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The Puzzling Wedding Feast

by Tony M.

The Gospel reading for today’s mass is the wedding feast at Cana (John 2). Lest anyone grow complacent in their understanding of this passage, may I bring forth some troublesome aspects to this particular story?

Mary was invited, as was Christ and his disciples. This was the very beginning of his ministry, before he had revealed himself in his own miracles. At this point the only knowledge we have for sure of signs and wonders is John the Baptist’s testimony and the Father’s declaration at the baptism in the Jordan River. Why was Christ invited along with the disciples? One might suppose 4 possibilities, and I don’t have a clue if any of them is right:

1. Christ was invited, and then he specifically asked to bring his disciples.

2. The wedding was for a couple so closely related to Jesus that they knew what he was about and assumed he would want to bring along these new people.

3. The wedding couple (or their parents) were already disciples themselves and so naturally enlarged the scope of their guest list.

4. The custom of “invitation” was much more flexible than ours, and taking along a dozen friends wasn’t so weird.

I don’t think (4) is all that likely, the passage actually says that the disciples were “invited”, and I think that merely “bringing along” friends would be described as “invited”. I doubt that (2) works: not much later on (Luke chapter 4?) Jesus’s friends and relatives were pretty upset at his ministry.

Next puzzlement: When Mary says to Jesus “they have no wine” his answer is positively off the wall. “ Woman, what is that to me and to you? My hour is not yet come.” This is terribly unresponsive. But the real question is, why did Mary comment on the wine to begin with? Did she expect him to do something? So far he hadn’t done any miracles, and she had lived with him for 30 years of no miracles to quell any expectations of special deals from God.

And then what does Jesus’s reply mean, given that he immediately goes and takes care of the problem? One explanation I have heard is that Jesus allowed Mary to make the first move of opening up his miraculous ministry: the Father inspired Mary to initiate the wonder-working, so that Christ’s ministry was not only a gift from Christ but also from Mary. This seems a bit stretched to me, and it doesn’t really _explain_ his seeming to reject any special role, and then accepting that role 5 seconds later.

When Mary tells the servants to “do whatever he tells you”, why do they obey? Mary wasn’t part of the “in charge” set, so closely associated with the hosts as to be effectively speaking for them, was she? And when Jesus tells them to fill the water basins, that looks to be a fairly onerous undertaking, not something done at a moment’s notice from the faucet. They must have spent some time drawing water from the well for that. Did any of them think to explain to the hosts or chief steward why all their time was taken up on such a fruitless task? What would they have said to justify themselves?

Next, when Jesus tells them to take it to the chief steward, at this point was it already wine, (before they took it), or did that happen later, on the way? I suspect it was already wine, because if I were one of them there would be no way in the world I would have brought water from the purifying (washing) jugs to the steward for him to taste. But the construction of the passage doesn’t suggest that. Either these servants were already granting to Jesus near-divine status, or the passage is leaving out something.

Finally, the passage has the steward comment on the excellence of the wine, but says nothing at all about the revelation of the miraculous source of the wine: we don’t get the servants saying “HE did it” or anything of the kind. It passes directly into talking about this first of his miracles manifesting his glory, passing right over the actual denouement.

As story-telling, one would have to say that this is pretty ineffective, a pretty sloppy and careless approach to getting a crowd wrapped up in the story. Which leads one to suspect that what John was doing was writing down the bare bones of an already extremely well-known event, where almost everyone (in his expected readership) knew the majority of the facts, all he was doing was adding a few details.

I cannot close without throwing out a Catholic note: there is no way in the world you can locate a teetotaler Jesus in the Gospel. This story blows any such notion into shreds. Not only does Jesus accept an invitation to attend a party where most people expect to be getting well lubricated, even after they are well along and the wine has run out, he makes additional wine to enable the process to continue, and makes it especially high quality so that nobody will be inclined to pass it up. Even though he could have left them only part of the way toward a highly convivial state, he chose to intervene with a miracle that has essentially no direct theological or spiritual purpose. Jesus is fine with wine.

