Aug 9, 2005 / 22:00 pm
Workers in Old Jerusalem have stumbled onto the ruins of the Pool of Siloam, where Jesus, in the Gospel of John, heals a man blind from birth--the new find is being praised as a discovery which helps to prove the historical authenticity of the Bible.
James H. Charlesworth, a New Testament scholar at the Princeton Theological Seminary, was quoted by the Los Angeles Times saying, "Scholars have said that there wasn't a Pool of Siloam and that John was using a religious conceit" to illustrate a point…"Now we have found the Pool of Siloam … exactly where John said it was."
A gospel that was thought to be "pure theology is now shown to be grounded in history," he added.
Sewer workers discovered the pool some 200 yards from another Pool of Siloam, this one constructed somewhere between 400 and 460 AD by the Empress Eudocia of Byzantium, who, experts say, commissioned the rebuilding of several biblical sites.