Featured Image Credit: FOX News/City of David Foundation
Topics: World News
Jess Hardiman
A biblical site where Jesus is said to have ‘healed a blind man’ has been unearthed for the first time in 2,000 years.
The Pool of Siloam is a historical site in Wadi Hilweh - a neighborhood archaeologists believe is the original site of Jerusalem - south of the walls of Jerusalem's Old City.
Recent efforts have seen huge developments in the excavation of the site, with a dig team discovering a set of steps leading down to the pool.
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Ze’ev Orenstein, director of International Affairs - City of David Foundation, told Fox News Digital: "The ongoing excavations within the City of David - the historic site of Biblical Jerusalem - particularly of the Pool of Siloam and the Pilgrimage Road, serve as one of the greatest affirmations of that heritage and the millennia-old bond Jews and Christians have with Jerusalem.
"Not simply as a matter of faith, but as a matter of fact."
The Pool of Siloam was built as part of Jerusalem’s water system about 2,700 years ago in the 8th Century BC, during the reign of King Hezekia.
It is famous for being the spot where Jesus restored the sight of a blind man, as cited in a passage in the Gospel of John.
The entire 1.25-acre site is being fully excavated, but one section of the pool is set to become accessible to the public in the near future.
Orenstein continued: "The half-mile running through the City of David, from the Pool of Siloam in the south, continuing along the Pilgrimage Road, up to the footsteps of the Western Wall, Southern Steps and Temple Mount, represents the most significant half-mile on the planet.
"There is no half-mile anywhere on Earth which means more to more people - not to millions, but to billions - than the half-mile that is the City of David.”
The pool was first revealed back in 2004 by chance, when work being carried out by the Hagihon water company uncovered the steps - in turn prompting a survey to be launched by The Israel Antiquities Authority.
Orenstein said visitors can witness the biblical site for themselves in just a few years, and will be able to ‘see with their own eyes, touch with their own hands, and walk with their own feet upon the very stones their ancestors walked thousands of years ago, as they made their way to Jerusalem on pilgrimage’.