Okay, I did some research yesterday to learn more about the relation between the two stories in John, and it was really mind-blowing -- I'm not sure where to start. Let me just say that it is pretty obvious that Jesus was supposed to be the bridegroom in the Cana story, but the evidence I've looked at points to Mary Magdalene as being the bride in the original (i.e. Semeia Gospel or other pre-Johannine) version of the story. John has then obscured Jesus' role as bridegroom (but not erased it) and removed the identity of the bride, so that when the gospel is read at a deeper level, the marriage is spiritualized and the bride becomes the body of disciples and followers of Jesus (as the rest of the gospel hints explicitly), a theme found also in Revelation.
The difficulties I mentioned may be partly resolved by sticking 2:1-11 after 4:42 (instead of placing the Samaritan story before 2:1-11), and the "third day" does follow smoothly after the "two days" of the Sychar story (once the contradictory verses and references to "Cana" and "Galilee" are removed). But while this makes some intuitive sense, having a first meeting between Jesus and a woman precede a wedding, I think this is not an instance of dislocated text. First of all, the earliest witness to John is Tatian's Diatessaron (c. A.D. 150-160), which preserves an earlier form of the text than the finished gospel, and the four witnesses I have seen place the water-to-wine episode prior to the Sychar episode (cf. ch. 10 vs. ch. 13 in the Pepysian Harmony) and they also place the former in Galilee. Second, dislocating the Cana episode from its current position in the text would create a hole in the temporal structure of the gospel. As has been widely noted, John is systematically constructed around six Jewish festivals (the number symbolizes the imperfect old system of the Law, like the six purification waterpots in John 2:6), three Passovers and three feasts (e.g. the Feast of the Tabernacles, the Feast of the Dedication, and the Feast of Pentecost). This is bounded by two weeks: the first week of Jesus' earthly ministry (1:19-2:11) and the last week of Jesus' earthly ministry (11:55-19:42). Bridging these two terminal weeks is an intermediate "symbolic" week of seven signs (2:1-11:54). At the outset of this "week," Jesus' hour "had not yet come" (2:4), while at the end of the "week" the hour "has arrived" (12:23). The week motif, incidentally, is derivative of the week of Creation in Genesis 1, which was already alluded to in the Prologue (cf. John 1:1 = Genesis 1:1; John 1:4-5 = Genesis 1:2-3) and the Cana miracle story bears many verbal links with the Creation story (in the LXX): arkhe "first, beginning" (2:11; cf. John 1:1, 2; Genesis 1:1), epoisen "created, performed" (2:11; cf. Genesis 1:1), egeneto "came to be" (2:1, 9; cf. John 1:3; Genesis 1:3, 5-9, etc.), kalon "good" (2:10-11; cf. Genesis 1:3, 10, 12, etc.). We have the same formula as in Creation: Jesus commands (cf. 2:7, 8), he creates (cf. 2:9, 11), and the result is "good" (cf. 2:10). This carries forward the theme of Jesus, the Word, as the Creator from 1:3. The figurative week of signs"created" (cf. 2:11 = Genesis 1:1) by Jesus is thus symbolic of the seven days of creation. The Week of Signs follows closely on the heels of the first week of Jesus' ministry, and the last week of Jesus' ministry also closely follows the last sign Jesus performs. But if we relocate the Cana miracle to a point after the first Passover, the symmetry is not only broken but the "first week" would no longer exist. As the text now stands, day one starts in 1:19, day two begins in 1:29, followed by the third day in 1:35, the fourth in 1:43 with Nathaniel's conversion, and then the story picks up "three days later" in 2:1. The wording deliberately evokes Jesus' resurrection on the "third day" but also completes the first week of Jesus' ministry. The overall structure to the gospel does not resemble something a later redactor could have imposed on John but instead looks like something worked out by its principal author.
