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The pool of Siloam
Photo: BiblePlaces.com

The Pool of Siloam

Chapter 9 of John's Gospel, verses 1-11, record how
Jesus heals a man who had been born blind.  He does this by spitting
on the ground, making mud with the saliva, smearing it on the man's eyes.
Then he tells the man to go and wash in a pool called 'Siloam'.  The
man washes the mud off, and regains his sight.

The pool of Siloam was (and still is) a real place in Jerusalem, at the
southern end of the tunnel that king Hezekiah built to bring water into
the city when it was under threat of being beseiged by the Assyrians. In
'The Historical reliability of John's Gospel' (page 152), Craig Blomberg
says:

Archaeologists have even more confidence about having
identified the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem than they do about the pool of
Bethesda. Originally part of Hezekiah's tunnel (2 Kings chapter 20 verse 20, 2 Chronicles chapter 32 verse 30), Siloam was excavated
in 1880, complete with an inscription enabling its identification.

For more about the pool of Siloam and Hezekiah's tunnel, see page 126
of 'Discoveries
from Bible Times', by Professor Alan Millard

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