ReViews: After 18 Years, Still Waiting …

Le Projet Béthesda (1994–2010): La Piscine Probatique de Jésus à Saladin
Proche-Orient Chrétien, Numéro Spécial 2011

200 pp., $20 (softcover) By Claudine Dauphin and Shimon Gibson

This is a preliminary report on “Le Projet Béthesda,” which for the past 18 years has been studying the Pools of Bethesda in Jerusalem, where the Gospel of John recounts Jesus’ healing a crippled man.^a During these 18 years the site (and associated museum) has been closed to other researchers. In this respect, the project is somewhat like that of the Dead Sea Scrolls, in which other scholars were excluded from studying a large portion of the scrolls while the scholars assigned to publish them procrastinated.

I wish I could state that this report on the Pools of Bethesda was worth the 18-year wait and the exclusion of other scholars (like me) from studying the site. On the contrary, this preliminary report is disappointing in almost every respect.