Outside all these courts lay the court of the Gentiles. This was separated from the courts described above by a _Soreg_ or ritual wall, which no Gentile might pass. Herod placed inscriptions in Greek at the various gates in this ritual wall, which warned Gentiles on pain of death not to enter. The court of the Gentiles surrounded the other courts on the north, east, and south; it was, however, most extensive on the east and south; (Fig. 257). To obtain a greater area for this court on the south, Herod extended the level of the hill by erecting great arches which supported a pavement. This structure still remains; it is now called “Solomon’s stables”; (Fig. 258). In the Crusading period horses were stabled there. Around the court thus enlarged ran a beautiful colonnade. The pillars for this and for Herod’s palace were quarried from the rock around Jerusalem. One pillar which had a defect and was accordingly never moved from the quarry was found a few years since in front of the Russian cathedral north of the city. Although the temple has passed away and other sacred buildings have since the second century been erected in succession near its site, the expanse of the court of the Gentiles remains, and as the devout Christian visits it he seems almost to hear the footfalls of Christ and of Paul! =18. The Pool of Bethesda.=--Another spot connected with the life of Christ lay not far from the temple on the north; it was the Pool of Bethesda. It was situated near the Sheep Gate, which was just northeast of the temple. Since the thirteenth century the _Birket Israin_[294] which lies between the temple area and the modern St. Stephen’s Gate has been identified by some with Bethesda. Since 1889 it has been thought by many that two pools discovered in that year, now far under ground, in the land of the Church of St. Anne, just north of St. Stephen’s Gate, constituted the Pool of Bethesda; (see Fig. 259). It is really impossible to decide between the two possibilities on the evidence we have. Both are in the region where we should look for the Pool of Bethesda. =19. Gethsemane.=--Two other spots near Jerusalem are of the deepest interest to the Christian student--the Garden of Gethsemane and Golgotha. The fact is certain that the Garden of Gethsemane lay on the western slope of the Mount of Olives. (See Luke 22:39; John 18:1; Mark 14:26, 32.) Since the sixteenth century the Roman Catholics have shown a little garden, which lies just above the Kidron, as the Garden of Gethsemane. More recently the Russian Church has walled in the space next above it as the real garden. There is no certainty that the garden was on either site. To the Jews of the first century a garden was not a place for flower-beds, but an olive orchard, and such an orchard may have extended widely over the hillside. We cannot now identify the spot made sacred by the Master’s agony, but we know as we look at this hillside that it was somewhere on it.