There may have been however an earlier stage, either in the Semeia Gospel or the gnostic precursor of John, where a Courtship by the Well story (later developed by John into the more spiritual Samaritan Woman story) did indeed precede a marriage story, or the two stories were drawn from related but independent traditions. In either case, I think the identity of the woman Jesus is courting may well be Mary Magdalene. And this would mean that John is drawing on tradition that designates Mary as a resident of Samaria. While I'll go into my reasons for this later, it is interesting to note that in John, Mary Magdalene does not appear by name until the scene of the crucifixion (19:25), while a "Mary, the sister of Martha" appears enigmatically in ch. 11, who apparently already knew Jesus quite well. Nowhere does John relate a story of how Mary stumbled upon Jesus' ministry, even though Luke 8:2 and Ps.-Mark 16:9 identify her as a woman healed by Jesus' or his disciples' exorcism. The Courtship by the Well story may have thus functioned as a story of how Jesus met Mary, and this makes sense in the context of a gnostic gospel, considering Mary's status within the gnostic gospel tradition. This would have then been followed by the Wedding story which presented Jesus and Mary as the couple being married.
The evidence of Jesus as the bridegroom in John 2 is fairly compelling. In 3:28-29 John the Baptist explicitly designates Jesus as the bridegroom:
"I myself am not the Christ, I am the one who has been sent in front of him. The bride [numphon] is only for the bridegroom [numphiou]; and yet the bridegroom's friend, who stands there and listens, is glad when he hears the bridegroom's voice. This same joy I feel, and now it is complete." (John 3:28-29)
Here John identifies himself as the bridegroom's friend (i.e. the best man), Jesus as the bridegroom, and the bride consists of all the disciples that Jesus baptizes (cf. 3:26, "the man to whom you bore witness is baptizing now and everyone is going to him"). This establishes the spiritual understanding of the wedding as being between Jesus and his Church. There is another important link between John the Baptist and the Cana miracle story in John 1:31-33 where John says that he "came baptizing in water" while the Christ "baptizes in the Holy Spirit". John is the last vestige of the old Judaic system, and his baptismal water is like the water at the marriage feast that is used "for the Jewish custom of purification" (2:6), while Jesus provides something better (v. 10), and the "living water" that Jesus will furnish through his blood (i.e. wine) is the Holy Spirit (7:37-39). John also serves as the match-maker between Jesus and his Church by introducing his first disciples to him (1:35-40). Moreover, a close parallel to both John's declaration in 3:28-29 and the Cana story in ch. 2 can be found in Mark:
"Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, 'How is it that John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?' Jesus answered, 'How can the guests of the bridegroom [numphios] fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them. But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast. No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine [oinon neon] into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins." (Mark 2:18-22)
Here we find Jesus designated again as the bridegroom, with John the Baptist mentioned as representative of the old Judaic system (e.g. fasting), the disciples as participants of the wedding, and even the motif of "new wine" is mentioned! The principal difference is that the disciples represent the "bride" for John while they only appear as "guests" in Mark. Since John likely used Mark as a source for his gospel (particularly in the case of the Passion Narrative), he apparently drew on its conceptions to develop an earlier story about the marriage of Jesus into a more spiritual form. The same theme also appears in Revelation 19, in which the Lamb "has arrived and the bride [gune] has made herself ready" with fine linen which "is the righteous acts of the saints [hagion]" (v. 7-8) in other words, the bride herself consists of the saints who wear their righteous acts as linen. The text goes on the mention "the marriage supper" (deipnon tou gamou) which recalls the wedding feast in Cana (v. 9). Another depiction of the Church as a woman appears in 2 John 1:1 which addresses the epistle to "the chosen lady (eklekte kuria) and her children", and Hermas of Rome (Vis. 2.4.1) also describes the church as an old woman.
