New finds bolster the historicity of John's Gospel

The Pool of Siloam, considered a metaphor in John's Gospel by some New Testament scholars, was in fact a huge basin at the lowest point in the city of Jerusalem. Recent excavations have uncovered two corners and one side of the pool that stretched for half the length of a football field."It's very exciting," James Charlesworth, a professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, told CT. "It's very important for the study of the New Testament."Some Johannine experts have suggested the story in John 9 of the blind man whom Jesus healed and told to wash in the Pool of Siloam wasn't much more than a metaphor."To dismiss John as not historically important is absurd," Charlesworth said. "Now it becomes clear that the Gospel of John does have reliable historical information. We have found there is such a pool, precisely as John describes it."