John 2
Encyclopedia
John 2 is the second chapter of the Gospel of John
in the New Testament
of the Christian
Bible
. It contains the famous stories of the miracle of Jesus
turning water
into wine
and Jesus
expelling the money changers from the Temple
.
The second chapter of John begins with the miracle
of Jesus turning the water into wine at a marriage at Cana
. He is attending a wedding with his disciples
and the hosts run out of wine. His mother is also there and asks him to help. He seems annoyed that she would ask him for a miracle and says that it is not his time yet. Nevertheless, she still tells the servants to do whatever he asks, so he tells them to fill up the empty wine containers with water. Afterwards, the headwaiter of the wedding tastes it and remarks to the groom that they have saved the best wine for last. John tells his audience that the water was there for the Jewish rite of purification.
According to John, this was his first miracle (in Cana). It occurs immediately after Jesus
has told Nathanael
in chapter
1:50 that "You shall see greater things than that." According to the hypothesis
of the Signs Gospel
, this miracle was originally in that document. John uses the Greek
word semeion meaning sign, or ergon meaning work, instead of the term the synoptics
use, dynamis or act of power, for miracle (Brown 339).
This could be seen as John's fulfillments of prophecies
in the Old Testament
, such as in Amos
9:13-14 and Genesis 49:10-11 about the abundance of wine that there will be in the time of the messiah
(Brown 340). Messianic wedding festivals are mentioned in Isaiah
62:4-5 (Brown et al. 954). One can also perhaps see this in the synoptics in for instance Mark
2:21-22 where Jesus speaks about "new wineskins". Jesus' mother, not named in the gospel, appears again in John 19:25-27 at Jesus' crucifixion
. This begins a series of stories about Jesus's role as the new way that last until his second miracle or sign, the healing of the official's son in John
4.
It then says he went with his mother and brothers and disciples to Capernaum
for a "few days" but does not relate what went on there. This miracle only occurs in John, not in any of the synoptics
. They make no mention of Jesus attending the wedding before going to Capernaum, or that his mother or brothers went there with him. Luke
4 and Matthew
4 have Jesus going to Nazareth
and then Capernaum after Jesus's baptism
and temptation. Mark
1 has him going directly to Capernaum (from the temptation wherein he gathers his disciples, which were present at the famous wedding feast) and performing miracles in Capernaum (Mark 1:25, 31, 34). After the authority and power of Jesus had been demonstrated, He and His disciples went throughout Galilee preaching and casting out demons (Mark 1:38-39). Mark later records that they return to Capernaum, after going throughout the neighboring lands; Mark 2:1 (Cana is only several miles from Capernaum).
The story of Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers in the Temple is related. Jesus goes to Jerusalem for the Passover
, the first of three in John, the others being John 7, where he goes to the Feast of Tabernacles, and the final Passover during which he is crucified. He enters the Temple courts and sees people selling livestock and exchanging money
. He explodes:
John says his disciples remembered Psalm 69:9, "zeal for your house will consumes me", perhaps a bit of wordplay interposing the ideas of "'demanding all my attention' and 'leading to my destruction'" (Miller 204) Whether the disciples remembered this during the incident or afterward is not clear.
He is asked to perform a "miraculous sign" to prove he has authority to expel the money changers. He replies "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days". The people believe he is talking about the official Temple building, but John states that Jesus meant his body, and that this is what his disciples came to believe after his resurrection
. John then says that during the Passover Feast Jesus performed miraculous signs, but does not list them, that caused people to believe in him, but that he would "not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men". Perhaps John included this statement to show Jesus possesses a knowledge of people's hearts and minds, an attribute of God
(Brown et al. 955).
This introduces the antagonism between Jesus and "the Jews", as John calls them, a sign perhaps of a non-Jewish audience. This is over the nature of the Temple. The Temple is already destroyed by the time of the writing of John, and John is trying to show right from the start that the old Temple has been replaced by the new Temple, Jesus' resurrected body and the new Christian and Johannine community
. This shows to most scholars the split between John's community and Judaism
in general. Some of the Dead Sea scrolls
also speak of the community as the temple (Brown et al. 954).
John mentions the incident with the money changers as occurring at the start of Jesus's ministry, while the synoptic gospels
have it occurring shortly before his crucifixion
. Some scholars insist that this instead shows that Jesus fought with the money changers twice, once at the beginning and once at the end of his ministry. The incident in the synoptics occurs in Mark
11:12-19, Matthew
21:12-17, and Luke
19:45-48. Perhaps John has relocated the story to the beginning to show that Jesus' arrest was for the raising of Lazarus
in John 11, not the incident in the Temple (Brown et al. 954).
