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Joh_2:11. The τὴν before ἀρχήν being spurious (see critical notes), we must translate: This, as beginning of His miracles, did Jesus at Cana. See on Joh_4:54, and Bernhardy, p. 319; Stallbaum, ad Plat. Gorg. p. 510 D. From this it is clear that it is the first miracle in general, and not merely the first of those that were wrought in Cana (Joh_4:46 sqq.), that is meant (so already τινές in Chrysostom and Paulus). This concluding remark of John’s simply serves to express, on occasion of the first of them, the teleological nature of the miracles of Jesus generally.
τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ ] not “His excellent humanity” (Paulus), but His divine Messianic majesty, as in Joh_1:14. The miracles of Jesus, as He Himself testified, had for their object not only the δόξα of the Father, but also His own, Joh_11:4 (in opposition to Weizsäcker, Jahrb. f. Deutsche Theol. 1857, p. 165). The former is really the latter, and the latter the former. Observe how in John (as well as in the Synoptics) Jesus begins His Messianic ministry in Galilee, even in this His first miracle.
καὶ ἐπίστευσαν , κ . τ . λ .] and His disciples became believers in Him. The faith which they already had (Joh_1:35-51) was only introductory, belonging to the commencement of their connection with Jesus; now, upon the basis of this manifestation of His glory (Joh_1:14), came the more advanced and fuller decision, a new epoch in their faith, which, moreover, still continued susceptible of and requiring fresh additions even to the end (Joh_11:15, Joh_14:11). There is no hint here of any contrast with the unbelief afterwards manifested by the people (Brückner), nor can this be inferred from Joh_2:12 ff. Comp. Weiss, Lehrbegriff, p. 102.
Note.
This turning of the water into wine must be regarded as an actual miracle, for John as an eye-witness (see on Joh_1:41-42), in the most simple and definite manner (comp. Joh_4:46), represents it as such, and as the first manifestation of the divine glory dwelling in Christ in the direction of miraculous working (not as portraying beforehand the heavenly marriage supper, Rev_19:8, Mat_26:29, as Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, II. 2, p. 407, and Baumgarten, p. 99, take it). Every exposition which explains away the miraculous element contradicts the words and the purpose of St. John, infringes on his credibility and capacity for simple observation, and places even the character of Jesus in an ambiguous light. The physical inconceivability, which nevertheless is not identical with absolute impossibility (against Scholten, p. 215), pertains to this work in common only with every miracle;[137] and hence the appeal made to a supposed accelerated process of nature (Olshausen, comp. already Augustine and Chrysostom), which must have been at the same time an artificial process, is only a superfluous crutch on which the representation is made to lean, inapplicable to the other miracles, and as arbitrary as it is (in the absence of a vine) inadequate. Its inconceivableness in a telic point of view John himself removes in Joh_2:11; and remembering its design as there stated, the miracle was not an act of luxury (De Wette), but of abounding human kindness in blessing (see on Joh_2:6). To suppose another design, viz. that Jesus wished to show how opposed He was to the strict asceticism of the Baptist (Flatt, Olshausen), is pure and arbitrary invention, in opposition to Joh_2:11. Further, the fact that the Synoptics have not the narrative really amounts to nothing, because John selected and wrote independently of the synoptical series of narrations; and as they have not the first, so neither have they the last and greatest miracle. We must, after all, abide by the simple statement that there was a change of substance (Joh_2:9), effected by the power of Jesus over the sphere of nature, in conformity with a higher law of causation. Granting this power, which the whole range of the Gospel miracles demands, there is no ground whatever for contenting oneself (against Joh_2:9) with the assumption of a change of attributes merely in the water, whereby (after the analogy of mineral waters) it may have received the colour and taste of wine (Neander). It is levity of an equally objectionable kind, and a wronging of a writer so serious as John, to explain what occurred as a wedding joke, as Paulus (Jesus had a quantity of wine brought into the house, and had it mixed with water out of the pitchers and put upon the tables, Joh_2:4 having been spoken jestingly) and Gfrörer (Mary brought the wine with her as a wedding present, and during the feast, at the right moment, she gave her son a sign to bring out and distribute the gift) have agreed to do. Thus, instead of the transmutation of the water, we have a frivolous transmutation of the history.