Comments (28)

Interesting comments. I have conjectures on only a few of the puzzles raised. I'd suggest that Jesus and his mother probably were related to the people having the wedding. This doesn't entirely explain the disciples' invitation, but it doesn't seem too off-the-wall to me that Jesus was able to get an invitation for his disciples for his own reasons.

If the people getting married were relatives, then Mary may very well have been in the planning team so that the servants would listen to her. Even nowadays female relatives of the bride and/or groom often are deeply involved in making the wedding go smoothly.

I would suggest that Mary didn't know what Jesus would do and didn't particularly expect a miracle but went to him as her eldest son and as someone who had already shown himself a pretty authoritative person and someone who might have an idea. Many a woman goes to her husband in the same spirit: "We have a problem here. Got any ideas? What should we do?" I'm going to guess that Joseph was dead by this time, in which case Jesus would be the head of the family.

I don't entirely know why he at first responded the way he did. That remains up in the air. But I do think that the dynamic that follows is very human in terms of male and female interactions. The female asks the man to help or to have input or to do something. The man refuses or puts her off. At that point the woman is not supposed to push him. She does not, however, give up. She issues her orders to the servants because she continues to hope that the man she has appealed to will do something, and the servants may need to be available in that case. The man knows (one way or another) that she hasn't really given up; having asserted his prerogative not to "ask how high" when the woman says "jump," he now relents and takes care of the problem.

This scene, or a variant thereof (no servants), is repeated in households, between sons and mothers and husbands and wives, probably hundreds of times (if not thousands of times) around the world every day.

That doesn't answer all of the questions, but it does put the whole thing in a firmly human context. I also think it supports the conclusion that Mary had no idea what was going to happen but hoped for the best.

It passes directly into talking about this first of his miracles manifesting his glory, passing right over the actual denouement.

Perhaps since it also says that his disciples believed on him as a result, very few other people knew. Why the servants didn't tell the important people (like the steward) isn't entirely clear, though one can get a sort of picture of their keeping their mouths shut because they won't be believed and because it all seems to be working out all right and being taken as a natural event. Servants perhaps didn't try to get improbable stories believed when this wasn't necessary.

As story-telling, one would have to say that this is pretty ineffective, a pretty sloppy and careless approach to getting a crowd wrapped up in the story. Which leads one to suspect that what John was doing was writing down the bare bones of an already extremely well-known event, where almost everyone (in his expected readership) knew the majority of the facts, all he was doing was adding a few details.

I would say rather that the intent isn't to get the audience wrapped up in the story but to tell it as part of a memoir with the purpose of giving facts and evidence about the life of Jesus Christ. The gaps are the result of a non-literary purpose. It isn't composed. John is telling it bringing up details as they occur to him as he recalls the event. Real oral history is more likely to be like this, I would say, than like anything that really gets a crowd wrapped up in a story.

Of course, there is also (e): the disciples, or some number of them, were independently known to those extending the invitation.

There has been extensive ink spilled over this passage since the Patristic age. It falls squarely within the realm of "thing about which I do not feel compelled to attempt to draw independent conclusions, because if I am that curious, I really could go and find better analyses written by saints." So pardon my complete lack of engagements with the merits of the post, but if I wanted to try and interpret the Scriptures as if I were the first person reading them (or as if it were somehow given to me to interpret them), I would be a Protestant.

Titus, surely you're not saying that a Catholic like Tony is blameworthy because he muses on a passage like this himself? That Catholics "aren't supposed to do that"? He surely hasn't challenged any Church doctrine by so doing, that I know of, nor rejected any Church teaching by any of the things he said in the post. I've gotta say, such a dismissive attitude towards a mere discussion among friends of a Scripture passage does rather confirm some extreme stereotypes of Catholic views about Scripture and the laity. Perhaps that doesn't bother you, though.

