Epilogue
Luke 13: 4-5
Or those eighteen on whom the tower at Siloam fell, do you suppose they had failed in their duty more than all the rest of the people who live in Jerusalem?
Gospels enjoy a variety of interpretations in association to any of the rich theological, historical, sociological or poetic dimensions surrounding the material; probably not the least of reasons being the full linguistic spectrum of modern translations that are being given to the original texts, themselves written in a Greek influenced by a different native, cultural or liturgical language of the authors. Without any form of exegetical ambition, the passage of Luke 13 attracted the author as an intriguing metaphor of some of the ideas brought forward in the present book.
The fall of the Siloam tower can be partially traced back into archaeological evidence, as visitors to modern Jerusalem are guided into the rests of the Siloam district of the 1st century AD-Jerusalem. It must have been a building of certain importance at the time, the failure of which brought casualties and made an adverse event significant enough to be referred to in the news and the topics addressed by Jesus and to mark his contemporaries and disciples. Yet, even if the text itself could probably be supplemented by additional evidence coming from archaeology, a number of sources and types of uncertainty surround the evidence.
It is ambiguous for instance whether the 18 casualties involved builders or workers associated to the tower ...
