BETHSAIDA (Bethesda, Bezatha, Bethzatha). — Pool of Jerusalem, near which Jesus healed the man who had been paralysed for 38 years (Io. 5, 1-9). The Greek text (the Vulgate is inaccurate) calls it near the [sheep] gate (= “of the sheep”: cf. Neh. 3, 1.31; 12, 38). Its name has been preserved in three forms: the 1st (of the Vulgate): Βηθοατιδά = “house of fishing” (cod. B. W. W., Coptic manuscripts, many Latin writers, Tatian, Tertullian, Jerome); the 2nd: Βηθεοδά = “house of mercy” (the majority of the Syro-Antiochene codices), preferred by Knabenbauer, Vogels, Merk; the 3rd: Βηζαθα, Βηθεζαθα or Βεζεθα (cod. θ. s/s 33, manuscripts of the Old Latin, Irenaeus, Eusebius), adopted by Tischendorf, Nestle, Dalman, Lagrange, seems the most probable. Vincent and Ricciotti prefer Βεζεθα. The name would therefore derive from the hill of Bezeth (v.) on which the pool was excavated. Its waters acquired healing power when they bubbled (cf. Prat, I, p. 401 SGG.).
It is probably to be identified with the pool of Roman-period date, discovered by C. Schick and brought to light again by M. Mauss (1871) and the Bianchi Fathers (1914). It was excavated in the central area of the valley that crosses Bezeth obliquely, 30 m. north of the church of S. Anna, in a rectangle measuring 120 x 60 m., with a depth of 7–8 m. A transverse wall divided it so as to form two square pools, each 48 m. on the north-south axis, connected by means of a channel. The porticoes above it (6.20–6.50 m. wide and adorned with columns 8.47 m. high and with monumental entrances) were therefore five in number. “Ex voto” objects found in the excavations testify that the healing power of the waters did not cease in later times. Tradition as well (cf. D. Baldi, Enchiridion locorum sanctorum, Jerusalem 1935, pp. 573-91) confirms the archaeological data. Under Bishop Juvenal (422-68), the church of the paralytic, with a single nave and apse, was erected on the transverse wall on the western side of the pool; and towards the end of the 5th century, the church of S. Maria della Probatica (about 45 m.), later called S. Anna, was built on the eastern side of the other pool, above the crypt which tradition venerates as the house of the Madonna. Both were destroyed by the Persians in 614.
A. Loisy’s assertion that the Bezeth pool is a product of Johannine symbolism referring to the 5 books of the Pentateuch, in whose shadow the Jewish people lived, is therefore disproved by the archaeological evidence.