If then we can discover, beyond the limits of the New Testament, very powerful causes for the origination of our narrative, we must renounce the attempt to construct it out of materials presented by the gospels themselves. [[517]]And here the fourth Evangelist, by putting into the mouth of the people a reference to the manna, that bread of heaven which Moses gave to the fathers in the wilderness ([v. 31]), reminds us of one of the most celebrated passages in the early history of the Israelites ([Exod. xvi.]), which was perfectly adapted to engender the expectation that its antitype would occur in the Messianic times; and we in fact learn from rabbinical writings, that among those functions of the first Goël which were to be revived in the second, a chief place was given to the impartation of bread from heaven.[306] If the Mosaic manna presents itself as that which was most likely to be held a type of the bread miraculously augmented by Jesus; the fish which Jesus also multiplied miraculously, may remind us that Moses gave the people, not only a substitute for bread in the manna, but also animal food in the quails ([Exod. xvi. 8], [xii. 13]; [Num. xi. 4 ff.]). On comparing these Mosaic narratives with our evangelical ones, there appears a striking resemblance even in details. The locality in both cases is the wilderness; the inducement to the miracle here as there, is fear lest the people should suffer from want in the wilderness, or perish from hunger; in the Old Testament history, this fear is expressed by the people in loud murmurs, in that of the New Testament, it results from the shortsightedness of the disciples, and the benevolence of Jesus. The direction of the latter to his disciples that they should give the people food, a direction which implies that he had already formed the design of feeding them miraculously, may be paralleled with the command which Jehovah gave to Moses to feed the people with manna ([Exod. xvi. 4]), and with quails ([Exod. xvi. 12]; [Num. xi. 18–20]). But there is another point of similarity which speaks yet more directly to our present purpose. As, in the evangelical narrative, the disciples think it an impossibility that provision for so great a mass of people should be procured in the wilderness, so, in the Old Testament history, Moses replies doubtingly to the promise of Jehovah to satisfy the people with flesh ([Num. xi. 21 f.]). To Moses, as to the disciples, the multitude appears too great for the possibility of providing sufficient food for them; as the latter ask, whence they should have so much bread in the wilderness, so Moses asks ironically whether they should slay the flocks and the herds (which they had not). And as the disciples object, that not even the most impoverishing expenditure on their part would thoroughly meet the demand, so Moses, clothing the idea in another form, had declared, that to satisfy the people as Jehovah promised, an impossibility must happen (the fish of the sea be gathered together for them); objections which Jehovah there, as here Jesus, does not regard, but issues the command that the people should prepare for the reception of the miraculous food.
But though these two cases of a miraculous supply of nourishment are thus analogous, there is this essential distinction, that in the Old Testament, in relation both to the manna and the quails, it is a miraculous procuring of food not previously existing which is spoken of, while in the New Testament it is a miraculous augmentation of provision already present, but inadequate; so that the chasm between the Mosaic narrative and the evangelical one is too great for the latter to have been derived immediately from the former. If we search for an intermediate step, a very natural one between Moses and the Messiah is afforded by the prophets. We read of Elijah, that through him and for his sake, the little store of meal and oil which he found in the possession of the widow of Zarephath was miraculously replenished, or rather was made to suffice throughout the duration of the famine ([1 Kings xvii. 8–16]). This species of miracle is developed still further, and with a greater [[518]]resemblance to the evangelical narrative, in the history of Elisha ([2 Kings iv. 42 ff.]). As Jesus fed five thousand men in the wilderness with five loaves and two fishes, so this prophet, during a famine, fed a hundred men with twenty loaves, (which like those distributed by Jesus in John, are called barley loaves,) together with some ground corn (כַּרְמֶל, LXX. παλάθας); a disproportion between the quantity of provisions and the number of men, which his servant, like the disciples in the other instance, indicates in the question: What! should I set this before a hundred men? Elisha, like Jesus, is not diverted from his purpose, but commands the servant to give what he has to the people; and as in the New Testament narrative great stress is laid on the collection of the remaining fragments, so in the Old Testament it is specially noticed at the close of this story, that notwithstanding so many had eaten of the store, there was still an overplus.