On the idea that the story is sketchy or even sloppy because it doesn't fill in a lot of details, a couple of other observations: A story moves more slowly when a lot of explanations are offered. For the movement of the story, an explanation of why the disciples were invited would be a digression. A person telling a story as remembered would, in my opinion, be less likely to stop and offer that explanation than, say, a novelist. Also, John may well not have known the answers to all of these questions. Why did Mary ask Jesus to do something about the wine shortage? Why did the servants listen to Mary? Why did Jesus say what he did to her at first and then change his tune so relatively quickly? Why didn't the servants tell the steward that Jesus had changed the water into wine? An eyewitness to the event might quite easily not know the answers to these things and not conjecture, because conjecture isn't in his assignment, so to speak. I'm quite sure there have been many ordinary life situations in which my relationship to the situation has been just like that. I can tell you pretty accurately what was said and what happened, because I was there, but I don't know all the whys and wherefores, and I'm not going to stop at every point where a why or wherefore comes up to _tell_ you that I don't know or to speculate.

Tony, you might find interesting this comment of mine going into some detail on just one example (of many and many) of the argument from undesigned coincidences in the gospels. It's the fact that John, in the "Lovest thou me" passage, shows Jesus clearly alluding to Peter's boast that, though all others forsake Jesus, Peter never will, but John's gospel does not contain that boast. It's found only in the Synoptics. Jesus' words are thus somewhat cryptic in John's gospel alone, because he is telling the scene as he remembers it, not stopping to fill in explanations. These undesigned coincidences often begin with questions raised by the account in one gospel and explained in another.

http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2011/01/undesigned-coincidences.html?showComment=1295050843217#c6039038043024424112

Titus, my basic purpose was to pose challenges, reasons for people to work harder at grasping the whole passage. One part of that "work harder" is to go read the Fathers and see what they say. I have St. Thomas's Catena Aurea, and I can (and did) look up what St. Thomas puts together from the Fathers. The issues I put up here are either not dealt with by them, or dealt with in a manner that leaves room for further thought.

There is one person, who received visions (private revelation, not confirmed or approved for general affirmation), who proposed that it was Jesus himself who was the responsible party, second only to the "chief steward", in making sure all went smoothly. This would explain fully why Mary would go to him to mention the problem, but would make us scratch even harder for explaining his answer back.

On the idea that the story is sketchy or even sloppy because it doesn't fill in a lot of details, a couple of other observations:

Lydia, my primary concern with the "storyness" of the story was about the resolution: John recounts all about how a miracle was prepared, but fails to say one word about how it became known as a miracle - either to the select few (outside of the servants) or to the wider assembly. How did the disciples find out? The passage says this was the start of manifesting his glory, but we are left uncertain whether the event became general knowledge to the party-goers, the hosts, even Mary. I suspect that John leaves this last out because that information was already general knowledge among Christians, but what do I know?

A person telling a story as remembered would, in my opinion, be less likely to stop and offer that explanation than, say, a novelist...An eyewitness to the event might quite easily not know the answers to these things and not conjecture, because conjecture isn't in his assignment, so to speak.

John apparently wrote his Gospel last. He would have been telling these facts about Christ for decades before he wrote them down. It is humanly unlikely that he would have failed to generate a "standard" way of telling the story by that point, and his hearers would have asked for many of the details that I point out as desired. John, with Mary living under his roof, would have had total opportunity to flesh out his data, his facts, to make the story more complete. I suspect that the written version simply doesn't hold all the details that he had at his fingertips, and it is up to us to discern why - to the extent that the information we have allows. Possibly, because he is doing something in addition to merely furnishing the story of the first miracle. Also, John does not place himself as present, so it is possible that he had to gather this story from others to begin with.

Also, John does not place himself as present, so it is possible that he had to gather this story from others to begin with.

