Although there is no indication that the angel who agitated the water of the pool of Bethesda was the archangel Michael, the story does suggest an early recognition of angelic agency in healing waters. In the early Christian era, angels were widely venerated for their healing powers all across western Asia Minor. The size and influence of the Jewish community in the region suggests that the devotion to angels may have in some part developed out of Jewish angelology, itself a product of foreign influences. In several of his Epistles, St. Paul is particularly concerned with and preaches against the worship of angels. In his most polemical attack on the practice, the Apostle condemns the Colossians for worshipping angels (Colossians 2:18). In the fourth century, the Council of Laodicea (ca. 360 CE) reiterated St. Paul's aversion to the worship of angels and expressly prohibited the practice. Writing some fifty years after the Council, however, Theodoret, in his commentary on the Epistle to the Colossians, stated that the “disease” against which St. Paul inveighed “long remained in Phrygia and Pisidia,” adding that “even to the present time oratories of the holy Michael may be seen among them and their neighbors.”