbance of the waters,” and the Jews still bathe in the cavern when the water suddenly surges up to fill it. They say that it is a cure for rheumatism. Josephus calls this spring “Solomon’s Pool,” using the same word (Kolumbêthra) used in the Gospel, and he evidently regarded it as the Gihon where Solomon was anointed. Till of late it might have been objected that there was no reservoir here such as might have been surrounded by five cloisters above the steps which led to the “troubled” waters of Bethesda. But the excavations of 1902—already noticed—showed that a large pool formerly existed before the cave, under the present mound with its two modern flights of steps leading down to the water. The only real objection to this site thus disappears, and we may regard Bethesda as having been the later name of the older Gihon, and as one of the few well-fixed Gospel sites.