That, I'm pretty certain, is not the case. John is huge on being the "one who saw." Remember, too, that Peter makes (see Acts) one of the requirements for a newly chosen apostle that the person have been with them from the origin of Jesus' ministry through to being a witness of the resurrection. That doesn't mean that every one of the disciples, not even of the twelve, was present at every incident in Jesus' life that is recorded anywhere. But since John makes such a point of saying that this is the "beginning of miracles," and that "his disciples believed on him," it is highly likely that he was there. Note, too, that it isn't in the synoptics--yet more reason to believe that he is filling in something he himself witnessed that hadn't been recorded already. And John records it with his usual meticulous attention to detail. The passage begins, "On the third day," he gives the number of water pots that were sitting there, all of that. That's classic Johannine eyewitness reportage.

I think yours are interesting questions, but I'm inclined to think that the reason they are not answered is _because_ John's purpose is to tell the story of the first miracle, not because he has some other purpose. I have only a rather general idea of what you mean about "how people came to know" about what Jesus had done. If I'm understanding you correctly, I have trouble thinking of any story of any miracle that spells that out more clearly than this one does. It says his disciples were there and that they believed on him as a result. What more do you want? The clear implication (as with, say, the feeding of the five thousand) is that the disciples knew because they were there and saw what happened.

By the way, apropos of the question of when the miracle happened, I've just refreshed my memory of the passage, and it definitely says that Jesus told them to "draw out" and bear what they drew out to the master of the feast. So they were carrying, presumably, a cup or flagon of what they drew to the master. Since in the next verse it says that the master tasted the water that was made wine and that the servants knew where it came from, I think we are safe in inferring that it was wine when they drew out some of it in some smaller vessel to bear to the steward.

I have trouble thinking of any story of any miracle that spells that out more clearly than this one does. It says his disciples were there and that they believed on him as a result. What more do you want?

Was there a general announcement: "Hey, everybody, Jesus just did this amazing thing!" Or was it reserved to a smaller subset? Chrysostom says the following:

He manifests His glory, as far as related to His own act; and if at the time many knew it not, yet was it afterwards to be heard and known of all. And His disciples believed on Him. It was probable that these would believe more readily, and give more attention to what went on.

It is at least possible that there WASN'T a general revelation of the miracle to all present. The text doesn't say one way or another, and the ending part is compatible with the miracle coming to general light only later, and known only to a few at the time. There are comments from some Fathers suggesting that the servants themselves were not responsible for initiating the reveal moment, they were just servants and who pays attention to them?

Titus, we can always say that we don't know because we weren't intended to know. But we can never be sure how far we were supposed to plumb the details and figure out what is not stated explicitly.

That's classic Johannine eyewitness reportage.

Excellent points.

Yes, I'd be inclined to agree that it was probably not generally known but only to those immediately present. He manifested forth his glory and his disciples believed on him--the implication may be that only those standing immediately around, which included the disciples, knew what had happened.

On Mary's and Jesus' motivation, something related to genre occurred to me: How often does John directly record motivations? And especially Jesus' motivations. I can't think of a single instance of that. I can think of one instance, in John 12, of an acerbic comment about Judas's motive in asking why the perfume with which Jesus was anointed was not sold and the profit given "to the poor." John can't resist pointing out that Judas was a thief and wanted to get his paws on the loot if that money were donated to Jesus' fund "for the poor." As a general rule, though, I don't recall a lot of places where John tells us directly why someone asked a certain question or did a certain thing. He tells us what was said and what happened, and we infer from there.

How often does John directly record motivations? And especially Jesus' motivations.

John is a mixture of these. He does it some of the time: like in ch. 6:

When Jesus therefore had lifted up his eyes and seen that a very great multitude was coming to him, he said to Philip: "Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?" 6 And this he said to try him, for he himself knew what he would do.

And chapter 7:

After these things, Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill him.