There are several clues within the Cana story itself that establishes Jesus as the bridegroom. First of all, it was the responsibility of the bridegroom to provide for everything for the wedding (cf. also John 2:10), so why did the "mother of Jesus" complain to Jesus that the guests had no wine (v. 3), if he was just another uninvolved guest? And neither was she simply a guest since she them ordered the servants to do what Jesus said (v. 5). When the wine is distributed, the headwaiter then compliments the bridegroom as the one who had provided the extra wine:
"And the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom (numphion) aside and said, 'Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you (su) have saved the best till now.' " (John 2:9-10)
If Jesus was the bridegroom, who was the bride? The author of the gospel would like us to read the disciples into this role at a spiritual level. Aside from the servants and headwaiter, only Jesus, his mother, and his disciples are explicitly mentioned as invited to the wedding; in fact, these three are grouped together between two instances of the word
gamos "wedding":
And on the third day there was a wedding (gamos) in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus (he mater tou Iesou) was there; and Jesus also was invited, and his disciples (hoi mathetai autou), to the wedding (gamon). (John 2:1-2)
Some Bible scholars have noted a chiasus in this text, centered on Jesus -- the bridegroom. The next layer concerns the bride, of which there are two: the "mother of Jesus" and "his disciples". The third layer, that of the "wedding," establishes both bride and groom as the central participants of the gamos "wedding". As strange and incestuous as it might sound, John is implying that Mary is the bride of Jesus on the literal narrative level while the disciples constitute the bride on a spiritual level. The mother of Jesus also "was there" (en ekei) already at the house (v. 1), while Jesus arrives separately (v. 2), which is suggestive of the bride waiting for her bridegroom to arrive. In v. 4, Jesus says to his mother: "Woman, what do I have to do with you?" At the surface level, this registers Jesus' surprise that he has anything to do with the provision the wine at the wedding, but at a deeper level it hints that Jesus indeed has something to do with Mary with respect to the wedding. It's a rhetorical question answered by positing Jesus and his mother as the couple. The theme of the son marrying his mother also appears in the related text in Revelation. As mentioned above, the Lamb (Jesus, cf. John 1:29, 36) appears with the bride (the Church) at the "marriage feast" of Revelation 19:7-9, and the Lamb appears earlier in the vision in the guise of a "male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron" (cf. 19:15) in Revelation 12:5. In this chapter, "a woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet" gives birth to the Messiah (v. 1-2), and it is through the "blood of the Lamb" (v. 11) that the saints overcome the Dragon. The woman symbolizes the saints persecuted by the Dragon (cf. 12:13, "When the dragon was that he was thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child"), and the same saints comprise the bride in heaven (cf. 19:8). The woman is also explicitly designated as the mother of the Messiah, i.e. Mary. Similarly, the story of the "woman" (gune) of Revelation 12:1 is clearly derivative of the story of Eve in Genesis 3: both are called "woman" and not by their names (cf. also John 2:4, where Jesus calls his mother "woman"), the mention of labor pains (cf. 12:2 = Genesis 3:16), the foe being the "serpent of old" who is enemies with the woman and her offspring (cf. 12:9, 13, 17 = Genesis 3:14-15), and the serpent being a deceiver (cf. 12:9 = Genesis 3:13). The mother of Jesus is thus cast in the role of Eve, and if the author draws on the notion of Jesus as the Second Adam (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:45), Mary would also assume the role of Adam's wife. Justin Martyr and Irenaeus both developed this theme in their writings:
"Christ became man by the virgin that the disobedience which issued from the serpent might be destroyed in the same way it originated. Eve was still an undefiled virgin when she conceived the word of the serpent and brought forth disobedience and death. But the virgin received faith and joy, at the announcement of the angel Gabriel, and she replied, 'Be it done to me according you your word'. So through the mediation of the virgin he came into the world, through whom God would crush the serpent." (Justin Martyr, Apology, 100).
