Jesus and His disciples are said to be "passing by" and there is no indication yet that they have left Jerusalem, the scene of the narrative in chapters 7 and 8. Jesus sends the man He heals to the Pool of Siloam, a rock-cut pool on the southern slope of Jerusalem, located outside the walls of the Old City to the southeast. However, there are also references to a Jewish ruling that anyone who believed Jesus to be the Messiah would be excluded from the synagogue (John 9:22). There is no other New Testament reference to Jerusalem having a synagogue, but rabbinical tradition states that there were 480 synagogues in Jerusalem at the time of the Jewish rebellion.