Good examples. I would say the first is the more pertinently similar.

Okay, so I was trying to be nice by not commenting on Sunday. I simply want to make that point up front.

Since I've read some alternative/unorthodox interpretations of the New Testament, there is one that is relevant to this story. Short and sweet, the bridegroom is Jesus. Going back to a point I keep pounding home, the Gospel of John was written in part to answer questions and criticisms made against the Synoptic gospels. It could also include responses to other texts and oral traditions that were circulating at the time. I don't have any idea if Jesus was married or not, Dan Brown's book notwithstanding, all I'm claiming is that there could easily have been a story circulating that he was. Phrased more accurately it was so common for Jewish spiritual leaders (even unconventional ones) to be married that the Pharisees would have remarked upon it if he wasn't. Since they made no such comment, then Jesus must have been married. The writer of John, not sure what to make of these stories, included them in an obscure form. This version of events would explain why the disciples were there, why Mary would bring this problem to Jesus, and why the servants would obey him.

If you want to get deeper into the text, there is even an allusion to another famous passage in Luke 5:33-39, although it reverses the ending so that the new (symbolic of the New Covenant) is better than the old.

"And they said unto him, Why do the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees; but thine eat and drink? And he said unto them, Can ye make the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days. And he spake also a parable unto them; No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better."

My initial reaction was: why do you want to know?

I kept looking into the story, and interestingly, it is 6 vessels that are filled with water. I had a dream, where there were also 6...let's just call them vessels. In light of the Gospel, it makes me think I need to be careful with what I am using to fill them, what I am drawing forth.

So, whatever the reason you asked, it was very helpful. Thanks for your questions. I hope you find profitable answers.

Step2, I'm going to be tactful by commenting that I'm not commenting on that...theory.

Step2, I know that Dan Brown made extra canonical biblical speculation fun and respectable around town, but as investigative endeavor it's really, really close to completely useless.

It may have been very common for leaders to be married, but it wasn't universal, and it wasn't in itself remarkable when they happened not to be. Until this degenerate age of hooking up and running from commitment, it was very common in all societies for men to be married, but it was also true in nearly all societies that some men don't marry.

The writer of John, not sure what to make of these stories, included them in an obscure form.

I totally reject the model of biblical interpretation that permits any such playing with the Gospels. First of all, the "writer of John" was a guy by the name of John. He was the beloved disciple, the last living apostle. Secondly, he wrote what he knew, he didn't make up just-so stories to insert his own neat little theories about stuff he didn't know into the record, he recorded what he saw / heard. In my opinion, people who adhere to any such version of "gospel-writing" as myth-making where the author makes up stories and words to put into Jesus mouth are basically rejecting the whole of Christianity itself, and the whole point of even bothering with the Gospels, as well as ignoring scads of historical non-belief-centered evidence for their root veracity as reporting facts. I'm not interested in that nihilistic game.

But thank you for waiting until Monday. Very nicely done.

Copied directly from jewfaq.org
"Marriage is vitally important in Judaism. Refraining from marriage is not considered holy, as it is in some other religions. On the contrary, it is considered unnatural. The Talmud says that an unmarried man is constantly thinking of sin. The Talmud tells of a rabbi who was introduced to a young unmarried rabbi. The older rabbi told the younger one not to come into his presence again until he was married."

First of all, the "writer of John" was a guy by the name of John. He was the beloved disciple, the last living apostle.

Well, there was a beloved disciple, but his name wasn't John.
http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/01/was-lazarus-beloved-disciple.html

Secondly, he wrote what he knew, he didn't make up just-so stories to insert his own neat little theories about stuff he didn't know into the record, he recorded what he saw / heard.

John was clearly written last, at least a decade or two after the Synoptic gospels, some scholars put it as far as fifty years removed. In all probability the final writer wasn't an eyewitness, although some eyewitness accounts were used as part of the gospel.

