By the great twin-basin Pool of Bethesda near the Sheep Gate of Jerusalem, an angel was traditionally believed to disturb the water periodically — the first to step in afterward was healed. Many sick, blind, lame, and paralysed lay around the porticoes. Among them was a man who had been infirm for thirty-eight years, no one to lift him into the water.
Christ asked him: 'Do you want to be healed?' He replied: 'Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred; while I am going, another steps down before me.' Christ said: 'Rise, take up your pallet, and walk.' He stood, took up his pallet, walked away. It was the Sabbath, and the discourse that follows is the great theological foundation of John 5: 'The Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.' The Pool of Bethesda — long thought a Johannine invention — was rediscovered by archaeologists in 1888 and is one of the most spectacular site-confirmations in Gospel archaeology.