Ritual Bath or Swimming Pool?
Jesus spit on the ground, creating some mud with his saliva; he then applied the mud to the eyelids of a beggar who had been blind since birth and told him to bathe in the Pool of Siloam. When the blind man did so, he could see (John 9:1–11). A few years ago, the Pool of Siloam where this miracle occurred was discovered in a Jerusalem excavation.a
Located at the southern end of the City of David (the oldest part of Jerusalem), near the outlet of Hezekiah’s Tunnel, the Pool of Siloam is now a must-see on any trip to the Holy City.
Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron, who are excavating the site on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, have suggested that the Siloam Pool may have been a large public mikveh, or Jewish ritual bath. Not so, says Yoel Elitzur of The Hebrew University in a forthcoming article1: The Pool of Siloam, he says, was probably a public swimming pool!
About some things, however, there is no question. This is surely the Siloam Pool from Jesus’ time. And it is big. Reich and Shukron have excavated one side (presumably one of the short sides) and have reached the corners at either end (). With its three sets of five steps and two landings, this side of the pool, according to Elitzur’s measurement, is 156 feet wide.2 The corners at either end turn a bit more than 90 degrees, so the pool must be trapezoidal, widening as it goes further into the valley.
Nor is there any doubt that it was a magnificent construction with a colonnade on one side. And the steps and landings of the pool are faced with beautifully cut stone pavers.
Thousands of pilgrims would come to Jerusalem on the three Jewish pilgrim festivals: Passover (Pesach), Tabernacles (Sukkoth) and Weeks (Shavuot). They may have camped in the adjacent Kidron Valley. They surely needed to purify themselves before ascending to the Temple Mount. And the Pool of Siloam fulfills all the legal requirements of a mikveh, especially concerning the limitation that requires free-running water.
There is a problem, however: Bathing in a mikveh must be in the nude; the entire body must be immersed while unclothed.
Reich and Shukron, aware of this problem, speculate that mats and wooden poles that have not survived may have been used to create partitions for privacy.
Elitzur is of a different view. He notes that Herod embellished Jerusalem with many of the opulent features of Roman culture, including a theater. Why not a swimming pool? The latter would be less likely to anger Jerusalemites than a theater.
In the Roman world, Elitzur points out, swimming pools were often adjacent to large baths and wrestling rings. As early as the fourth century B.C.E., Rome had its Piscina Publica.
Moreover, a number of palaces that Herod built in Israel had swimming pools. They have been excavated at Caesarea, Jericho, Masada and Herodium. Elitzur suggests that several of Jerusalem’s other large pools may have been used for swimming, rather than for ritual bathing.
I wonder, however, if nudity would have been a problem at the Siloam Pool in Jesus’ time. We usually think of a mikveh in modern times—primarily used by women to purify themselves after menstruation. Men sometimes use a mikveh today but rarely, except in ultra-Orthodox communities. In ancient times, this was probably not the case. It was primarily men who purified themselves in a mikveh. And, even for Jews 2,000 years ago, a bunch of nude men in a mikveh might not have presented a problem.—H.S.