There is also the problem of omissions by this gospel writer. It isn't only his style of writing that is dramatically different, there are significant content differences as well.
http://bible.org/seriespage/major-differences-between-john-and-synoptic-gospels

Fascinating discussion.

Lydia's early comment struck me as particularly insightful:

This scene, or a variant thereof (no servants), is repeated in households, between sons and mothers and husbands and wives, probably hundreds of times (if not thousands of times) around the world every day.

When reading or hearing the Blessed Mother's words from this story, I often recall my own mother and her way of speaking to my father and to her three sons when she needed something done. Often her requests for action were not phrased as questions but took the form of statements. "That car sure needs washing." "Those birds at our feeder have nothing to eat." "Would you look at that -- The garbage is overflowing."

While some might be tempted to read into such conversational patterns a form of sarcasm or "passive-aggressiveness" or some other sort of psychobabble, in our family there was always an implied or explicit winking that went on around such statements from my mother. As her sons grew into their teenage years, they learned to play the game too. "The garbage is full, huh, Mom? Wow, that's really interesting." After a round or two of good-natured banter in this fashion, though, the job would get done.

I have no scriptural studies degree but I have always imagined this passage as a potential window into just the same sort of playful back-and-forth among the Holy Family. Mary: "Look at that - they have no wine." It helps to imagine Christ saying his line with a knowing smile on his face "Woman, what does that have to do with me?!" Mary shrugs back with a smile of her own, and turns to the servants - "Listen, just do whatever he tells you."

Chesterton wrote at the end of Orthodoxy about some of the puzzling silences in the Gospels, and concluded that "There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth."

In all probability the final writer wasn't an eyewitness

In all probability, you are totally wrong. He insists on having been an eyewitness.


there are significant content differences as well.

Whaddaya know about that. Think he might have been trying to fill in some information?

By the way, I've just been re-reading a sweet little essay by Dorothy Sayers called "A Vote of Thanks to Cyrus." She's very good on the way that the criticisms aimed at the fourth gospel would never be taken seriously if it weren't for a double standard directed at religious texts. Her only error that I can see is that she is unaware of the fact that the "John the Presbyter" really was John the Apostle and that the idea of a separation between them was originally simply an error. But that's a small matter (which many readers wouldn't even pick up on) in an otherwise excellent little essay.

(As for Witherington's "beloved apostle was Lazarus" theory, perhaps least said, soonest mended. Lazarus was at least a first-century disciple of Jesus, so to that extent the theory isn't as off the wall as others one hears. But it just won't hold water. Indeed, it suffers from exactly the sort of thing Sayers talks about, as though this is a literary work where we're looking for heavy clues, and as though Jesus, not being, as Sayers says, quite _real_, couldn't love more than one person. The Gospels also mention that Jesus looked on the rich young ruler and loved him. Hmmm. Maybe _he_ was the beloved disciple! Yikes.)

The Talmud says that an unmarried man is constantly thinking of sin.

And since the Talmud is post-Christ, this tells us...very little.

St. John the Baptist was an unmarried prophet. Of considerable reputation.

St. Paul had been, before becoming a Christian, an unmarried Pharisee of some standing. This would have been impossible if marriage were such a norm as to be a universal requirement.

Besides the fact that without having state-assigned forced marriages, having universal marriage has always been an impossibility, since there are always cases where "it just never worked out" for no bad reason at all, just the mechanics of life alone.

some scholars put it as far as fifty years removed.

Yeah, and some scholars put the whole Bible into "fairy tale" category. Some scholars couldn't find the business end of a piece of chalk. Please, I don't want to get involved in the "New Testament wasn't written by Matthew / Mark / John..., it was written by 'Christian Communities' in the period 250 BC to 350 AD" sillies. I wonder if a single person who espouses such drivel would be willing to bet on their being right, with the price of losing being they would permanently lose their job and have to dig ditches for the rest of their lives (much less losing their lives) as the bargain. In any case, there are "scholars" who say the Holocaust never happened, and I don't need to spend an iota of time researching the question, my Dad saw one of the death camps.

