By Water & Blood

Panarion 51, Chapter 30: Water-to-wine memorials and the typology of Cana

Therefore also in many places even to this day this happens because of the divine sign that then took place, as a testimony to unbelievers, as springs and rivers in many places bear witness by being changed into wine;

the spring of the city of Cibyra in Caria, at the hour at which the servants drew and he said, ‘Give to the master of the feast’; and likewise the spring in Gerasa of Arabia also bears witness; for we ourselves have drunk from the Cibyratic spring, and our brothers from the spring in Gerasa that is in the martyr-shrine.

And many in Egypt also bear witness concerning the Nile to this. Therefore on the eleventh of Tybi according to the Egyptians all draw water and set it aside in Egypt itself and in many countries.

For thus it is found that after Athyr the twelfth, when he had gone away and been tempted forty days and come to Nazareth and remained about two weeks and three days, he went down to the Jordan to John and completed a first and second day and returned to Nazareth and remained likewise a first and second day and went out on the

third into Cana of Galilee, so that all the days from the baptism are sixty: forty of the temptation and the two weeks in Nazareth and two days and the other two, and on the third the sign of the water at the wedding took place.

Thereafter he came to Capernaum and worked other things, as we have often said, and going up again to Nazareth read the book of Isaiah the prophet. Therefore they say, ‘Do also here the signs that we have heard you did in Capernaum’;

and later again, when he came to Capernaum, from there he crossed over to the lake or sea of Gennesaret, and those about Peter were finally chosen, and so from there he joined the whole completion of the preaching.

For according to the sequence, as we said, after the forty days and the other two weeks and two days in Nazareth, he was with John the first day and the next; and when he returned from him to Nazareth and remained from the tenth hour until evening, and on the other day went out and met Philip—these are two days—

thereafter the Gospel shows the unalterable accuracy through the first two days which, when he came, he remained, saying, ‘On the third day a wedding took place in Cana of Galilee,’ which was a symbol of the church; for on the

third day of his transaction in the heart of the earth, which he performed on the earth after the passion, rising he joined a wedding to Cana; for Cana is interpreted

‘she who has acquired.’ And who is she who has acquired but the heir concerning whom the psalmist said in the fifth psalm, ‘For her who inherits,’ and what follows? For this wedding is truly blessed, taking its occasion from that type.

For there a perceptible wedding was in Cana of Galilee, and water truly became wine; and he was invited in two ways: that he might contract by astringency the watery character of those reveling in the world, through marriage, into sobriety and dignity; and that he might correct what was lacking into gladness through the pain-relieving wine and grace;

so that in every way he might stop the mouths of those rising up against the Lord, and show that he himself is God with the Father and his Holy Spirit, supplying water to the vine and coloring it in her into wine for the gladness of human beings. In another place we have narrated these things at greater length; here we have run through the account as in a digression.

Nevertheless the Savior keeps two Passovers after the beginning of the preaching and suffers at the third, so that what I have already said in detail concerning days and months and consulships is fulfilled. And from every side the erring account of these people has fallen, the Gospels being in agreement with one another and neither of the evangelists having things contrary to the other.