Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
John 2:1-12, Water into wine at a village wedding
At a wedding in Cana the wine runs out. Jesus has the servants fill six stone purification jars with water, and the master of the feast tastes the best wine of the week.
John 2:1-12, in every translation this tool compares.
Jesus, his mother and his disciples are guests at a wedding in Cana of Galilee when the wine runs out. His mother tells him, and he answers her with a distance that surprises readers, yet she tells the servants to do whatever he says. He has them fill six stone jars, kept for Jewish purification, with water and take some to the master of the feast, who finds it is fine wine and teases the bridegroom for saving the best until last. John calls it the first of Jesus' signs.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/honor-and-shame\/","n":"Honor before a crowd","s":"Public standing was the currency of the ancient Mediterranean. People competed for honor and dreaded being shamed in front of others.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/unclean-by-touch\/","n":"Unclean by touch","s":"Under the law, skin disease, bleeding, corpses, tombs and certain animals made a person ritually unclean, and touch could pass it on.","r":""}
Weddings lasted seven days; the host had to supply wine for the whole week, and running out was a lasting embarrassment (Keener and his notes). Guests helped pay for weddings with gifts, so Mary may be asking her son for one, Keener suggests; his notes read her words as a polite, indirect request. The cultural backgrounds notes say, "Jewish people preferred stone jars because they did not easily contract ritual impurity." Together these six held about as much as an immersion pool (Keener and his notes; the ESV Study Bible). What the empty wine means is read in different ways: the ESV and CSB Study Bibles see the barrenness of the religion of the day, and Wright sees God starting something new inside the old Jewish order. Most scholars now place Cana at Khirbet Qana, about nine miles north of Nazareth, where excavation has found Roman-period houses and a ritual immersion pool (the ESV Study Bible; the cultural backgrounds article on Cana; Price and House; the Zondervan atlas); the traditional site, Kefr Kenna, has the modern churches, and the Zondervan Bible dictionary leaves the question open.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on John 2:1, 2:2, 2:3, 2:4, 2:6, 2:8, 2:9-10 and 2:11
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on John 2:1, 2:2, 2:3, 2:4, 2:6, 2:8, 2:10 and 2:11
- ESV Study Bible, study notes on John 2:1, 2:3, 2:4 and 2:6
- CSB Study Bible, note on John 2:3
- N. T. Wright, John for Everyone, Part One, comment on John 2:1-12
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article Cana of Galilee
- J. Randall Price and H. Wayne House, Zondervan Handbook of Biblical Archaeology, ch. 12, John 2:1-2 Cana of Galilee
- Carl G. Rasmussen, Zondervan Atlas of the Bible, The Life of Christ
- J. D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Cana