Let's just pretend, for the fun of it, that John wrote the book that bears his name because he witnessed 3 years of Christ's public ministry, his death, and the resurrected Christ.

He insists on having been an eyewitness.

Well that settles it. I mean, if a guy named John who elliptically refers to himself as the beloved disciple claims he was an eyewitness, why wouldn't I trust him? I've never encountered a person named John that I didn't instantly and instinctively trust with my very life.

Think he might have been trying to fill in some information?

There is a difference between filling in information and writing a spin-off show.

St. John the Baptist was an unmarried prophet. Of considerable reputation.

True enough, but he was also not interacting with the Pharisees as far as we are told. His ministry was apparently out in the countryside, safely removed from temple life if not from lethal political intrigue.

St. Paul had been, before becoming a Christian, an unmarried Pharisee of some standing. This would have been impossible if marriage were such a norm as to be a universal requirement.

I didn't say it was a requirement, I said it was a universal expectation and that the Pharisees would have remarked upon it if he wasn't married. Since Paul is the one who elevated the Christian idea of celibacy as a path to sanctity, I don't think he ever had a traditional Jewish orthodoxy to begin with. As far as his standing goes, he also was the son of a Pharisee, so his status could have been inherited.

In any case, there are "scholars" who say the Holocaust never happened, and I don't need to spend an iota of time researching the question, my Dad saw one of the death camps.

There may be one or two who espouse that nonsense, but among actual scholars (as opposed to cranks, paranoids, and Iranian presidents) the Holocaust is an overwhelming, undeniable fact. The real problem for your position is that the largest time gap comes mainly from traditional conservative scholars, because they moved the Synoptic timeframe up so early.

Let's just pretend, for the fun of it, that John wrote the book that bears his name because he witnessed 3 years of Christ's public ministry, his death, and the resurrected Christ.

Let’s pretend you can answer any of the multitude of problems with your assumption.

Let’s pretend you can answer any of the multitude of problems with your assumption.

Scholars have been proposing new "problems" with the idea that the Gospel authors actually wrote the Gospels for many centuries. In virtually every case, the "problems" have been adequately dealt with by other scholars, either immediately, or within a few short decades, so that very few old "problems" are still considered real problems by real scholars. In biology that would called "scientific progress", and is considered to be solid reason for us to think that we will solve by science the remaining questions that have not yet been solved. Double standard...again.

I have been reading to articles and listening to mp3 debates by people trying to "prove" all sorts of problems with Christianity, including reliance on the Gospels. Most of the time (but not all), the problems with the Bible are so silly, thin, foolish that it is amazing that presumably "scholarly" people would admit to holding them. Some of the time they are serious, but there is real, solid follow-up evidence that solves the problem - but the cranks STILL keep spouting the "problem" as if it were a deal-killer. It is just numbing how much drivel you have to wade through to find serious issues. If I were a professional NT scholar, I would wade through it anyway, but as an amateur, I can reasonably do elsewise with my time.

I have no scriptural studies degree but I have always imagined this passage as a potential window into just the same sort of playful back-and-forth among the Holy Family. Mary: "Look at that - they have no wine." It helps to imagine Christ saying his line with a knowing smile on his face "Woman, what does that have to do with me?!" Mary shrugs back with a smile of her own, and turns to the servants - "Listen, just do whatever he tells you."

Tim, I didn't mean to ignore your comments. I think you have a good point here, and this may be just the right way to look at it.

