The miracle at Cana, the feast of Epiphany, and the cult of Dionysos
- Daniel Oltean
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
The transformation of water into wine is a miracle attributed to both Christ in the Gospel of John and the god Dionysos in Greek mythology. Since the legends that credit Dionysos with the invention of wine are much older, the miracle at Cana in Galilee has often been interpreted as a Christian response to a pagan cult widespread at the time. [1] This parallel is supported by a similar celebration of the miracle. Among Christians, in the 4th century, the wedding at Cana was celebrated on January 6th, a date associated with the birth and the baptism of Christ, as well as with the New Year. However, on the same day, non-Christians had long celebrated either Dionysos and the miracle of water turned into wine, or the birth of the god Aion, the symbol of eternal time, who in Egypt amalgamated with Osiris and Dionysos, the gods of death and resurrection.
The Miracle at Cana
According to Epiphanios of Salamis (4th c.), the birth of Christ and the miracle at Cana occurred on the same day, January 6th, with an interval of thirty years between them. Their shared feast, called the Epiphany (i.e., manifestation, appearance), was accompanied by miracles similar to that of Cana, “as streams and rivers in many localities testify by being changed to wine.” Epiphanios of Salamis gives two examples of such rivers: those near Cibyra in Caria (southwest Anatolia) and Gerasa in Jordan; he and his companions are said to have drunk from these springs, whose water turned into wine. [2]
In Egypt, the miracle at Cana was celebrated with the baptism of Christ on January 6th, a date that coincided with the New Year. [3] The wedding at Cana and the baptism were also celebrated together in several regions in the West, as mentioned by Paulinus of Nola (4th-5th c.), Peter Chrysologus (5th c.), Maximus of Turin (5th c.), and the calendar of Polemius Sylvius (448-449), among others. The Luxeuil lectionary and the Bobbio missal, which date from the 7th/8th century, include the miracle at Cana (John 2,1-11) among the readings for the liturgy of January 6th. [4]
In the Byzantine tradition, the commemoration of the miracle at Cana was transferred to January 8th, two days after the Epiphany. This date is mentioned in some ancient manuscripts, either in the synaxarion, [5] or in the calendar (menologion) included at the end of the apostolos. [6] Among the Byzantines, this custom subsequently disappeared, but the Coptic tradition preserves it to this day.
According to several ancient texts, the miracle at Cana was copied by many saints. It seems that Epiphanios of Salamis not only drank from springs miraculously transformed into wine, but he also performed a reverse miracle, changing the wine into water. [7] In Palestine, Sabas the Sanctified is said to have turned vinegar into wine; for three days, this wine did not run out, so that the monks could drink it freely. [8] In Paris, on the day of Epiphany, Marcel (4th-5th c.) is said to have taken water from the Seine, but it turned into wine for the Eucharist. [9] According to the Life of Columba of Iona (6th c.), the saint changed water into wine, [10] while Vedast of Arras (5th-6th c.) is said to have miraculously filled an empty barrel with wine. [11] As for Brigid of Kildare in Ireland (4th-5th c.), it is said that she performed a similar miracle, but this time she turned water into beer. [12]
The cult of Dionysos
These Christian legends about changing water into wine have very ancient origins. In Greco-Roman mythology, similar miracles are associated with Dionysos/Bacchus, the god of wine, theatre, fertility, mysteries, and resurrection. In the early centuries of Christianity, his cult was widespread throughout the Mediterranean region, including Galilee.
