The Wedding Feast takes place in Cana shortly after the call of
Philip and
Nathanael. According to
John 21:2, Cana was Nathanael's hometown. Although none of the
synoptic Gospels mentions the wedding at Cana,
Christian tradition based on John 2:11 holds that this is the first public miracle of Jesus. It is considered to have symbolic importance as the first of the
seven signs in the Gospel of John by which Jesus' divine status is attested, and around which the gospel is structured. Jesus will later return to Cana, where
John 4:46–54 describes him healing a Capernaum official's young son; the second sign in the Gospel of John. When his mother advises Jesus that their hosts are running out of wine, he says "Woman, what has this to do with me?" Sheen sees an echo of the
Protevangelium of Genesis 3:15 "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers", marking the commencement of Jesus' redemptive ministry. Interpreted allegorically, the good news and hope implied by the story are in the words of the steward of the Feast when he tasted the good wine, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now" (
John 2:10). This could be interpreted by saying simply that it is always darkest before the dawn, but good things are on the way. The more usual interpretation, however, is that this is a reference to the appearance of Jesus, whom the author of the Fourth Gospel regards as being himself "the good wine". According to Bill Day, the miracle may also be interpreted as the
antitype of
Moses' first public miracle of
changing water (the Nile river) into blood. This would establish a symbolic link between Moses as the first saviour of the Jews through their escape from
Egypt and Jesus as the spiritual saviour of all people. Some commentators have speculated about the identity of the unnamed bridegroom. One tradition, represented by
Thomas Aquinas among others, holds that the bridegroom was
John the Evangelist himself, a tradition that goes back to
Bede.
PECUSA Bishop
John Spong suggests in his book
Born of a Woman that the event was the wedding of Jesus himself to
Mary Magdalene. In 1854, at a time when
polygamy was an element of mainstream practice of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the
Latter-day Saint elder Orson Hyde made a similar suggestion, arguing that Jesus was a polygamist and that the event at Cana was his wedding to Mary Magdalene,
Martha and
Mary of Bethany. However, the idea that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene is usually dismissed by scholars as
pseudohistorical. Studying
Jesus in comparative mythology, the story of the transformation of water into wine bears some resemblance to a number of stories that were told about the ancient Greek god
Dionysus, who among others was said to fill with wine the empty barrels that had been left locked inside a temple overnight. However, scholars generally agree that the Gospel of John was written
by a community of
Jewish Christians who had recently been
excommunicated by the local synagogue for recognizing Jesus
as the Messiah, leading some to conclude that it would be making it unlikely the possibility that the Gospel was influenced by ancient
Greek mythology.
Bart Ehrman argues that the idea that the image of Jesus was influenced by ancient
pagan mythology is usually dismissed by scholars as a
fringe theory. The view of the valley looking out towards
Nazareth, from
Khirbet Qana, would have predominantly been of grape vines, as archeologists have found evidence of 1st-century
wine production. The early 6th-century writer
Antoninus Placentinus observed about Nazareth in his day: "it excels in wine and oil, fruits and honey." So, if a miracle of turning water into wine had actually occurred at the site, it would likely have had
allegorical significance for observers familiar with Greek mythology. The German theologian
Friedrich Justus Knecht points out three lessons that are to be drawn from this account at Cana: ==Identification of biblical Cana==