By Water & Blood

Panarion 51, Chapter 21: Harmony of the Gospels after baptism and the first signs

From that time he began to perform the perfect divine signs in the season of the preaching (‘for this first sign Jesus did,’ it says, ‘in Cana of Galilee’)—not before the baptism,

as I have often said, but when he returned from the temptation, on the third day after the two days that the two disciples of John who had heard and followed him remained with him;

so that immediately after the two days they spent with him he adds, saying, ‘And he went out into Galilee and finding Philip said, Follow me.’

Then immediately on the third day a wedding took place in Cana of Galilee. For it was fitting that, going out at once while a wedding was being celebrated, he should be invited in honor of it, for the blessing of marriage.

And it says, ‘A wedding took place on the third day in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there; and Jesus also was invited, and his disciples who were with him, to the wedding.’

‘And when the wine failed,’ it says, ‘the mother of Jesus says to him, They have no wine. And Jesus says to her, What is that to me and to you, woman? My hour has not yet come.’

After he came from the desert according to the sequence of the temptation, and was taken up to Jerusalem and stood on the pinnacle of the temple, and from Jerusalem was led up to a very high mountain—which many say is Mount Tabor, interpreted Itabyrion; and this is in Galilee.

For this sequence Matthew set down, who says, ‘When Jesus heard that John had been delivered up, he came into Galilee.’

But Luke, accurately indicating also the departure from the mountain, first speaking about the mountain and the kingdoms which the devil showed the Lord, afterward speaks about the pinnacle and Jerusalem, and how he returned into Galilee and Nazareth. And Matthew agrees, saying, ‘Leaving Nazareth he came into Capernaum.’

For he came to Nazareth and from there to the Jordan to John; and after crossing through the Jordan he again had his impulse toward his own place where he had been reared, to his mother in Nazareth; and remaining there two days—when those about Andrew also stayed with him—thereafter he pressed on, for the salvation of human beings, to begin the preaching;

and he stayed two days because he had come after an interval, having with him the disciples he had already taken; and dismissing the two who had followed him, he went out at once into Galilee for the preaching and for the work of the divine sign accomplished at the wedding.

For see how the Word secures us, as John the Baptist bears witness, speaking as of a work already past: ‘And I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize said to me, He upon whom you see the Spirit descending in the form of a dove, this is he.’

For when the Father sent John to baptize, he granted him this sign, so that when he saw it he might recognize the Savior sent from above to the world and the benefactor of our souls.

Such heretics, then, are overturned by the truth of the divine Scriptures and by their accuracy, especially by the agreement of the four Gospels. For no one of sound mind would reject what has been carefully wrought in every way by the Holy Spirit through the divine Gospels.

For even if they say that Matthew and Mark and Luke the evangelists related concerning the Savior that after the baptism he was led up into the desert and spent forty days being tempted, and after the temptation, hearing that John had been delivered up, came and settled in Capernaum by the sea, while John lies by not speaking of these things,

but immediately from the first, when the Savior came to John, and the rest of what he says he did—they will appear to have been ignorant in every respect of the accuracy of the Gospels.

For John the evangelist indicates that the Lord came to him after the days of the temptation, before the Baptist John was delivered up. For how, once John had been delivered up, could the Savior still come to him again at the Jordan?

They did not understand that the other three evangelists accurately narrate the time after John was delivered up, saying, ‘When Jesus heard that John had been delivered up, leaving Nazareth he settled in Capernaum by the sea.’ And you see that in truth all things have been said in agreement by the four evangelists.

For John again appears narrating in sequence that after the Savior performed the first sign and came to Capernaum, and performed certain signs there, and went up to Nazareth and read the book, then, once the Baptist had been delivered up, he came and settled in Capernaum for not many days.

These are the days after the day of the Epiphanies and his coming to Capernaum and to Nazareth and his ascent to Jerusalem for the Passover, and again coming to John where he was baptizing at Aenon near Salim.

For so he says: ‘After this he went down to Capernaum, he and his mother and his brothers, and there they remained not many days’ (for he was not yet indicating the settled residence of which he spoke later—that after John was delivered up he came and settled in Capernaum by the sea).

‘And the Passover of the Jews was near’ (as he says), ‘and Jesus went up to Jerusalem and found those selling in the temple the oxen and the sheep and the doves, and the money-changers sitting.’

And after driving out those money-changers and those selling the doves and the rest, and saying, ‘Take these things from here; do not make my Father’s house a house of merchandise,’ and hearing from them, ‘What sign do you show us that you do these things?’ and saying to them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up’—then Nicodemus came to him,

and after saying many things it says: ‘Jesus and his disciples came into the Judean land and there he was spending time with them and baptizing. And John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there; for John had not yet been cast into prison.’

And when John had said many things—‘He who has the bride is the bridegroom’—then the Gospel says: ‘When therefore Jesus knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (though Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples), he left the Judean land and went again into Galilee.’

‘And he had to pass through Samaria’—when he sat by the well and conversed with the Samaritan woman, and the Samaritan woman announced concerning him to those in the city, and the Samaritans came to him and asked him to remain with them; ‘and he remained there two days, and many more believed because of his word.’

‘After the two days he came into Galilee’; ‘and there was a royal official whose son was ill in Capernaum,’ when Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son lives,’ and he believed and the child was healed. And the Gospel says, ‘This again was the second sign Jesus did when he came from Judea into Galilee.’

‘After this there was a feast of the Jews’ (I think he speaks of another Jewish feast—either Pentecost or Tabernacles) ‘and Jesus went up to Jerusalem,’ when coming to the Sheep Pool on a sabbath he healed the man who for thirty-eight years had been paralyzed in illness.

From that point, once the acceptable year was fulfilled, they began to persecute him from the time he healed the paralytic at the pool on the sabbath; then again it says, ‘The Jews persecuted Jesus the more, because he not only broke the sabbath but also called God his own Father, making himself equal to God.’

How then are the heresies not to be condemned that make the Son incomplete in relation to the Father? For ‘making himself equal to God,’ the Gospel says.

‘After these things Jesus went away beyond the sea of Galilee of Tiberias, and a great crowd followed him, seeing the signs he was doing on the sick. So Jesus went up onto the mountain and there sat with his disciples. And the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was near.’

Thereafter, as the other Gospels say, once John had been delivered up he came and settled in Capernaum by the sea; as John himself also is found speaking in agreement with the others. For since the Passover occurs in the month of March or April, it is shown in every way that there are other seasons in which the Savior, after the temptation, comes to John.