"The seduction of a fallen angel drew Eve, a virgin espoused to a man, while the glad tidings of the holy angel drew Mary, a virgin already espoused, to begin the plan which would dissolve the bonds of that first snare... For as the former was lead astray by the word of an angel, so that she fled from God when she had disobeyed his word, so did the latter, by and angelic communication, receive the glad tidings that she should bear God, and obeyed his word. If the former disobeyed God, the latter obeyed, so that the Virgin Mary might become the advocate of the virgin Eve. Thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so it is rescued by a virgin; virginal disobedience is balanced in the opposite scale by virginal obedience." (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.23.4)
The shift in role between mother and bride is also understandable in view of the OT tradition of Israel as the bride or wife of God (cf. Isaiah 26:17-18; 62:4-5), and Zion as the mother of Israel and Yahweh as Israel's spiritual father (cf. Isaiah 66:7-9). But when we strip away all these layers of symbolism from the Cana story, Mary could hardly have been the bride of Jesus in the original literal story. My hypothesis is that there was indeed a Mary in the original form of the story, Mary Magdalene, but that the author substituted another Mary -- the mother of Jesus -- in her place. It is curious that Jesus does not call her "mother" but "woman," which is a highly unusual form of address for a son to his mother. This may be regarded as an allusion to Genesis 3, and it also serves to distance Jesus from his earthly generation -- a theme also encountered in John 6:42. But if original to the Semeia Gospel version of the story, the use of "woman" could also be a vestige of the originally non-maternal nature of this character. What is particularly striking is that Jesus again addresses his mother as "woman" during his crucifixion (John 19:26), and this is the very scene that Mary Magdalene appears with her name in full. But, as dependent John is on the Markan Passion Narrative, it is particularly noteworthy that John specifies no less than three Marys at the scene: mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the wife of Clopas (John 19:25), while Mark and Matthew relate only two: Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Joses (Mark 15:40; Matthew 27:56). John thus appears to have cloned one of the Marys to insert Jesus' mother into the scene. Mary Magdalene is the only Mary in common with all three traditions. There is also extensive evidence of how the identities of Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus were sometimes swapped or conflated in early Christian tradition. While the gospels unanimously place Mary Magdalene at the Empty Tomb, Tatian's Diatessaron designates Jesus' mother as this Mary (cf. Ephraem, On the Diatessaron 21.27). One wonders if this was original to John's gospel since this would furnish a direct parallel to the Cana story: just as Jesus was with his mother on the "third day" at Cana (John 2:1), the day he first revealed his "glory" (v. 11), so he was with her on the "third day" when he was glorified in his Resurrection. Of course, it would make better sense the other way around -- Mary Magdalene was the one present at the Cana wedding and Jesus' resurrection -- since tradition seems to be nearly unanimous about the disciple Mary at the Resurrection. Moreover, the Gospel of Bartholomew repeatedly identifies Mary Magdalene with Jesus' mother. Hippolytus of Rome (late second century A.D.) regards Mary Magdalene as the New Eve and the Bride of Christ, an identification later shared by Cyril of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo. The gnostic Pistis Sophia also presents the disciple Mary as "blessed beyond all women upon earth, because you shall be the Pleroma of all Pleromas and the completion of all completions" (1:19), language otherwise reserved for the other Mary in orthodox Christianity.
