Nehemia
3:15
The
Fountain Gate was repaired by Shallum son of Col-hozeh, the leader of the
Mizpah district. He rebuilt it, roofed it, set up its doors, and installed its
bolts and bars. Then he repaired the wall of the pool of Siloam near the king’s
garden, and he rebuilt the wall as far as the stairs that descend from the City
of David.
For roughly 2000 years, many considered the pool of
Siloam a mythical place, and the incident where Jesus famously healed a man born
blind, only a parable, a story with a nice moral lesson. People who do
believe that the Bible recounts factual history, identified another water
source and claimed it to be the original pool of Siloam. The problem was that
it was built hundreds of years after Jesus and was far too small for the
function the Bible describes that it had.
In the summer of 2004, workers in Jerusalem were
repairing a broken sewer line just outside the old city of David’s walls, when
they uncovered two ancient stone steps. Just that, leading to nowhere that they
could see. Archaeologists were called in, and they began to uncover step after
step, descending to an area far larger than anyone expected – about 70 metres
along one side, with steps on at least three sides so that crowds could enter
the water from several directions. It has the appearance of a mikvah bath
(where people bathed in running water for purification rituals), big enough for
thousands of pilgrims to purify themselves before continuing their climb up to
the temple to bring their offerings.
The water that flows into this pool comes from the Gihon
spring, through a tunnel. This tunnel was built by Hezekiah about 700 years
before the blind man washed his eyes in those waters, and its construction is
another miracle among the many that is found in the history of Jerusalem. The
archaeologists dated the tunnel to around 700 BC (therefore in Hezekiah’s era),
silencing the sceptics who proclaimed that the tunnel was built much later.
Coins and pottery from the time of Jesus were also found around the pool area.
This is only one of many archaeological discoveries made
in recent times, all confirming the authenticity of biblical accounts, rooting
them in real history with tangible artifacts proving the accuracy of the
stories written in the Bible. These finds keep increasing today in our times,
one discovery rapidly following upon another!
And this led me to consider the words of Jesus found in
Luke 19:39-40 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher,
rebuke your disciples!” “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the
stones will cry out.”
Is this not exactly what is happening now before our very
eyes?
Pearls to ponder:
Start searching and tracking modern archaeological finds
in Israel and stand amazed to see the stones from antiquity crying out that God
and the Bible is real, and not just stories!