Gospel of John
The Gospel According to John , commonly referred to as the Gospel of John or simply John, and often referred to in New Testament scholarship as the Fourth Gospel, is an account of the public ministry of Jesus...
in the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
of the Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
. It contains the famous stories of the miracle of Jesus
Miracles of Jesus
The miracles of Jesus are the supernatural deeds of Jesus, as recorded in Gospels, in the course of his ministry. According to the Gospel of John, only some of these were recorded. states that "Jesus did many other things as well...
turning water
Water
Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...
into wine
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...
and Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
expelling the money changers from the Temple
Temple in Jerusalem
The Temple in Jerusalem or Holy Temple , refers to one of a series of structures which were historically located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, the current site of the Dome of the Rock. Historically, these successive temples stood at this location and functioned as the centre of...
.
Water into Wine
Miracle
A miracle often denotes an event attributed to divine intervention. Alternatively, it may be an event attributed to a miracle worker, saint, or religious leader. A miracle is sometimes thought of as a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature. Others suggest that a god may work with the laws...
of Jesus turning the water into wine at a marriage at Cana
Marriage at Cana
In Christianity, the transformation of water into wine at the Marriage at Cana or Wedding at Cana is the first miracle of Jesus in the Gospel of John....
. He is attending a wedding with his disciples
Disciple (Christianity)
In Christianity, the disciples were the students of Jesus during his ministry. While Jesus attracted a large following, the term disciple is commonly used to refer specifically to "the Twelve", an inner circle of men whose number perhaps represented the twelve tribes of Israel...
and the hosts run out of wine. His mother is also there and asks him to help. He seems annoyed that she would ask him for a miracle and says that it is not his time yet. Nevertheless, she still tells the servants to do whatever he asks, so he tells them to fill up the empty wine containers with water. Afterwards, the headwaiter of the wedding tastes it and remarks to the groom that they have saved the best wine for last. John tells his audience that the water was there for the Jewish rite of purification.
According to John, this was his first miracle (in Cana). It occurs immediately after Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
has told Nathanael
Nathanael
Nathaniel is a male name and surname. It comes from the Hebrew name נְתַנְאֵל/Nethan'el meaning "God has given"...
in chapter
John 1
John 1 is the first chapter in the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible.-Analysis:The first chapter of the Gospel of John can be divided in two parts:The first part John 1 is the first chapter in the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible.-Analysis:The...
1:50 that "You shall see greater things than that." According to the hypothesis
Hypothesis
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...
of the Signs Gospel
Signs Gospel
The Signs Gospel is a hypothetical gospel account of the life of Jesus Christ. Some scholars believe it to be a primary source document for the Gospel of John. This theory has its basis in source criticism...
, this miracle was originally in that document. John uses the Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
word semeion meaning sign, or ergon meaning work, instead of the term the synoptics
Synoptic Gospels
The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes exactly the same wording. This degree of parallelism in content, narrative arrangement, language, and sentence structures can only be...
use, dynamis or act of power, for miracle (Brown 339).
This could be seen as John's fulfillments of prophecies
Prophecy
Prophecy is a process in which one or more messages that have been communicated to a prophet are then communicated to others. Such messages typically involve divine inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of conditioned events to come as well as testimonies or repeated revelations that the...
in the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
, such as in Amos
Book of Amos
The Book of Amos is a prophetic book of the Hebrew Bible, one of the Twelve Minor Prophets. Amos, an older contemporary of Hosea and Isaiah, was active c. 750 BCE during the reign of Jeroboam II, making the Book of Amos the first biblical prophetic book written. Amos lived in the kingdom of Judah...
9:13-14 and Genesis 49:10-11 about the abundance of wine that there will be in the time of the messiah
Messiah
A messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...
(Brown 340). Messianic wedding festivals are mentioned in Isaiah
Book of Isaiah
The Book of Isaiah is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, preceding the books of Ezekiel, Jeremiah and the Book of the Twelve...
62:4-5 (Brown et al. 954). One can also perhaps see this in the synoptics in for instance Mark
Mark 2
Mark 2 is the second chapter of the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It has the first argument in Mark between Jesus and other Jewish religious teachers...
2:21-22 where Jesus speaks about "new wineskins". Jesus' mother, not named in the gospel, appears again in John 19:25-27 at Jesus' crucifixion
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is an ancient method of painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead...
. This begins a series of stories about Jesus's role as the new way that last until his second miracle or sign, the healing of the official's son in John
John 4
John 4 is the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible.- Jesus Surpasses John :The Pharisees learn that Jesus is baptizing more people than John the Baptist, although it says that "...in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples." Jesus learns...
4.
