so the archaeological site that I want to cover today is truly one of the most amazing sites in all of the land of the Bible and it doesn’t get visited very often mainly because it’s in the Palestinian area known as the West Bank the historical source that we need to use in order to understand this place is the Gospel of John in John chapter 4 Jesus leaves Jerusalem to travel back to Galilee when he came to a town in Samaria called psychar verse 6 informs us that Jacob’s Well was there from ancient Jerusalem Jacob’s Well is located around 41 miles to the north [Music] in the valley below Mount girizine [Music] and near the ancient city of shechem today Jacob’s Well in the ruins of shechem are in the Palestinian city of Nablus the location of Jacob’s Well is marked today by the church that has been built over it [Music] John 4 6 says Jesus tired as he was from the journey sat down by the well you’ve been traveling all through the country right you’re going to continue traveling through the country if there is one place where you can get it the most specific Jesus was right here it’s Jacob’s Well he was right here does this well match the text the John 4 account continues when a Samaritan woman came to draw water and Jesus asked her for a drink then Jesus offers the woman a drink of Living Water to which she replies sir the woman said you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep the Samaritan woman says of this well the well is deep now just next to Jacob’s Well and just to the north of it are the ruins from the Old Testament period city of shechem and G Ernest Wright excavated there and during his excavations he also measured Jacob’s Well and found it to be 151 feet deep we need to go over how we know that that is Jacob’s Well one of the strong evidences for this is this archaeological phenomenon that you find with authentic sites of one thing being built on top of another and definitely we have this at Jacob’s well today we have the modern church built over the well before that we know there was a crusader Church before the Crusader Church there was an early Byzantine church and the Mosaic floors from this Byzantine Church also have been exposed and can be seen at the site today this well for a very long time has been commemorated as Jacob’s Well and so what has been left behind is the archeology for that and these stacked layers one on top of another pointing to this well saying this is the authentic site that John 4 is talking about so the way that these biblical locations like Jacob’s Well were remembered over time is through the knowledge of the locals who passed on the location of these sites and what they were from generation to generation and a great example of how this works is found in John chapter 4 itself in John 4 12 the Samaritan woman asked Jesus are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well and drank from it himself as did also his sons and his flocks and herds it’s been some 1800 years since the time of Jacob and his sons and yet we see the Samaritan woman no knows who it is that dug the well that she’s getting water from how is this possible well the locals have passed this knowledge down from generation to generation so that 1800 years later the locals understand who dug this well I mean when you’re there looking at the well looking down in the well it is hard to comprehend this was dug by Jacob himself by his sons the sons of Israel we have here the reality that the history of this well is retained by the local knowledge and the biblical text all the way from when it was dug by Jacob and his sons all the way to the time that Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman and then all the way to the time where Christians are visiting this site writing about it and building a commemorative church over the top of it now the other thing that helps the locals to retain the knowledge of this well is that they continue to use it Century after Century after Century in the land of the Bible the uh the need for water is great and so when you have access to that water then certainly you use it from generation to generation as an example of this I was doing a film called The Soul Shepherd and for this film I spent two and a half years hanging out with Bedouin Shepherds and so one day I was with a shepherd and I was in this very remote area and he stopped to water his flock at this ancient well I could tell by looking at it that it was very ancient and so being an archaeologist I walked around the outside of the well and collected the pottery which showed that that well had been in use for over 3 000 years this is the same case with Jacob’s Well it was in use for thousands and thousands and thousands of years it was in use from the time Jacob and his sons dug it until the Samaritan woman came to it to draw water and then even in the pictures from the late 1800s we see that women are still coming to the as well to draw water and take it back to their families so if the well would have gone out of use for a long period of time maybe it would have been forgotten but because it’s connected to these ancient texts to scripture and because it’s used generation after generation the knowledge of that well who dug it and what happened there in the time of Jesus in the Roman period was retained by the local knowledge now it’s important to note that that the Old Testament