January 31, 2026

Archaeology: ”Wrong Again on the Pool of Siloam?”

If you’ve been to Jerusalem with me on any of my tours, I always walk our groups through Hezekiah’s tunnel, an underground rock-cut channel built in the eight century B.C. by King Hezekiah to bring water from the Gihon Spring into the city out of fear that the Assyrians might soon march on Jerusalem. Without water the people would be doomed by the impending siege. The water diverted from Gihon would now collect in a pool behind the city walls, commonly identified as the Pool of Siloam, the same pool described in John 9 where Jesus would later heal the blind man.

But then in 2005 archaeologists realized that they had made a mistake, for they found the real Pool of Siloam a little further down the hill. Millions have since visited the new site, a much larger pool with steps leading down into it that could easily accommodate ritual cleansing for large numbers of pilgrims visiting Jerusalem on holy days. With great excitement both archaeologists and tour guides accepted the new location, for the evidence clearly supported a dating to the time of Hezekiah.

Legal issues limited the archaeologists from a complete excavation of the pool, but with the case finally decided, a team began digging anew in 2023 to the resounding ho-hums of most scholars who had since concluded that there was nothing left to discover about the pool that would significantly impact the narrative. But weren’t we all surprised recently when the excavation team reported that their findings supported a date for the pool that preceded King Hezekiah, at least one hundred years earlier to the time of King Jehoash of Judah and perhaps (though most are still holding their breath as they await additional evidence) to the time of King Solomon?

– Daniel McCabe

Trivia

On what holiday in Israel do large numbers of people dress up in costumes?

On Location: Friends of Zion Museum

I’ve been married for twenty-two years to a remarkable woman, and I know her better than anyone. But still every great once in a while, I’ll hear her tell a story that’s new to me. Likewise I fell in love with the city of Jerusalem in 1999 when I first arrived there at the age of thirty-six, and recently I learned something new about her too.

I’m watching one of my favorite YouTubers, a thirty-something Messianic Jewish woman who has lived in and around Jerusalem since the age of eight and who shares stories about her personal life and the land of Israel. One day she is walking back streets near Jaffa Road, sharing her heart, and on a whim she decides to walk into the Friends of Zion Museum, vlogging as she goes. I’d never heard about it!

Their website says it best, “For centuries the Biblical prophecies of Jews returning to their homeland seemed like only a distant dream. But a dream remembered year after year with Jews repeating the promise ‘next year in Jerusalem.’ Throughout history, Christian Zionists have stood in support of this dream with courage and, in many cases, sacrificed their lives to protect the Jewish people. Although there is an increasing awareness in Israel of historic support from these non-Jewish friends, many remain unaware of the many Christian heroes who have given their lives to save God’s Chosen People, and others who helped establish the modern State of Israel.”

The museum highlights the contributions of Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, Orde Wingate, Oskar Schindler, Raul Wallenberg and the Ten-Boom family. I can assure you that on my next trip there I’ll be looking for Yosef Rivlin St. to pay my 44 shekels ($13.50) for the tour.

– Daniel McCabe

You’re invited to attend our Spring 2026 Five-Week Community Mini-Series:

“The Greatest Biblical Archaeological Discoveries of All Time”

Our weekly multimedia presentation will cover such finds as the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hezekiah’s Tunnel.

Instructor: Dr. Daniel McCabe, MACE, ThM, DMin

Executive Director of Shalom Y’all Ministries

Former Professor at the College of Biblical Studies

Pastor of Cullman Bible Church

Location: Golden Corral at 1720 Cherokee Ave SW in Cullman, Alabama

Time: Mondays, 6:00-7:15 pm, five consecutive weeks from February 9 – March 9, 2026

Cost: Free—you can attend the seminar without purchasing a buffet or you can choose to enjoy a meal before, during or after the seminar. All ages are welcome.

To Launch: We need a minimum of 10 people to sign up for the seminar before we can launch.

Click on this link to reply: Shalom Y’all Ministries <reply+32q7u9&2ag8sl&&204e90433f2b2dc3132536aae6c951712d534c354e8048e833c997c4fb87b55e@mg1.substack.com>

Anthropology: Man’s Origin and Purpose, part 1

Anthropology, the study of man or mankind, comes from the Greek word for man, anthropos. I’ll break this broad topic into smaller subtopics over several weeks, but we’ll begin today with man’s origin and purpose. I’ll represent my understanding of anthropology from the Bible, giving several statements that sometimes include Scripture references though everything I present is based on my understanding of the Bible and what it teaches or reveals to us about who we are.

Let me start by saying that the entire race of mankind includes both male and female. The entire race of mankind was created by God on the sixth day of His creation in the person of Adam. Adam was the first and only human when God created him, and Adam represented the entire human race at that time even though there was only one person. In this sense the entire human race was present on the sixth day of creation.

God created Eve from Adam, and both of them began life in a state of moral perfection. They were both morally perfect and complete.

Adam and Eve are the progenitors of the entire human race. Everybody has come from the two of them. In that regard, we are all related with one another. We also trace all of our relations back through Noah because from him and his family came everyone whom we see today, but ultimately everyone came from Adam and Eve. They didn’t evolve from something else. Adam and Eve were the first people and we’ve all come from them.

The purpose of man, his ultimate purpose, is to bring glory to God. We see this in Isaiah 43:7, 1 Corinthians 10:31 and many other places in the Bible. If you take a step back, look at the Bible cover to cover, and put it all together, I don’t think you can escape the conclusion that our ultimate purpose, in addition to whatever else we do, is to bring glory to God. That’s the meaning of life. That’s the meaning of all creation in the universe. You don’t have to climb some mountain to meet the guru who lives up top to ask him, “What is the meaning of life?” It is to bring glory to God.

We are also to love Him. We see this in Deuteronomy 6 and Mark 12. We are to fear Him and to keep His commandments. In fact, at the end of Ecclesiastes, Solomon figured it out, and he summarized the end of the matter. It’s all been written, “Fear God and keep His commandments.” This is man’s origin and purpose.

– Adam Keim

The People and Religions of Israel—the Jews

It’s harder to define a Jew than one might think. Yes, a Jew is one who practices Judaism, but secular Israelis today also self-identify as Jews. More generally a Jew is one who has descended from Abraham and the Old Testament people that the Bible calls Hebrews or Israelites.

In modern Hebrew a Jew is known as a Yehudi, one who descended directly from the tribe of Judah. You may recall that the Jews historically belonged to twelve different tribes, generally linked to twelve different geographical regions in what is now modern-day Israel and Jordan. Following King Solomon’s death the tribes broke into two factions. Ten northern tribes broke away and formed the Kingdom of Israel under King Jeroboam, and the remaining two tribes of Judah and Benjamin formed the Kingdom of Judah under King Rehoboam. Sometimes we refer to the ten northern tribes as the Lost Tribes of Israel because they were conquered in 722 B.C. by the Assyrians and assimilated into other conquered people groups. Even though the two southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin would later be conquered by the Babylonians and removed from Judah in 586 B.C., they successfully maintained their cultural and religious identity throughout their captivity, and some returned to the land of Judah as early as 538 B.C. Waves of both ancient and modern Jews have since returned to their homeland in Judah where they have maintained an uninterrupted presence.

Today the Jewish people make up approximately 75% of the population of Israel. Although more than 40% of the Jewish population of Israel would describe themselves as secular, they still identify as Jews since they speak Hebrew and celebrate Jewish holidays, including Passover and Yom Kippur.

Daniel McCabe

Answer to the Trivia

D. Purim