Now I'd like to go into the evidence that links the Mary of the wedding story with the woman of the Woman at the Well story. As I said at the outset, I speculated that the Mary Magdalene was the Samaritan woman in the story. At the outset, this would seem bizarre since Mary Magdalene is named after Magdala, a town located along the Galilee not far from Nazareth and Cana. But this is not unusual at all because the gospels present disparite traditions drawn from different locales. That is why there are so many different Marys in the gospels; the apostle we conventionally call "Mary Magdalene" was an early, prominent figure in the early Eastern church, and different areas throughout Palestine and Syria had different traditions about her. In Syria and Galilee she was known as Mary of Magdala, in Judea she was Mary of Bethany, and possibly in Samaria she was known simply as a Samaritan woman named Mary. Since each area had different edifying stories about Mary, the gospelists simply collected the various stories together and attributed them to different Marys. It is remarkable, for instance, that the disciple Mary of the gnostic literature is simply known as Mary -- I don't think she ever bears the name Magdalene (cf. Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, Pistis Sophia, Acts of Philip, etc.) except for the Gospel of Philip. This is interesting also in view of the patristic tradition that located Gnosticism earliest in Samaria (cf. Justin Martyr, Apology 1.26, 56; Hippolytus, Refutio Heresiarum 6.7-20; Pseudo-Tertullian, Adv. Haer. 1; Three Steles of Seth), and Mary occurs as one of the principal apostles in Gnosticism. As for John, the gospel writer draws on all these traditions: the Galileean Mary (who may or may not have been known as Magdalene in the Semeia Gospel) for the Wedding story, which draws on local Galileean detail (cf. the setting of Cana, the Ioudaion, or "Jews" at the Wedding [2:6], and the purifying ablutions practiced by the Jews in the town), the Samaritan Mary for the Woman at the Well story (which again has local Samaritan color), the Bethany Mary for the Raising of Lazarus story (drawn from a source cognate with Secret Mark) and the Anointing story (which is shared by the Synoptics), and finally the Magdalene Mary for the Passion and Resurrection stories (drawn from Mark). If that is the case, that would mean that the Courtship and Wedding stories do not come from the same source but possibly represent parallel versions of the same legend. This is also evident from the fact that the former comes from a quasi-biographical narrative of Jesus' personal life while the latter derives from the Semeia Gospel which is wholly concerned with Jesus' miracles. If the Samaritan source included a wedding story it would have developed it in a fairly straightforward manner, while the Semeia Gospel has no interest in how Jesus met his wife and transforms the wedding story into a miracle narrative.
The two stories also differ in how they incorporate OT motifs: the Wedding story in ch. 2 draws on Joseph and Moses traditions while the Woman at the Well story in ch. 4 draws on Isaac and Moses traditions. Jesus as prefigured by Moses is the common thread between the two stories, but the significance of Moses is different in each. In the Wedding story, the clearest intertexual link to Joseph appears in John 2:5:
"When all Egypt began to feel the famine, the people cried to Pharaoh for food. Then Pharaoh told all the Egyptians: 'Go to Joseph and do what he tells you (ho ean eipe humin poiesate).' " (Genesis 41:55; LXX)
"When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, 'They have no wine'... His mother said to the servants, 'Do whatever he tell you (ho ti an lego humin poiesate).' " (John 2:3, 5)
Not only is there a verbal resemblance, but the entire verse is structurally parallel: there is first a temporal clause about a famine or lack of wine, then someone talks to another about the famine or lack of wine, then someone of authority instructs another group to do whatever Joseph=Jesus tells them. The lack of wine is also meant to be understood as analogous to the famine in Egypt and the role of Jesus, like that of Joseph, is to provide nourishment and drink to the famished: "When the famine had spread over the whole country, Joseph opened the storehouses and sold grain to the Egyptians, for the famine was severe throughout Egypt. And all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe in all the world" (Genesis 41:57-58). Jesus shows himself to be superior to Joseph because he dispenses freely what Josephus sold for money. This same theme occurs in the Woman at the Well story (John 4:10), and throughout the John "thirst" (as a liquid equivalent of hunger) is a significant theme (John 4:13-15; 6:35; 7:37-38; 19:28). And like Joseph, John construes Jesus as a Savior of the whole world. The famine motif from Genesis 41 may have also suggested to John the prophecy in Amos:
" 'The days are coming,' declares the Sovereign Lord, 'when I will send a famine (limon) through the land, not a famine (limon) of food or a thirst for water, but a famine (limon) of hearing the word of the Lord (ton logon Kuriou)'.... 'The days are coming,' declares the Lord, 'when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine (glukasmon) will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills. I will bring back my exiled people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine (oinon); they will make gardens and eat their fruit.' " (Amos 8:11; 9:13-14)
Here Amos obviously means a spiritual famine like John, and a thirst for non-literal water, with God's Word (suggestive of John's Logos) as what the famished were seeking, and "wine" as the motif of blessing they shall receive. Another connection between Joseph and Jesus can be found in Genesis 40:11-13, where Joseph interprets the cupbearer's dream. The cupbearer dreamt that he would squeeze grapes into Pharaoh's cup and Joseph tells him "in three days Pharaoh will release you and restore you to your place" (v. 13). The squeezing of grapes (i.e. producing wine) is here connected with being restored on a third day which for John serves as a metaphor for the Passion: wine and grapes being associated with Jesus' shed blood (cf. John 6:53-56; 15:1-5) and "cup" being figurative with Jesus' death (cf. John 18:11). Like the cupbearer, Jesus provides the wine to his disciples and is restored to life after three days.
