Though discovered more than a decade ago, the pool of Siloam continues to make headlines, most recently in an analysis by author and speaker Eric Metaxas.
In John 9, Jesus spat in the dirt, rubbed the mud on a blind man's eyes and then commanded him to go wash in the Pool of Siloam.
Workers stumbled upon this very pool in 2005 while repairing sewage pipes.
"Scholars have said that there wasn't a Pool of Siloam and that John was using a religious conceit" to illustrate a point, New Testament scholar James H. Charlesworth told the Los Angeles Times. "Now we have found the Pool of Siloam ... exactly where John said it was..."
Finding the Pool of Siloam
The Gospel of John chapter nine tells the story of Jesus’ healing of a man born blind. After telling his disciples that the man’s blindness had nothing to do with either the man’s sins or those of his parents, Jesus applied mud to the man’s eyes and told him to wash it off at the Pool of Siloam.
Since at least the fifth century, Christians had identified a spot in Jerusalem as the Pool of Siloam and the site of the miracle. But it was not until a decade ago that archaeologists found what they are certain is the ancient pool of Siloam.
Like so many such finds, it was almost by accident. During construction work to repair a water pipe near the Temple Mount, Israeli archaeologists Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron found “two ancient stone steps.”
According to Biblical Archaeology Review, “Further excavation revealed that they were part of a monumental pool from the Second Temple period, the period in which Jesus lived.” The pool was trapezoidal in shape and 225 feet long.