[307] The only important difference here is, that on the side of the evangelical narrative, the number of the loaves is smaller, and that of the people greater; but who does not know that in general the legend does not easily imitate, without at the same time surpassing, and who does not see that in this particular instance it was entirely suited to the position of the Messiah, that his miraculous power, compared with that of Elisha, should be placed, as it regards the need of natural means, in the relation of five to twenty, but as it regards the supernatural performance, in that of five thousand to one hundred? Paulus indeed, in order to preclude the inference, that as the two narratives in the Old Testament are to be understood mythically, so also is the strikingly similar evangelical narrative, extends to the former the attempt at a natural explanation which he has pursued with the latter, making the widow’s cruse of oil to be replenished by the aid of the scholars of the prophets, and the twenty loaves suffice for one hundred men by means of a praiseworthy moderation;[308] a mode of explanation which is more practicable here than with the New Testament narrative, in proportion as, by reason of the greater remoteness of these anecdotes, they present fewer critical (and, by reason of their merely mediate relation to Christianity, fewer dogmatical) motives for maintaining their historical veracity.
Nothing more is wanting to complete the mythical derivation of this history of the miraculous feeding of the multitude, except the proof, that the later Jews also believed of particularly holy men, that by their means a small amount of provision was made sufficient, and of this proof the disinterested industry of Dr. Paulus as a collector, has put us in possession. He adduces a rabbinical statement that in the time of a specially holy man, the small quantity of shew-bread more than sufficed for the supply of the priests.[309] To be consequent, this commentator should try to explain this story also naturally,—by the moderation of the priests, for instance: but it is not in the canon, hence he can unhesitatingly regard it as a fable, and he only so far admits its striking similarity to the evangelical narrative as to observe, that in consequence of the Jewish belief in such augmentations of food, attested by that rabbinical statement, the New Testament narrative may in early times [[519]]have been understood by judaizing Christians in the same (miraculous) sense. But our examination has shown that the evangelical narrative was designedly composed so as to convey this sense, and if this sense was an element of the popular Jewish legend, then is the evangelical narrative without doubt a product of that legend.[310]
§ 103.
JESUS TURNS WATER INTO WINE.
Next to the history of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, may be ranged the narrative in the fourth gospel ([ii. 1 ff.]), of Jesus at a wedding in Cana of Galilee turning water into wine. According to Olshausen, both miracles fall under the same category, since in both a substratum is present, the substance of which is modified.[311] But he overlooks the logical distinction, that in the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the modification is one of quantity merely, an augmentation of what was already existing, without any change of its quality (bread becomes more bread, but remains bread); whereas at the wedding in Cana the substratum is modified in quality—out of a certain substance there is made not merely more of the same kind, but something else (out of water, wine); in other words, a real transubstantiation takes place. It is true there are changes in quality which are natural results, and the instantaneous effectuation of which by Jesus would be even more easy to conceive, than an equally rapid augmentation of quantity; for example, if he had suddenly changed must into wine, or wine into vinegar, this would only have been to conduct in an accelerated manner the same vegetable substratum, the vinous juice, through various conditions natural to it. The miracle would be already heightened if Jesus had imparted to the juice of another fruit, the apple for instance, the quality of that of the grape, although even in this his agency would have been within the limits of the same kingdom of nature. But here, where water is turned into wine, there is a transition from one kingdom of nature to another, from the elementary to the vegetable; a miracle which as far exceeds that of the multiplication of the loaves, as if Jesus had hearkened to the counsel of the tempter, and turned stones into bread.[312]
