The pool by which the sick man lay was close to the Sheep Gate and was therefore known as the Sheep Pool (Piscina Probatica).
John's reference to "five porches" at the pool seems to indicate that there was a portico on each side of the pool and a fifth on a rock division between its two halves, each 50m/165ft square and 13m/43ft deep.
By the pool, which no doubt originally served as a reservoir of water for the Temple precinct and in the time of Jesus was frequented by the sick and crippled, a temple of Aesculapius, the god of healing whose cult had spread from Epidaurus throughout the ancient world, was built in the second century.
Bethesda was originally the name of a pool in Jerusalem, on the path of the Beth Zeta Vally.
This use of the pools gave the water of the pools a halo of sanctity, and many invalids came to the pools to be healed.
Prior to archeological digs it was identified with the modern so-called Fountain of the Virgin, in the valley of the Kidron, and not far from the Pool of Siloam and also with the Birket Israel, a pool near the mouth of the valley which runs into the Kidron south of St.
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