Hi gwetsam,
I did a little research on the pools at Bathesda and found that archaeologists have excavated the site. Here’s what they discovered.
From Yale Divinity School - divdl.library.yale.edu:
Between 150 BCE and 70 CE, a popular healing center was located in this area… The baths, grottos and a water cistern were arranged for medicinal and religious purposes. After bathing, patients could sleep in a grotto. “Priests” were available to interpret dreams as part of the healing ritual.
And from Bible Archaeology.org:
It is known that there was a healing shrine in the area during the Late Roman period. This shrine, connected to the healing cult, was in rock hewn caves, with three or four steps leading down to them. A clay votive foot, thanking the god for healing, and a stature of a human head with the body of a snake, probably Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, were discovered in the excavations.
The pool of Bethesda was a shrine to Asclepius, and what was going on there matches the ritual of Asclepius - the Greek god of healing. A couple centuries after Jesus, the Romans replaced the bath and grottos with a full-fledged temple to Asclepius.
Now it makes much more sense why a misguided, though sincere, transcriber would later try to give virtue to the story by adding the line about an angel in verse 4, "From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters." Kind of adds a whole new perspective to the story in John 5.
It's interesting in this account that the man had no faith in Jesus and didn't even appear to know who He was (John 15:13). Sometimes Jesus healed simply because he saw people in need and had compassion on them, He shows no partiality, as in Matthew 14.
Mat 14:14 And when Jesus went out He saw a great multitude; and He was moved with compassion for them, and healed their sick.
The pool of Bethesda was located just north of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. People started coming there some 150 years before Jesus was born, convinced the waters of Bethesda possessed healing properties. Jerusalem seems to have many diverse religions and obviously pagan worship and practices. The pool still drew a crowd in Jesus’ day.
John 5:2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches.
v. 3 In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. (that part of 3 is also spurious)
It seems that Jesus may have approached this place to show them that here was One so much greater than their belief in this false god. This man did not even know Him and had been waiting 38 years on his god who would/could not heal him because he was not fast enough to get in the pool... but Jesus healed him instantly on the spot. I think Jesus came there with this miracle that was right in the face of their worship of this false god and their superstition of healing.
John 5:6 When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, "Do you want to be made well?"
John 5:8 Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your bed and walk."
mercy, peace and love
Kat
Author
Topic: Trouble understanding the angel that troubled the water (Read 4870 times)