The other major Savior figure for John is Moses ("Moses" incidentally is reminiscent of Hebrew moshiah "savor, deliverer"). But Moses' relevance to the Wedding story relates to Moses as a Law-giver and miracle worker. The latter theme is emphasized throughout the gospel: "For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (1:17), "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up (3:14), "If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me" (5:46), "It was not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven" (6:32), "Has not Moses given you the Law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?" (7:19), "You are this fellow's disciple! We are disciples of Moses!" (9:28), "We know God spoke to Moses, for as for this man, we don't know where he comes from" (9:29), etc.
In the Wedding story, Jesus provides wine (the offer of grace and Spirit) whereas Moses provided the old system of the Law. The water Jesus changes into wine is held in six jars "for the ablutions that are customary among the Jews" (2:6); his act is therefore symbolic of the transformation of the Law into the "Law of grace". The theme of Jesus as a new Law-giver also appears in John 13:34; 14:15; 15:12, 14. As for verbal echoes, the Wedding story has fingerprints from Exodus all over it. Not only is water symbolic of the Law, it also symbolizes Moses. In John 2:8, Jesus tells the servants: "Fill the waterpots with water (hudatos)...Draw out (antlesate) some now and take it to the steward." This statement reminds one of Moses' name: "When the child grew old, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses saying, 'I drew (mosheh) him out of the water' " (Exodus 2:10). Just as Moses is drawn from the water, so does he later draw the Israelites from the water (Red Sea), and so does Jesus later draw his followers out of the water (i.e. baptism). And since Jesus is the counterpart of Moses, he is likewise identified with the wine; whereas the Jews say "we don't know where he comes from (ouk oidamen pothen estin)" in John 9:29, the steward similarly "did not know where it (i.e. the wine) came from (ouk edei pothen estin)" in 2:9. The Nile water motif is also not limited to the relationship between Moses and Jesus. The wedding significantly is set in the town of Cana (Greek Kana), which is Aramaic and Hebrew for "place of reeds". The basket containing Moses that Pharaoh's daughter drew out of the water was similarly "put among the reeds (eis to helos) along the bank of the Nile" (Exodus 2:3). And the use of the word antlesate "draw out" in John 2:8 is quite conspicuous because it does not mean to pour from a container.
The description of Jesus as a miracle worker, as I've discussed in earlier posts, derives from the language applied to Moses in Exodus:
"He also performed (epoiese) the signs (ta semeia) before the people, and they believed (episteusen). And when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshipped.... And when the Israelites saw the great power of the Lord displayed (epoiese) against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and believed in him (episteusan eis auton) and in Moses his servant." (Exodus 4:30-31; 14:31)
"This was the first of the signs (ton semeion) Jesus performed (epoiesen) in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him (episteusan eis auton).... Many other signs (semeia) Jesus also performed (epoiesen) in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written that you may believe (pisteuete) that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God." (John 2:11; 20:30-31)
See also Numbers 14:10-11=John 10:24-26, 31 for another close parallel between Jesus and Moses as miracle workers. Now the first "sign" Jesus performed was turning water to wine, the latter symbolizing his shed blood. The first "sign" that Moses gave in the Ten Plagues was the transformation of the Nile water into blood:
"I will strike the water (to hudor) of the river and it shall be changed (metabalei) to blood.... Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters (ta hudata) of Egypt, over their rivers and their canals, their reedy places (ta hele auton), and all their reservoirs, and let them become (egeneto) blood throughout the land of Egypt, even down to the contents of every tub and jar (lithois).... [Moses] struck the waters (to hudor) of the river, and all the water (to hudor) in the river changed (metebalen) to blood. The fish in the river died, and the river smelt so foul that the Egyptians found it impossible to drink its water (piein hudor)." (Exodus 7:17, 19-21)
"Now there were six stone water jars (lithinai hudrai) set there.... Jesus said to them, 'Fill the water jars (hudrias) with water (hudatos).' And they filled them to the brim. And he said to them, 'Draw some out now, and take it to the head waiter.' And they took it to him. And when the head waiter tasted the water (egeusato to hudor) which had become (gegenemenon) wine, and did not know where it came from, but the servants who had drawn the water knew, the headwaiter called the bridegroom." (John 2:7-9)