It then says he went with his mother and brothers and disciples to Capernaum
Capernaum
Capernaum was a fishing village in the time of the Hasmoneans. Located on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. It had a population of about 1,500. Archaeological excavations have revealed two ancient synagogues built one over the other...
for a "few days" but does not relate what went on there. This miracle only occurs in John, not in any of the synoptics
Synoptic Gospels
The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes exactly the same wording. This degree of parallelism in content, narrative arrangement, language, and sentence structures can only be...
. They make no mention of Jesus attending the wedding before going to Capernaum, or that his mother or brothers went there with him. Luke
Luke 4
Luke 4 is the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It details Jesus's three temptations, his rejection at Nazareth, and the start of his mission.-Jesus's Three Temptations:...
4 and Matthew
Matthew 4
Matthew 4 is the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. It contains two quite distinct sections. The first half, to verse eleven is Matthew's account for the Temptation of Christ by Satan...
4 have Jesus going to Nazareth
Nazareth
Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...
and then Capernaum after Jesus's baptism
Baptism
In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...
and temptation. Mark
Mark 1
Mark 1 is the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark of the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It begins "The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God" stating right from the start Mark's belief. However, because there is no article in the Koine Greek some have suggested be...
1 has him going directly to Capernaum (from the temptation wherein he gathers his disciples, which were present at the famous wedding feast) and performing miracles in Capernaum (Mark 1:25, 31, 34). After the authority and power of Jesus had been demonstrated, He and His disciples went throughout Galilee preaching and casting out demons (Mark 1:38-39). Mark later records that they return to Capernaum, after going throughout the neighboring lands; Mark 2:1 (Cana is only several miles from Capernaum).
The money changers
Passover
Passover is a Jewish holiday and festival. It commemorates the story of the Exodus, in which the ancient Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt...
, the first of three in John, the others being John 7, where he goes to the Feast of Tabernacles, and the final Passover during which he is crucified. He enters the Temple courts and sees people selling livestock and exchanging money
Money
Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context. The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past,...
. He explodes:
- So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market! (15-16)
John says his disciples remembered Psalm 69:9, "zeal for your house will consumes me", perhaps a bit of wordplay interposing the ideas of "'demanding all my attention' and 'leading to my destruction'" (Miller 204) Whether the disciples remembered this during the incident or afterward is not clear.
He is asked to perform a "miraculous sign" to prove he has authority to expel the money changers. He replies "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days". The people believe he is talking about the official Temple building, but John states that Jesus meant his body, and that this is what his disciples came to believe after his resurrection
Resurrection of Jesus
The Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus states that Jesus returned to bodily life on the third day following his death by crucifixion. It is a key element of Christian faith and theology and part of the Nicene Creed: "On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures"...
. John then says that during the Passover Feast Jesus performed miraculous signs, but does not list them, that caused people to believe in him, but that he would "not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men". Perhaps John included this statement to show Jesus possesses a knowledge of people's hearts and minds, an attribute of God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
(Brown et al. 955).
This introduces the antagonism between Jesus and "the Jews", as John calls them, a sign perhaps of a non-Jewish audience. This is over the nature of the Temple. The Temple is already destroyed by the time of the writing of John, and John is trying to show right from the start that the old Temple has been replaced by the new Temple, Jesus' resurrected body and the new Christian and Johannine community
Authorship of the Johannine works
Authorship of the Johannine works has been debated by scholars since at least the 2nd century. The main debate centers on who authored the writings, and which of the writings, if any, can be ascribed to a common author.Ancient tradition attributes all the books to John the Apostle...
. This shows to most scholars the split between John's community and Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
in general. Some of the Dead Sea scrolls
Dead Sea scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 texts from the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical documents found between 1947 and 1956 on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name...
also speak of the community as the temple (Brown et al. 954).
John mentions the incident with the money changers as occurring at the start of Jesus's ministry, while the synoptic gospels
Synoptic Gospels
The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes exactly the same wording. This degree of parallelism in content, narrative arrangement, language, and sentence structures can only be...
have it occurring shortly before his crucifixion
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is an ancient method of painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead...
. Some scholars insist that this instead shows that Jesus fought with the money changers twice, once at the beginning and once at the end of his ministry. The incident in the synoptics occurs in Mark
Gospel of Mark
The Gospel According to Mark , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Mark or simply Mark, is the second book of the New Testament. This canonical account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth is one of the three synoptic gospels. It was thought to be an epitome, which accounts for its place as the second...
11:12-19, Matthew
Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth...
21:12-17, and Luke
Gospel of Luke
The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...
19:45-48. Perhaps John has relocated the story to the beginning to show that Jesus' arrest was for the raising of Lazarus
Lazarus of Bethany
Lazarus of Bethany, also known as Saint Lazarus or Lazarus of the Four Days, is the subject of a prominent miracle attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of John, in which Jesus restores him to life four days after his death...
in John 11, not the incident in the Temple (Brown et al. 954).