WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: It didn’t seem a big deal this week in the news, but a set of steps has been uncovered in Jerusalem that hadn’t been seen in two thousand years. Reflect upon where they lead.
Uncovered After 2,000 Years: City of David Steps of Deep Meaning Both to Christians and Jews
If like me you took umbrage earlier this year at Palestinian Authority Chairman Abbas’ spokesperson proclaiming “there’s no historical proof despite all the excavations” that Jews “had any kind of presence” in Israel in ancient times, you got yet more such historical proof this week, of deep meaning both to Christians and Jews.
On Thursday, 9/7/23, Fox News reported Steps Where Jesus Walked and Healed a Blind Man Unearthed for First Time in 2,000 Years. A small section of the Pool of Siloam, of eighth century BCE King Hezekiah tunnel fame, has been accessible to the public for several years, but what has been unearthed now are “some eight steps descending into the Pool which had not been seen in 2,000 years.”
A hint of significance to Christians of identification of specific Holy Land sites associated with Jesus was captured some years ago at a related site by Israeli archeologist Meir Ben-Dov in his In the Shadow of the Temple: The Discovery of Ancient Jerusalem (pp.112-113), where he told of an incident in the post-Six Day War excavations just south of the Temple Mount, which he was directing, to which many Muslim authorities objected. The archeologists were uncovering the broad set of steps leading up to the Mount’s southern wall Double Gates. An incident occurred revealing the significance of this excavation to Christians:
“The patriarch of the Ethiopian Church happened to visit the dig soon after we had uncovered these steps. ‘Is it possible that Jesus and the Apostles walked up these steps?’ he asked. ‘There’s no doubt about it,’ I told him. ‘This is the main staircase that led to the Temple Mount, and it was the only one used by pilgrims bound for the Temple.’ Upon hearing my answer, a wave of emotion swept over the patriarch and his retinue, and we paused so that they could offer up prayers on the spot.”
As Fox News noted in this Thursday’s article, Jesus’ association with these just uncovered Siloam Pool steps is even closer: “According to a passage in the Gospel of John, Jesus restored the sight of a man born blind at the Pool of Siloam.”
Fox News quoted a spokesperson:
“’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,’ Ze’ev Orenstein, director of International Affairs – City of David Foundation told Fox News Digital. ‘Not simply as a matter of faith, but as a matter of fact,’ he added.
“’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,’ Orenstein said. ‘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,’ he added.”
Fox News quoted Orenstein that “in a few years’ time, visitors to the City of David will be able to witness the factual history for themselves and ‘see with their own eyes, touch with their own hands, and walk with their own feet upon the very stones their ancestors walked.’”
But he warned that “‘whether in the halls of the United Nations, ongoing efforts by Palestinian leadership, or on university campuses, Jerusalem’s Biblical heritage is under assault.’”
Whether the West’s Christians assert a stake in Jerusalem’s Biblical heritage is up to them (and they should take note that in that statement of Abbas’ spokesperson I quoted in part above he also called Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre “a Palestinian holy place”). But we have no Rome, no Mecca. We have historic Jerusalem, period. Not just Israelis, but all of us, who for all of those two thousand years in which those just revealed Pool of Siloam steps were covered up have been vowing Next Year In Jerusalem, have a stake in that Biblical heritage. We Jews acquiescing in “East” (i.e., historic) Jerusalem being “Palestinian territory occupied since 1967” is not an option.