This picture is an 1877 oil-on-canvas painting of the Pool of Bethesda by English painter Robert Bateman, now in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. The Johannine narrative describes the porticos as being a place in which large numbers of infirm people were waiting, which corresponds well with the site's 1st century AD use as an asclepeion. Some ancient biblical manuscripts argue that these people were waiting for the troubling of the water; a few such manuscripts also move the setting away from Roman rituals into something more appropriate to Judaism, by adding that an angel would occasionally stir the waters, which would then cure the first person to enter.Painting credit: Robert Bateman
This picture is an 1877 oil-on-canvas painting of the Pool of Bethesda by English painter Robert Bateman, now in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. The Johannine narrative describes the porticos as being a place in which large numbers of infirm people were waiting, which corresponds well with the site's 1st century AD use as an asclepeion. Some ancient biblical manuscripts argue that these people were waiting for the troubling of the water; a few such manuscripts also move the setting away from Roman rituals into something more appropriate to Judaism, by adding that an angel would occasionally stir the waters, which would then cure the first person to enter.Painting credit: Robert Bateman