doesn’t mention Jacob’s Well by name however it does give an account for Jacob living in the area Genesis 33 18-19 says after Jacob came from padana ROM he arrived safely at the city of shechem in Canaan and camped with inside of the city for a hundred pieces of silver he bought from the sons of hamor the father of shechem the plot of ground where he pitched his tent the archeology is the study of the ancients from what’s been left behind so when reading in this verse what would we expect to be left behind well certainly we would expect the ruins from the city of shechem to be left behind and we know where those are they’ve been excavated several times however it becomes a problem when you’re talking about people who lived in tents nomadic people living in tents don’t tend to leave very much behind they don’t have very much to leave behind I grew up around Bedouin I’ve been around better win for most of my life and I can assure you that it is difficult to figure out where Bedouin camped a couple of weeks ago much less 4 000 years ago and so we have this dilemma how do you know where Jacob camped 3 800 years ago um he lives in tents well there is an exception if he and his sons dug a 151 foot hole down through the Bedrock to get access to the water then that would be left behind and so amazingly since we know where this site is Jacob’s Well from John chapter 4. we also can connect it back to Genesis 33 and know where Jacob bought this land and where he pitched his tent it’s very significant this land that Jacob purchased for a hundred pieces of silver because it is at shechem that Abram Jacob’s grandfather first came in at least in the land of Canaan was first promised that your descendants will inherit the land of Canaan and here we have the grandson of Abram Jacob possessing this land buying this plot of land where he pitched his tent in Genesis chapter 33 and so where is that it’s where Jacob’s Well would would be located why because you don’t buy a piece of land put your tents up there with your huge flocks and then go dig a well 151 feet through the ground somewhere else you would do it at the place at the pot of ground that you bought when we look at where the location of Jacob’s Well is which is given to us because it’s under this modern church and we look at the ruins of shechem we see that indeed it fits this Genesis 33 account in that it is definitely within sight of this city so I want the women to come forward and we’re going to get some water out of the well go ahead and grab this and just start lowering it foreign okay yeah so I see I see it’s in the water now okay now bring it the other way now you can see that it was no easy task for the Samaritan woman to come here maybe more than one time a day to get water she had to walk from her house with this big jar and go down to Jacob’s Well lower it down fill it with water pull it up 151 feet put it on her head would have been very heavy and then carry it back to her house and so uh when she came to the well and Jesus was sitting there Jesus knew precisely what to talk to her about and he talked to her about water Jesus answered everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst indeed the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life the woman said to him sir give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water now the thing about Shepherds watering their flocks at a well is it’s not wears them for the animals themselves the animals can’t get a drink a sheep can’t get a drink out of a well it’s the Shepherd that does all the work in order for the animals to drink the shepherd has to get the water and give them a drink foreign this is what’s happening in the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman Jesus is offering her this drink of Living Water she can’t drink living water on her own she needs to be offered that drink Jesus says yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and Truth God is spirit and his worshipers must Worship in spirit and in truth the woman said I know that Messiah called Christ is coming when he comes he will explain everything to us then Jesus declared I who speak to you am he saying when the Messiah comes he’s going to explain everything and Jesus says the one that’s sitting here talking to you I am he and so this is where Jesus offers this drink to the Samaritan woman of Living Water and how does she drink it she drinks it by believing that he is who he claims to be foreign we can’t access a living water we can’t get eternal life for ourselves we need Jesus to do the work and then offer us the drink when we come to believe in Jesus then he pours out the Holy Spirit and we worship God through the spirit and truth and we have what guarantees the inheritance of eternal life [Music] to dig deeper you can order a copy of my book which has been a number one bestseller in archeology just click the link in the description below this video I hope that you like this video if you did please give it a like consider uh also subscribing to the channel some of the footage that you saw comes from a film that I did called The Soul Shepherd I consider that the best film I’ve ever made I know people who watch it have a very strong reaction to it so I would really highly recommend that you watch the soul Shepherd which you can do right here and thank you for watching and I’ll see you next time