Siloam (hamlet)
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Lower quarter of Jerusalem and place-name of the Kidron Valley.
Inhabitants or natives
Simon the Zealot when he was a leper, Sidonia the born blind.
Description and notable facts
Shilohan or Siloam refers to a group of places gathered in the same area:
- The tower of Siloam which collapsed causing the death of 18 people.[1] It was supposed to be outside the walls of Jerusalem.
- The pool of Siloam where Jesus sends a born Confessor, Sidonia nicknamed Bartholmai, to purify himself.[2]
- The place called Shilohan, on the other side of the Kidron, on the steep slope of the Mount of scandal, where caves serve as refuge for lepers. One of them is Simon the Zealot who, healed by Jesus,[3] will become one of the apostles.
- A nearby fountain must be located on one side or the other of this narrow valley of the Kidron.
"'And now, let us go and see those unhappy people!' says Jesus, and turning His back to the town He goes towards a desolate place on the slope of a rocky hill which lies between the two roads from Jericho to Jerusalem, A strange place, similar to a flight of steps after the first slope, up which climbs a path, so that there is a drop of at least three yards from the first terrace to the path, and the same from the second one. It is an arid, dead… extremely sad place. 'Master' shouts Simon the Zealot 'I am here. Stop where You are, that I may show You the way…' and the Zealot, who was leaning against a rock to be in the shade, comes forward and leads Jesus up the steps of a path leading towards Gethsemane, but separated from it by the road that from the Mount of Olives goes to Bethany."[4]
Its name
Siloam - Shiloham - Silwan: "The sent one".
Silwan is now a neighborhood of Jerusalem with 50,000 inhabitants.
Where is it mentioned in the work?
Learn more about this place
Shilohan later sheltered a Canaanite village indiscriminately called Shilohan or Siloam.
François-René de Chateaubriand reports in his Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem and from Jerusalem to Paris, Volume 2, page 24 - Also Volume 3, page 266 :
"There is also the Canaanite village of Shilohan; at the foot of this village is another fountain, which Scripture calls Rogel: opposite this fountain, at the foot of Mount Zion, is a third fountain, named Mary. It is believed that the Virgin came there to draw water, like Laban's daughters at the well where Jacob removed the stone. The Virgin's fountain blends its waters with those of the fountain of Siloam".[5]
And further:
"To this ravine flows the depression or valley that distinguished Mount Zion from the Acra hill, which Josephus called caseariorum, or the cheese-makers. Edrisi makes mention of this valley, very distinctively, saying that at the exit of the gate he mentioned under the name of Sion, one descends into a hollow (in fossam, Salton quotes the version of the Maronites) called, he adds, the Valley of Hell, and in which is the Saltuan fountain (or Shilohan). This fountain was not enclosed within the city walls: Saint Jerome tells us so with these words (in Matthew 23:25): In portarum exitibus, quae Shiloham ducunt. The valley containing Siloam slopes from southeast to northwest, and Josephus must appear very accurate when he says the wall overlooking the fountain of Siloam runs on one side toward the south, and on the other toward the east. For thus, Salton shows the very site plan, and almost exactly, that this wall followed the edge of the two escarpments forming the ravine."[5]
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