To this miracle, as to the former, Olshausen, after Augustine,[313] applies his definition of an accelerated natural process, by which we are to understand that we have here simply the occurrence, in an accelerated manner, of that which is presented yearly in the vine in a slow process of development. This mode of viewing the matter would have some foundation, if the substratum on which Jesus operated had been the same out of which wine is wont to be naturally produced; if he had taken a vine in his hand, and suddenly caused it to bloom, and to bear ripe grapes, this might have been called an accelerated natural process. Even then indeed we should still have no wine, and if Jesus were to produce this also from the vine which he took into his hand, he must add an operation which would be an invisible substitute for the winepress, that is, an accelerated artificial process; so that [[520]]on this supposition the category of the accelerated natural process would already be insufficient. In fact, however, we have no vine as a substratum for this production of wine, but water, and in this case we could only speak with propriety of an accelerated natural process, if by any means, however gradual, wine were ever produced out of water. Here it is urged, that certainly out of water, out of the moisture produced in the earth by rain and the like, the vine draws its sap, which in due order it applies to the production of the grape, and of the wine therein contained; so that thus yearly, by means of a natural process, wine does actually come out of water.[314] But apart from the fact that water is only one of the elementary materials which are required for the fructification of the vine, and that to this end, soil, air, and light, must concur; it could not be said either of one, or of all these elementary materials together, that they produce the grape or the wine, nor, consequently, that Jesus, when he produced wine out of water, did the same thing, only more quickly, which is repeated every year as a gradual process: on the contrary, here again there is a confusion of essentially distinct logical categories. For we may place the relation of the product to the producing agent, which is here treated of, under the category of power and manifestation, or of cause and effect: never can it be said that water is the power or the cause, which produces grapes and wine, for the power which gives existence to them is strictly the vegetable individuality of the vine-plant, to which water, with the rest of the elementary agencies, is related only as the solicitation to the power, as the stimulus to the cause. That is, without the co-operation of water, air, etc, grapes certainly cannot be produced, any more than without the vine plant; but the distinction is, that in the vine the grape, in itself or in its germ, is already present, and water, air, etc., only assist in its development; whereas in these elementary substances, the grape is present neither actu nor potentiâ; they can in no way produce the fruit out of themselves, but only out of something else—the vine. To turn water into wine is not then to make a cause act more rapidly than it would act in a natural way, but it is to make the effect appear without a cause, out of a mere accessory circumstance; or, to refer more particularly to organic nature, it is to call forth the organic product without the producing organism, out of the simple inorganic materials, or rather out of one of these materials only. This is about the same thing as to make bread out of earth without the intervention of the corn plant, flesh out of bread without a previous assimilation of it by an animal body, or in the same immediate manner, blood out of wine. If the supranaturalist is not here contented with appealing to the incomprehensibleness of an omnipotent word of Jesus, but also endeavours, with Olshausen, to bring the process which must have been contained in the miracle in question nearer to his conception, by regarding it in the light of a natural process; he must not, in order to render the matter more probable, suppress a part of the necessary stages in that process, but exhibit them all. They would then present the following series: 1st, to the water, as one only of the elementary agents, Jesus must have added the power of the other elements above named; 2ndly (and this is the chief point), he must have procured, in an equally invisible manner, the organic individuality of the vine; 3rdly, he must have accelerated, to the degree of instantaneousness, the natural process resulting from the reciprocal action of these objects upon one another, the blooming and fructification of the vine, together with the ripening of the grape; 4thly, he must have caused the artificial process of pressing, [[521]]and so forth, to occur invisibly and suddenly; and lastly, he must again have accelerated the further natural process of fermentation, so as to render it momentary. Thus, here again, the designation of the miracle as an accelerated natural process, would apply to two stages only out of five, the other three being such as cannot possibly be brought under this point of view, though the two first, especially the second, are of greater importance even than belonged to the stages which were neglected in the application of this view to the history of the miraculous feeding: so that the definition of an accelerated natural process is as inadequate here as there.[315] As, however, this is the only, or the extreme category, under which we can bring such operations nearer to our conception and comprehension; it follows that if this category be shown to be inapplicable, the event itself is inconceivable.