[138] Lastly, the mythical explanation contradicts the trustworthiness and genuineness of the Gospel. According to it, fact is resolved into legend—a legend derived from the analogies of the histories of Moses (Exo_15:23 sqq.) and Elisha (2Ki_2:19), as Strauss will have it, or from a misunderstood parable, as Weisse thinks; while De Wette—without, however, adopting the mythical view, but not fully recognising the historic character of the narrative—regards the dispensing of the wine as an act corresponding with the dispensing of the bread, and both as answering to the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper. This he holds to be the most appropriate explanation; but it is all the more inept, because there is not the least hint of it in the narrative, and because the Lord’s Supper is not once mentioned in John. According to Schweizer and Weisse, the paragraph is to be reckoned among certain interpolations which have been added to the genuine Johannean nucleus,—an arbitrary assertion; whereas Baur, whose criticism rejects the whole Gospel, transforms the narrative into an allegory, wherein water is the symbol of the Baptist, wine of the Messiah’s dignity (i.e. the bridegroom’s), and the transformation typifies the transition from the preparatory stage of the Baptist to the epoch of Messianic activity and glory (comp. Baumgarten Crusius, p. 82); while Hilgenfeld (Evang. p. 248) looks upon the turning of the water into wine as intended as a counterpart to the synoptical narrative of the temptation, and to illustrate how Jesus was raised above all narrow asceticism. Thus, too, some of the Fathers (Cyril, Augustine, and many others) allegorize the miracle, without, however, surrendering its objective and historical character as a fact; whereas Ewald, while renouncing any investigation into the historic probability of the narrative, regards it as the gilding of the idea of the beneficent power of the Messianic spirit, whereby even now water ought to become wine. Luthardt holds, indeed, the objective historical reality, but regards the manifestation of the δόξα to have been in contrast with that given in the O. T.,—the gift of God occupying the place of the command, and the higher life, which Jesus the bridegroom makes known in this miracle, the place of outward purification. Similarly Scholten, p. 164. But while the representation of Christ as bridegroom is quite remote from the narrative, John gives no support or sanction to the idea that the miracle was symbolical, either in the remark of Joh_2:6 ( κατὰ τ . καθαρ . τ . Ἰουδ .) or in that of Joh_2:11 ( ἘΦΑΝΈΡ . Τ . ΔΌΞ . ΑὐΤΟῦ ).
The miracle at Cana is, finally, the only one to which the Synoptics have no one that corresponds. Therefore the miracles in John are all the less to be used in support of the assertion that, in John, Christ, after the manner of the Gnostics, announces another and higher God than the God of the O. T. (Hilgenfeld, Lehrbegr. 281). According to Keim, the marriage in Cana, the first great beaming forth of the divine glory, stands in John as “a loving portrait” of Christ, and designedly in place of the painful temptation in the wilderness. But this glory beamed forth still more grandly and more significantly in its bearing upon the Saviour’s whole ministry in the threefold triumph over Satan.
[137] It does not become more conceivable by Lange’s fiction (L. J. II. p. 479), which is quite unsupported by the text, viz. that the company were elevated to a higher tone of feeling, as the disciples were at a later time upon the mount of transfiguration, and that Christ, from the full spring of His highest life-power, made them drink creatively “in the element of the higher feeling.”
[138] Ammon also, L. J. I., falls back upon an erroneous idea and representation on the part of John: “What took place in the intervening time, when the water-pitchers were empty, and soon after were filled to the brim, is unknown to us.” The miracle is thus reduced into a natural event behind the scenes. Schenkel simply enough removes every miraculous element from the history, as being legendary adornments.