John describes a Jerusalem pool with the oddly specific count of five colonnades. For centuries no such five-sided wonder was known, and critics took the detail as symbolic invention by an author who had never seen the city. Excavation found the answer to be more mundane and more satisfying: two rectangular basins side by side, porticoes on the four outer sides and a fifth across the dividing wall between them. Five colonnades — an architectural detail only someone who knew the real place would write.
- What it is
- A monumental twin-basin pool complex north of the Temple Mount
- Date of artifact
- in use in the 1st century AD
- Discovered
- beside the Church of St Anne, Jerusalem, 1888 (Conrad Schick (first traces); fully excavated through the 20th century)
- Where it is now
- In situ, Jerusalem
- Related to
- The healing of the paralysed man at a pool “with five colonnades”
- Scripture
- John 5:2–9
What this find showsThe pool existed exactly as John describes it, arguing that the Gospel rests on accurate first-hand knowledge of pre-AD 70 Jerusalem.
What it does not proveLocating the pool does not verify the healing that John sets beside it — geography can be confirmed; a miracle cannot be excavated.
Sources & further reading