Not only, however, has the miracle before us been impeached in relation to possibility, but also in relation to utility and fitness. It has been urged both in ancient[316] and modern[317] times, that it was unworthy of Jesus that he should not only remain in the society of drunkards, but even further their intemperance by an exercise of his miraculous power. But this objection should be discarded as an exaggeration, since, as expositors justly observe, from the words after men have well drunk, ὅταν μεθυσθῶσι ([v. 10]), which the ruler of the feast ἀρχιτρίκλινος uses with reference to the usual course of things at such feasts, nothing can with certainty be deduced with respect to the occasion in question. We must however still regard as valid an objection, which is not only pointed out by Paulus and the author of the Probabilia,[318] but admitted even by Lücke and Olshausen to be at the first glance a pressing difficulty: namely, that by this miracle Jesus did not, as was usual with him, relieve any want, any real need, but only furnished an additional incitement to pleasure; showed himself not so much helpful as courteous; rather, so to speak, performed a miracle of luxury, than of true beneficence. If it be here said that it was a sufficient object for the miracle to confirm the faith of the disciples,[319] which according to [v. 11] was its actual effect; it must be remembered that, as a general rule, not only had the miracles of Jesus, considered with regard to their form, i.e. as extraordinary results, something desirable as their consequence, for instance, the faith of the spectators; but also, considered with regard to their matter, i.e. as consisting of cures, multiplications of loaves, and the like, were directed to some really beneficent end. In the present miracle this characteristic is wanting, and hence Paulus is not wrong when he points out the contradiction which would lie in the conduct of Jesus, if towards the tempter he rejected every challenge to such miracles as, without being materially beneficent, or called for by any pressing necessity, could only formally produce faith and astonishment, and yet in this instance performed a miracle of that very nature.[320]
The supranaturalist was therefore driven to maintain that it was not faith in general which Jesus here intended to produce, but a conviction entirely special, and only to be wrought by this particular miracle. Proceeding on this supposition, nothing was more natural than to be reminded by the opposition of water and wine on which the miracle turns, of the opposition between him who baptized with water ([Matt. iii. 11]), who at the same time [[522]]came neither eating nor drinking ([Luke i. 15]; [Matt. xi. 18]), and him who, as he baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire, so he did not deny himself the ardent, animating fruit of the vine, and was hence reproached with being a wine-bibber οἰνοπότης ([Matt. xi. 19]); especially as the fourth gospel, in which the narrative of the wedding at Cana is contained, manifests in a peculiar degree the tendency to lead over the contemplation from the Baptist to Jesus. On these grounds Herder,[321] and after him some others,[322] have held the opinion, that Jesus by the above miraculous act intended to symbolize to his disciples, several of whom had been disciples of the Baptist, the relation of his spirit and office to those of John, and by this proof of his superior power, to put an end to the offence which they might take at his more liberal mode of life. But here the reflection obtrudes itself, that Jesus does not avail himself of this symbolical miracle, to enlighten his disciples by explanatory discourses concerning his relation to the Baptist; an omission which even the friends of this interpretation pronounce to be surprising.[323] How needful such an exposition was, if the miracle were not to fail of its special object, is evident from the fact, that the narrator himself, according to [v. 11], understood it not at all in this light, as a symbolization of a particular maxim of Jesus, but quite generally, as a manifestation φανέρωσις of his glory.[324] Thus if that special lesson were the object of Jesus in performing the miracle before us, then the author of the fourth gospel, that is, according to the supposition of the above theologians, his most apprehensive pupil, misunderstood him, and Jesus delayed in an injudicious manner to prevent this misunderstanding; or if both these conclusions are rejected, there still subsists the difficulty, that Jesus, contrary to the prevailing tendency of his conduct, sought to attain the general object of proving his miraculous power, by an act for which apparently he might have substituted a more useful one.