In Jesus' miraculous sign, he alleviates a shortage of liquid drink and produces something even tastier than the original drink. Moses does the exact opposite: he creates a shortage of water and produces liquid "so foul" that it could not be drunk. The type of miracle however is strikingly similar: the transformation of water into a liquid either symbolic of blood or literally blood. The water turns to blood even within jars -- exactly the same thing in the Wedding miracle! And Moses turns water to blood in "reedy places", just as Jesus turns water to wine in Cana, a "reedy place" in Aramaic and Hebrew. The foregoing suggests that the Semeia Gospel that furnished the story of the Cana miracle was heavily influenced by the conception of Jesus as a Moses-like miracle worker who supercedes Moses and his Law. And the locale of Cana does appear to be integral to the intertextuality of the miracle story.
The "Woman at the Well" story, on the other hand, drew primarily on the courtship and nuptial traditions of Isaac and Moses. In the case of Isaac, his father did not want him to find a wife among the people he was living with in Canaan and thus Abraham sent his chief servant to his former land in Haran to find a suitable mate for his son (Genesis 24:3-7, 37-38). Like Isaac's servant, Jesus also meets a woman in a "foreign" land and his encounter with her at a well bears many striking similarities with the one between Isaac and Rebekah:
"In the evening, at the time when the water bearers go down for water (tou hudatos), he made the camels kneel outside the town (tes poleos) near the well (phrear)...[Rebekah] had a water jar (hudrian) on her shoulder. The girl (gunaikos) was very beautiful, and a virgin; no man had touched her. She went down to the well (pegen), filled her water jar (hudrian) and came up again. Running to meet her, the servant said, 'Please give me (potisan me) a little water (hudor) from your water jar (hudrias sou).' She said, 'Drink, my lord (pie kurie),' and she quickly lowered her water jar (hudrian) on her arm and gave him a drink (epotisan)....She quickly emptied her jar into the trough, and ran to the well again to draw (antlesai).... 'I said to her, "Please give me a drink (de potisan me)". Quickly she lowered her water jar (hudrian autes) saying, "Drink (pie su), and I will water your camels too." '.... Isaac, who lived in the Negeb, had meanwhile come into the wilderness of the well (phrear) of Lahai Roi. Now Isaac went walking in the fields as evening fell, and lifting up his eyes (anablepsasa tois ophthalmois) saw camels coming (erkhomenas). And Rebekah lifted up her eyes (anablepsasa tois ophthalmois) and saw Isaac. She jumped down from her camel, and asked the servant, 'Who is that man walking into the fields (eis to pedion) to meet us?' The servant replied, 'That is my master'; then she took her veil and hid her face. The servant told Isaac the whole story, and Isaac led Rebekah into his tent and he married Rebekah." (Genesis 24:11, 15-19, 45-46, 62-67)
"He left Judea and departed again into Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a city (eis polin) of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph; and Jacob's well (pege) was there. Jesus, being weary from his journey, was sitting thus by the well (pege). It was about the sixth hour [i.e. 6 pm]. There came (erkhetai) a woman (gune) of Samaria to draw water (antlesai hudor). Jesus said to her, 'Give me a drink (dos moi pein).' For his disciples had gone away to the city to buy food.... She said to him, 'Lord (kurie), you have no bucket (antlema) and the well (phrear) is deep; where then do you get that living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well (phrear), and drank (epien) of it himself, and his sons, and this cattle?' ... So the woman left her water jar (hudrian autes), and went into the city....'Behold, I say to you, open up your eyes (eparate tous ophthalmous humon), and look into the fields (theasasthe tas khoras).' " (John 4:3-8, 11-12, 28, 35)
The overall situation in the two stories are similar, the servant asks the woman like Jesus for a drink of water, both words for "well" (phrear, pege) are used, hudrias occurs as the word for "water jar," the time of day is the same, the woman addresses the man as "Lord" in both cases, the woman mentions watering animals, and at the end of the story there are mentions of lifting up or opening "the eyes" and "the fields". The story in John 4 however overtly alludes to the well of Jacob in Shechem instead of Isaac's encounter with Rebekah in Padan-Aram. The story is also connected with the Wedding Feast narrative by the use of the words hudrias "water jar" and antlesai "to draw out (water)."
