Have you ever wondered about the wedding at Cana? The one Heyzeus and his boys crashed around 31 CE. The actual location of Cana, if there ever was one, is unknown. It may have been any one of a dozen little villages in Galilee, or it may have been lost to time, or it may have been completely fictitious.
Reflect upon it for a moment and I will set up the scene. Heyzeus and the boys are hanging out at a wedding party in the town of Cana. The party then runs out of wine. His mother runs up to him and says, “They have no wine.” And Heyzeus snarkily replies (I assume that he had had a few, so it’s excusable), “Oh woman, what had this to do with me? My hour is not yet come.” Meaning don’t bother him, it wasn’t time to be nailed to a cross yet.
He then relents to his Jewish mother’s nagging and then orders the servants to fill the wine containers with water and then draw it out again. The servants pour out wine and take it to the head waiter, who tastes it and claims that it was the best served all evening. This miracle is regarded as the first sign among his followers that Heyzeus is the messiah and is walking the road to an impending crucifixion.
I’m going to ignore the fact that it sounds like he just mixed water with the sediment collected at the bottom of the gourds and produced a light version of the vintage. Additionally I’m going to put aside that this story is not written about in any of the synoptic gospels, only making an appearance in John, which was written much later than the other three – about the second century CE. This act has always struck me as a very odd miracle. It doesn’t really show off much of a compassionate nature or intent- as does the other miracles. It doesn’t involve bringing people back from the dead or curing them of leprosy. It’s not even on par with the feeding of the multitudes, because that was a very public forum and regarded people’s very real need to eat. It was a show of generosity.
The Wedding at Cana comes across as more of a drunken frat trick. “Hey look at me turn water into wine dudes, it’s fucking awesome. Party!” What is the point of it? Is there one, besides him looking cool at a party? Granted I’ve often found this miracle useful is justifying my alcoholism to Christian types, but it serves no real purpose. The Wedding at Cana is the miraculous equivalent of going for a beer run.
Personally I feel that it was thrown into John from a different gospel attributed to a different messiah (there were several other contenders for the position at the time swimming around in Judea), or perhaps from a different religion entirely, maybe a Bacchanalian cult.
But why staple this new miracle in? What was wrong with the one listed. The answer is simple and deals with numerology. There weren’t enough miracles already listed. John added one in order to reach seven. In ancient numerology, including Kabbalist lore, the number seven represents completeness and perfection in both a spiritual and physical sense. As opposed to the number six, which mankind, human weakness, and the manifestation of the Adversary. Thus man was created on the 6th day and given six days of labor. God and Heyzeus are one better, Man +1.
The writers of the Gospel of John needed an extra miracle in order to prop up their notions of Heyzeus’s messianic claim. Thus we have the Wedding at Cana. So sayeth the word of Rex Hurst!
Rex Hurst 