The miracle of Jesus turning h2o into vino at the wedding ceremony at Cana is the start of Jesus' miracles recounted in the Gospel of John, and equally such it marks a decisive moment in the story of Jesus' divinity. But there are several mysterious details nearly the story which are worthy of closer analysis, not least the matter of where 'Cana' exactly was.

The phenomenon is told of in John 2:i-11. Jesus, his mother, and his disciples attend a nuptials in the village of Cana. When the wine runs out at the banquet, Jesus turns water into wine, thus demonstrating his divinity to his disciples.

Permit'south accept a closer expect at the 'water into wine' phenomenon past analysing what John tells us.

Jesus turning h2o into wine: summary

In John chapter 2 verses 1-11, we are given an account of the matrimony at Cana, where the phenomenon takes place.

John tells us that there was a marriage 'in Cana of Galilee' and 'the mother of Jesus', i.eastward., the Virgin Mary, was present. Jesus and his disciples were also 'called' to the marriage. At the wedding, they ran out of wine and Jesus' mother told him that they'd run out, implying that he could perhaps … help out.

Jesus replied rather sharply: 'Adult female, what have I to exercise with thee? mine hr is not yet come.' In other words, 'woman, what am I going to do with you? You're hopeless! I'm not ready to denote my divinity to the world' (i.east., by performing a phenomenon and magicking up some vino in public).

But Jesus seems to have come round. Mary told the servants at the hymeneals, whatsoever her son tells them to do, they should practise it.

In that location were six water pots made out of stone. Jesus told the servants to fill them up with water, and they did so. Then he told them to fetch the governor or 'ruler' (i.east., the steward) of the feast. They did and then.

The ruler of the banquet tasted the water, and realised that it was wine. He couldn't say where information technology had come from, but the servants knew (and probably smiled to themselves, as they realised what Jesus had done). The steward of the banquet then called the bridegroom and congratulated him for keeping 'the good wine' back until this point in the banquet.

Jesus turning water into wine: analysis

The phenomenon at Cana is oftentimes imagined (past people who know vaguely of the story but take never read what the Bible actually says near it) as a public sit-in of Jesus' divinity. But this act is, nosotros should annotation, performed only with the utmost reluctance – Jesus even shouts at his mother for persuading him to turn the water into wine, after all! – and kept clandestine from the bulk of guests at the wedding. Jesus' disciples know the truth, as do the servants, merely it is clearly stated by John that the groom publicly gets the credit for the wine, and the governor or steward in accuse of the feast doesn't suspect that Jesus is behind it.

As such, the miracle is very different from one performed later in Jesus' ministry: the feeding of the five thousand (as information technology is commonly known) which nosotros have previously analysed here. By that betoken, Jesus is on the run after John the Baptist'south death and has amassed a vast following: a whole crowd which gathers around him to hear what he has to say. At that place, Jesus performs his miracle – making the loaves and fishes feed every man, woman, and child present – in front of the multitude and so there can be no incertitude every bit to his divinity.

Cana is remembered at present for one thing and one thing only: the fact that, according to John, Jesus turned water into wine there. But where Cana was is a mystery. We know it was somewhere in Galilee, that part of Palestine where Jesus was preaching at the time, and several possible sites have been proposed, including Kafr Kanna, Khirbet Qana in Lower Galilee, Reineh in Lower Galilee, and Qana in Upper Galilee. Of these, the authors of the Dictionary of the Bible suggest Khirbet Qana as the true identity of 'Cana of Galilee', which would have been so named to distinguish information technology from a 'Kanah' in the One-time Attestation, in the Book of Joshua. (Joshua's Kanah was probably near Tyre, in modern-mean solar day Lebanon.)

The name Cana is idea to be from the Hebrew or Aramaic for 'reeds', merely even that we cannot be sure well-nigh. Outside of John's gospel, Cana isn't mentioned elsewhere in the Bible. Nathanael, one of Jesus' disciples whom merely John mentions, came from Cana, and later in John'due south gospel we are told that Jesus healed a nobleman's son at Capernaum, shortly after Jesus had returned to Cana (John four:46).

Whatever the truth, information technology's probable that Cana was a few miles north of Nazareth, the place where Jesus grew up and where he first began to preach his teachings. Since the miracle of turning the water into wine is widely regarded equally Jesus' beginning phenomenon, it seems appropriate that it would happen at an event non far from Jesus' dwelling house, while he was with his mother. Whilst subsequently miracles often take place with a gathering of Jesus' followers assembled around him, at this stage the oversupply is there to witness the marriage of two other people, and the opportunity for Jesus' phenomenon arises naturally from a catering oversight.