With respect to Moses, there is different story in Exodus which also had strong influence on the Woman at the Well story. Moses appears relevant, not as a miracle worker, but as a man who also has a well encounter in a foreign land leading to marriage:
"When Pharaoh (Pharao) heard (ekouse) of this, he tried to kill (ezetei anelein) Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went (elthon) to live in Midian, where he sat down (ekathisen) by a well (epi tou phreatos). Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters. They came to draw water (entloun) and fill the troughs to water their father's sheep. Shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses came to their defense and watered their sheep for them.... So Moses settled with this man, who gave him his daughter Zipporah in marriage." (Exodus 2:15-17, 21).
"The Pharisees (Pharisaio) heard (ekousan) that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back (apelthen) once more to Galilee. Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground Jacob gave to his son Joseph, and Jacob's well was there. Jesus, being weary from his journey, sat down (ekathezeto) by the well (epi te pege). It was about the sixth hour. There came a woman of Samaria to draw water (antlesai hudor)." "For this reason the Jews tried harder to kill (mallon ezetoun apokteinai) him." (John 4:1-7; 5:18)
The resemblance is especially striking in the homophony between Pharao "Pharaoh" and Pharisaio "Pharisees", the respective enemies of Moses and Jesus. The motif of Jesus sitting down by the well was also lifted from Exodus. And the situation between Moses and Jesus is again paralleled since Moses meets his wife in a land foreign to him. Since both Isaac and Moses stories involve well stories in foreign lands that result in marriage, and since the Johannine well story undeniably draws on both, it seems pretty clear that John intends to deploy the theme of betrothal and marriage to repeatedly describe the formation of the Church.
Thus, in John 1:35-51, John the Baptist as the "friend of the bridegroom" introduces the first disciples to Christ. The weeklong engagement then results in the wedding depicted in 2:1-12. As v. 11-12 shows, the bride (those "believing in" Jesus) at this point included "his mother, his brothers, and his disciples". Now married, Jesus is now in a position to discuss having children and teaches how one may be reborn, not from his "mother's womb" (koilian tes matros) but by "water and the Spirit" (3:4-6), and Jesus then takes his disciples for the first time "into the Judean countryside and baptized" (3:22). John the Baptist again announces the arrival of the bride and bridegroom and beseeches everyone to "believe in the Son" (3:29-36). Jesus then courts and marries first a Samaritan woman and then the entire village (4:1-42). And as his ministry grows, so does the number of people comprising the Bride of Christ. But beneath the spiritualized conception in John, one can uncover hints of a gospel tradition about Jesus and the woman he marries; the problem is that it is no easy task to sift out what is "spiritual" from what originally was not meant to be allegorical. Without recourse to early traditions that refer unambiguously to Jesus' wife, one can only speculate what traditions may have existed. In view of the Gospel of Philip's description of Mary Magdalene as Jesus' "companion" (and similar statements in the Gospel of Mary), and the possible connection with early Gnosticism and Samaria, a Mary tradition may lie behind the Woman at the Well story in John 4.
