Note 338 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

In this dilemma between the supranatural and the natural interpretations, of which, in this case again, the one is as insufficient as the other, we should be reduced, with one of the most recent commentators on the fourth gospel, to wait “until it pleased God, by further developments of judicious Christian reflection, to evolve a solution of the enigma to the general satisfaction;”338 did we not discern an outlet in the fact, that the history in question is found in John’s gospel alone. Single in its kind as this miracle is, if it were also the first performed by Jesus, it must, even if all the twelve were not then with Jesus, have yet been known to them all; and even if among the rest of the Evangelists there were no apostle, still it must have passed into the general Christian tradition, and from thence into the synoptical memoirs: consequently, as John alone has it, the supposition that it arose in a region of tradition unknown to the synoptists, seems easier than the alternative, that it so early disappeared out of that from which they drew; the only question is, whether we are in a condition to show how such a legend could arise without historical grounds. Kaiser points for this purpose to the extravagant spirit of the oriental legend, which has ever been so fertile in metamorphoses: but this source is so wide and indefinite, that Kaiser finds it necessary also to suppose a real jest on the part of Jesus,339 and thus remains uneasily suspended between the mythical and the natural explanations, a position which cannot be escaped from, until there can be produced points of mythical connexion and origin more definite and exact. Now in the present case we need halt neither at the character of eastern legend in general, nor at metamorphoses in general, since transmutations of this particular element of water are to be found within the narrower circle of the ancient Hebrew history. Besides some narratives of Moses procuring for the Israelites water out of the flinty rock in the wilderness (Exod. xvii. 1 ff.; Num. xx. 1 ff.)—a bestowal of water which, after being repeated in a modified manner in the history of Samson (Judges xv. 18 f.), was made a feature in the messianic expectations;340—the first transmutation of water ascribed to Moses, is the turning of all the water in Egypt into blood, which is enumerated among the so-called plagues (Exod. vii. 17 ff.). Together with this mutatio in deterius, there is in the history of Moses a mutatio in melius, also effected in water, for he made bitter water sweet, under the direction of Jehovah (Exod. xiv. 23 ff.341); as at a later era, Elisha also is said to have made unhealthy water good and innoxious (2 Kings ii. 19 ff.342). As, according to the rabbinical passage quoted, the bestowal of water, so also, according to this narrative in John, the transmutation of water appears to have been transferred from Moses and the prophets to the Messiah, with such modifications, however, as lay in the nature of the case. If namely, on the one hand, a change of water for the worse, like that Mosaic transmutation into blood—if a miracle of this retributive kind might not seem well suited to the mild spirit of the Messiah as recognised in Jesus: so on the other hand, such a change for the better as, like the removal of bitterness or noxiousness, did not go beyond the species of water, and did not, like the change into blood, alter the substance of the water itself, might appear insufficient for the Messiah; if then the two conditions be united, a change of water for the better, which should at the same time be a specific alteration of its substance, must almost of necessity be a change into wine. Now this is narrated by John, in a manner not indeed in accordance with reality, but which must be held all the more in accordance with the spirit of his gospel. For the harshness of Jesus towards his mother is, historically considered, incredible; but it is entirely in the spirit of the fourth gospel, to place in relief the exaltation of Jesus as the divine Logos by such demeanour towards suppliants (as in John iv. 48), and even towards his mother.343 Equally in the spirit of this gospel is it also, to exhibit the firm faith which Mary maintains notwithstanding the negative answer of Jesus, by making her give the direction to the servants above considered, as if she had a preconception even of the manner in which Jesus would perform his miracle, a preconception which is historically impossible.344