A five-porticoed pool by Jerusalem's Sheep Gate where a sick man who had waited thirty-eight years was healed (John 5:1-9) — one of the few Johannine settings with a confirmed physical match: archaeologists excavated a twin-pool complex with five colonnades near St. Anne's Church, in the Muslim Quarter, that matches the description exactly. ⚠️ The name itself is a textual fork: the majority text and Byzantine tradition read BETHESDA ('house of mercy' or 'house of the flowing,' depending how the Hebrew/Aramaic underlying it is parsed); the earliest manuscripts (favored by the WH and NA28 editions) read BETHZATHA instead. The SBLGNT text this library translates from prints Bethesda here even while it sides with the earlier manuscripts in omitting v4 — a reminder that 'the modern critical text' is not one single, internally consistent witness, but an editor's judgment call made fresh at every verse.