For myself (also no degree in this) I am always a little cautious about trying to imagine the relationship between Jesus and Mary when they were living under the same roof. There are some major obstacles to projecting our experience into that. Mary (according to Catholics) didn't have original sin or the damaging effects of it. So, she would have had no clouding of the intellect. We already know that the human memory is capable of vastly more than most of us manage, including perfect recall of things we have seen and heard. There is no reason to think Mary didn't have a perfect memory. Similarly with the intellect: there are people who can do amazing "tricks" like computing in a couple of seconds the day of the week that July 8, 5442 falls on; our computing and processing capacity is in theory much more than we typically use. Mary's mind would have been ready and prepared to use all of its powers. So, with a perfect memory and no obstacles to using her mind properly, fully, she could have seen into and ascertained correctly everything which the data that came into her experience was able to be evidence for, for any question that she would have considered. Her IQ would have been way, WAY off the charts.

Secondly, the angel greeted her with the sobriquet "full of grace", not just a description, but a name, as in: she whose identity is only rightly understood when you call her full of grace. One of the mystics in the Church explains what this means: from the very first moment of her existence, she received the life of grace, God living in her soul, and responded to it in perfect creaturely love, thereby disposing herself to receiving still more perfect graces, to which she responded wholly, and so on. Mary's union with the mind and will of God was vastly greater than any of the patriarchs, surpassing even Abraham's faith and David's zeal, for example. In the lives of the great ones, patriarchs and prophets and saints, we see how this interior unity with God results in amazing insights, people who see things so much more clearly than we expect (such as, for example, that they know when to prophecy a wonderous miracle they are about to pull out of the hat). As a result, we should believe that her insights into human nature, human sin and motivations, how we fit into the economy of creation, etc would have been such as to be mind-boggling to the rest of us.

Thirdly, she spent 30 years with God at the dinner table. The Bible doesn't even try to describe what that was like. At one and the same time, she was the most perfect of creatures, humbly submitting to God; on the other, her Son was the most perfect example of obedience to the commandment "honor your father and your mother". What did they discuss, and how? Did Mary discuss the doings of the neighbors, suggest how to be of most help to them, and receive correction when Jesus knew that 1,477 years down the road what Mary proposed would result in something less than perfectly what God designed, so He made adjustments in her proposals? Did He explain why? We are given so little to even start to guess. That interplay of creature and Son gives us two of the oddest passages in the gospels: the finding of Jesus in the Temple at age 12, and this one at Cana. I suspect that when they talked together, the words out loud were sometimes only the barest sign of the communication that was occurring, with tones of voice, gestures, looks, and then interior movements of grace making it so much richer. We see through a glass darkly; in this case the darkness is nearly overwhelming.

"St Paul, before becoming a Christian, had been an unmarried Pharisee of some standing."
Just a quibble here. Isn't it plausible that St Paul was a widower?

Her IQ would have been way, WAY off the charts.

So let me get this straight, a speculative remark without a hint of evidence to support it supposed to be obvious, perhaps even logical, but no level of evidence (internal and external) is sufficient to cast doubt on who wrote the Gospel of John.

That was a fine comment, Tony, a fine tribute to Our Lady. That line in the Gospels about her 'keeping all these things in her heart' is probably just the lid on a treasure chest.

Step2, you need to re-read my comments. The whole thing is speculation, I don't represent it as anything else. I am fine if Protestants don't think I have captured the truth, or Luke's meaning well, (though I ask them to think hard on what "full of grace" does mean.) The entire reason to present it was to give a great reason for caution in thinking that we can take our own sensibilities about family life and project them onto that of Jesus and Mary, a huge note of caution and investigative humility about what Mary and Jesus mean in their words. Whenever I present something like "one of the mystics says" it is automatically just a speculative possibility, because I don't expect people to give a lot of weight to that, it's private revelation and is not protected from error.

The reasons for thinking that the Gospel of John is authentic is otherwise: plenty of evidence for hard-bitten skeptics to see, good answers to many proposed "problems," and so on. We will do a new thread on the question down the road, this is not the location for it. I ask you to be patient while we gather our resources and put together something worthwhile on it.

Bill, thanks.

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