Gabbatha

[2][3] It states that Pontius Pilate "brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment seat, in the place that is called Lithostrotos, and in Hebrew Gabbatha."

This was proved by the practice of St. John, who elsewhere gives Aramaic names as distinctly belonging to places, not as mere translations of the Greek.

It thus appears that the two names "Lithostrotos" and "Gabbatha" were due to different characteristics of the spot where Pilate condemned Jesus to death.

[citation needed] Commentators have made efforts to identify Gabbatha either with the outer court of the Temple, which is known to have been paved, or with the meeting-place of the Great Sanhedrin, which was half within, half without that Temple's outer court, or again with the ridge at the back of the House of the Lord; but these efforts cannot be considered as successful.

[5] The pool still survives under vaulting added by Hadrian so that the forum could be built over it, and can be accessed from the portion of Roman paving under the Convent of the Sisters of Zion, and from the Western Wall Tunnel.