Note 335 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

Here again it has been attempted to escape from the numerous difficulties of the supranatural view, by a natural interpretation of the history. The commentators who advance this explanation set out from the fact, that it was the custom among the Jews to make presents of oil or wine at marriage feasts. Now Jesus, it is said, having brought with him five new disciples as uninvited guests, might foresee a deficiency of wine, and wished out of pleasantry to present his gift in an unexpected and mysterious manner. The δόξα (glory) which he manifested by this proceeding, is said to be merely his humanity, which in the proper place did not disdain to pass a jest; the πίστις, (faith) which he thereby excited in his disciples, was a joyful adherence to a man who exhibited none of the oppressive severity which had been anticipated in the Messiah. Mary was aware of her son’s project, and warned him when it appeared to her time to put it in execution; but he reminded her playfully not to spoil his jest by over-haste. His causing water to be drawn, seems to have belonged to the playful deception which he intended; that all at once wine was found in the vessels instead of water, and that this was regarded as a miraculous metamorphosis, might easily happen at a late hour of the night, when there had already been considerable drinking; lastly, that Jesus did not enlighten the wedding party as to the true state of the case, was the natural consequence of his wish not himself to dissipate the delusion which he had playfully caused.335 For the rest, how the plan was effected, by what arrangements on the part of Jesus the wine was conveyed in the place of the water, this, Paulus thinks, is not now to be ascertained; it is enough for us to know that all happened naturally. As however, according to the opinion of this expositor, the Evangelist was aware, in a general manner, that the whole occurrence was natural, why has he given us no intimation to that effect? Did he wish to prepare for the reader the same surprise that Jesus had prepared for the spectators? still he must afterwards have solved the enigma, if he did not intend the delusion to be permanent. Above all, he ought not to have used the misleading expression, that Jesus by this act manifested forth his glory (τὴν δόξαν αὑτοῦ, v. 11), which, in the phraseology of this gospel, can only mean his superior dignity; he ought not to have called the incident a sign (σημεῖον), by which something supernatural is implied; lastly, he ought not, by the expression, the water that was made wine (τὸ ὕδωρ οἶνον γεγενημένον, v. 9), and still less by the subsequent designation of Cana as the place where he made the water wine (ὅπου ἐποίησεν ὕδωρ οἶνον), to have occasioned the impression, that he approved the miraculous conception of the event.336 The author of the Natural History sought to elude these difficulties by the admission, that the narrator himself, John, regarded the event as a miracle, and meant to describe it as such. Not to mention, however, the unworthy manner in which he explains this error on the part of the Evangelist,337 it is not easy to conceive of Jesus that he should have kept his disciples in the same delusion as the rest of the guests, and not have given to them at least an explanation concerning the real course of the event. It would therefore be necessary to suppose that the narrator of this event was not one of the disciples of Jesus: a supposition which goes beyond the sphere of this system of interpretation. But even admitting that the narrator himself, whoever he may have been, was included in the same deception with those who regarded the affair as a miracle, in which case his mode of representation and the expressions which he uses would be accounted for; still the procedure of Jesus, and his mode of acting, are all the more inconceivable, if no real miracle were on foot. Why did he with refined assiduity arrange the presentation of the wine, so that it might appear to be a miraculous gift? Why, in particular, did he cause the vessels in which he intended forthwith to present the wine, to be filled beforehand with water, the necessary removal of which could only be a hindrance to the secret execution of his plan? unless indeed it be supposed, with Woolston, that he merely imparted to the water the taste of wine, by pouring into it some liquor. Thus there is a double difficulty; on the one hand, that of imagining how the wine could be introduced into the vessels already filled with water; on the other, that of freeing Jesus from the suspicion of having wished to create the appearance of a miraculous transmutation of the water. It may have been the perception of these difficulties which induced the author of the Natural History entirely to sever the connexion between the water which was poured in, and the wine which subsequently appeared, by the supposition that Jesus had caused the water to be fetched, because there was a deficiency of this also, and Jesus wished to recommend the beneficial practice of washing before and after meals, but that he afterwards caused the wine to be brought out of an adjoining room where he had placed it:—a conception of the matter which requires us either to suppose the intoxication of all the guests, and especially of the narrator, as so considerable, that they mistook the wine brought out of the adjoining room, for wine drawn out of the water vessels; or else that the deceptive arrangements of Jesus were contrived with very great art, which is inconsistent with the straightforwardness of character elsewhere ascribed to him.