The Pool of Bethesda, JerusalemBeta
Twenty-eight centuries on one hollow in the rock · drag the model to turn it
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      Reading the model

          Scripture pins on the model
        
          Number the five porticoes
        John 5:2 says five. Four run round the two basins; the fifth crosses the dam between them — the odd number nineteenth-century sceptics doubted, and the one the excavators found.
What changed this phase

On a phone or tablet: two fingers always turn the model, one finger scrolls the page. Switch this if you would rather one finger turned it.
Elevation line

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What you walk down through

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Illustrative sequence — the real deposit varies sharply from one part of the site to another.

      Satellite imagery, today

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            Some aerial tiles could not load — the connection may be slow or blocked. The model itself is drawn locally and needs no network, so turn the imagery off and everything else still works.
Imagery © Esri, Maxar and partners. It lies flat on the ground plane and tilts with the model, so it reads properly only from a fairly high angle. The pools are buried, so the fit is a surveyed best estimate rather than a visible edge in the photograph.

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Heights and depths are to the same scale as the plan: the pools are cut some 13 m into the rock — about four storeys.

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      A reconstruction, not a survey. Footprints follow published excavation plans (Mauss 1863; de Vaux, Rousée & Duprez, École Biblique, 1957–62; later re-examinations); elevations above ground are informed estimates.

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        Section looking north · through the middle of both pools

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True scale, no vertical exaggeration · left is north, right is south · 0 m is the present rim

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To discuss

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Chronological scale — evenly spaced by phase, not by elapsed years · arrow keys move through time
The Pool of Bethesda
Prepared by Taylor Halverson, Ph.D.

          BetaPlans, dates and identifications are still being reviewed. Where scholars disagree — the date of the southern pool, whether the eastern basins were Jewish ritual baths or a healing shrine, how much of a pagan cult existed before AD 70, the exact plan of the Byzantine church — the model follows the reading most excavators have accepted and the essay says so.
What this is
Nine building phases in one hollow of rock, from the Iron Age dam of about 800 BC to the excavated garden you can walk through today. Each phase is a reconstructed model of what actually stood on the ground, drawn in a common set of coordinates so that the phases sit on top of one another exactly as the archaeology does — and each is paired with an essay of roughly a thousand words written to be read straight through rather than consulted.
The point of building it this way is that no photograph of Bethesda can show what the site is. Standing on the walkway above the pools you are looking at nine sites at once, stacked. A model you can turn, fade, ghost against another age, and lay over the present-day aerial can show that; a picture cannot.
Accuracy & limits
The plan is redrawn from published excavation reports: Mauss's clearance of 1863, the École Biblique campaigns of 1957–62 under de Vaux, Rousée and Duprez, and later re-examinations of the excavation records. Horizontal positions are approximate; heights, roofing and vaulting are reconstruction throughout, and anything drawn with a dashed outline is reconstructed or disputed. The northern pool is still largely unexcavated, so its later phases are the most conjectural thing here. The five porticoes of John 5 are not a guess — the foundations of four around the basins and a fifth on the dam were found — but their elevation is.
The aerial overlay is anchored on the Church of Saint Anne and rotated 12.3° east of the plan's north, a figure measured from the orientation of the built grid in the imagery rather than judged by eye. The pools are buried, so nothing in the photograph gives a sharp edge to lock onto; the fit is a surveyed best estimate and is fixed here so every reader sees the same one.
Sources
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Corrections welcome — this is a Beta.

          One site, nine phases, always drawn in the same frame and seen from the same angle unless you move it. Everything else here is a way of asking a question about that model — what changed, what survived, what is underneath, and where it all sits on the ground today.

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Escape closes any panel. On a narrow screen the three columns scroll sideways rather than stacking, so the model keeps its proportions.

          Taylor Halverson, Ph.D.
Author · Teacher · Tour leader · Scripture scholar
Taylor Halverson is a scholar of scripture and a teacher of learners — an entrepreneurship professor in the BYU Marriott School of Business who spends his working life helping people find and act on the best ideas and tools available to them.
He is the author and editor of more than fifty books and nearly a thousand articles and blog posts, and a builder of scripture study resources: the ScripturePlus app with Scripture Central, whose scripture YouTube channel he co-hosted to more than fifty million views, and BYU's Virtual Scripture Group, whose team spent more than five years reconstructing New Testament Jerusalem in three dimensions. This atlas of Bethesda belongs to that same body of work — tools made so that ordinary readers can see what specialists see.
He leads tours to Israel and the Middle East, China, India, Central America, Europe, and the national parks of the American West, where he unfolds how geology, geography, civilization, and scriptural texts created our beautiful present day.
Academic training
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Two doctorates in two separate fields — the ancient world, and the design of learning. Both of them are in this tool.
Elsewhere
insights.taylorhalverson.combooks.taylorhalverson.comexodustours.com