According to Diodorus Siculus (1st c. BC), the inhabitants of the town of Teos, in Ionia (a country in western Anatolia, near Caria), believed that Dionysos was born in that land, since a spring of wine with a delightful fragrance gushed forth there on a fixed date. [13] According to Pliny the Elder (1st c.), it was said that at Andros, in the Cyclades, at the sanctuary of Dionysos, the water from a spring turned into wine once a year. The miracle occurred during the seven days dedicated to this god, which began at the Nones of January (January 5th); however, the wine reverted to water if it was taken far from the temple. [14] As for Pausanias (2nd c.), he mentions the inhabitants of the city of Elis, in the northwest Peloponnese, who believed that Dionysos participated each year in the festival they dedicated to him; during the night, the god miraculously filled with wine three empty vessels prepared inside the temple. [15]
This festival on January 5th/6th, dedicated to Dionysos and the miracle of water turned into wine, appears to have been integrated into the celebrations of the winter solstice (traditionally set on December 25th) and the New Year. According to the same Epiphanios, in Alexandria, non-Christians gathered on January 6th, New Year’s Day, to celebrate “Kore—that is, the Virgin—[who] gave birth to Aion.” [16] In Egypt, Aion was the god of eternal time, assimilated with both Osiris and Dionysos. The same festival was observed in Elusa (Palestine), as well as in Petra (Jordan), the ancient capital of the Nabataeans, who celebrated the birth of the local god Dushara, often amalgamated with Zeus and Dionysos of the Greek pantheon. [17]
The feast of the Epiphany appears to have been built upon these pre-Christian customs. The commemoration of the miracle at Cana was thus intended to replace the festival of Dionysos; the nativity and the baptism of Christ corresponded to the symbolism of a new solar cycle and countered the god of time and life, who manifested himself in the world. However, after several centuries, when Christians forgotten Dionysos, the feast of the miracle at Cana lost its raison d’être in the Byzantine calendar.
[1] R. Seaford, Dionysos, London, 2006, p. 122-126; W. Eisele, Jesus und Dionysos: Göttliche Konkurrenz bei der Hochzeit zu Kana (Joh 2,1-11), in Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche, 100.1 (2009), p. 1-28; E. Kobel, Dining with John: CommunalMeals and Identity Formation in the Fourth Gospel and its Historical and Cultural Context (Biblical Interpretation Series, 109), Leiden, 2011, p. 221-246.
[2] The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, Book I (Sects 1-46), trans. F. Williams, Leiden, 1987, p. 62 (§51.30.1-2).
[3] W. Riedel – W. E. Crum, The Canons of Athanasius of Alexandria, London, 1904, p. 27 (§16).
[4] On the feast of Epiphany and the miracle at Cana, see B. Botte, Les origines de Noël et de l’Épiphanie, Louvain, 1932; H. Auf der Maur, Feiern im rhythmus der Zeit (Gottesdienst der Kirche. Handbuch der Liturgiewissenschaft, 5), vol. 1, Regensburg, 1983, p. 154-176; T. J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, New York, 1986, p. 85-147.
[5] H. Delehaye (ed.), Synaxarium Ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae, Acta Sanctorum Propylaeum Novembris, Bruxelles, 1902, col. 380.3-4 (manuscripts H, S, et Sa); J. Mateos, Le Typicon de la Grande Église. Ms. Sainte Croix n° 40, Xe siècle (Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 165), Rome, 1962-1963, vol. 1, p. 190-191. See also Sinai Gr. 548, 10th/11th c. (Hs, Diktyon 58923), f. 95r.
[6] Mount Athos, St. Panteleimon 86, 11th/12th c. (GA ℓ 1279, Diktyon 22223), f. 238v: σύναξις τοῦ ἐν Κανᾷ τῆς Γαλιλαίας γάμου, cf. G. Andreou, Il Praxapostolos bizantino. Edizione del codice Mosca GIM Vlad. 21 (Savva 4) (Jerusalemer Theologisches Forum, 46), Münster, 2023, p. 370-371.
[7] Patrologia Graeca, 41, col. 33-36 (BHG 596, §10).
[8] Cyril of Scythopolis, Lives of the Monks of Palestine, trans. R. Price – J. Binns (Cistercian Studies Series, 114), Kalamazoo (MI), 1991, p. 146 (BHG 1608, §46).
[9] Vita sancti Marcelli (BHL 5248), §20, in Venanti Honori Clementiani Fortunati presbyteri Italici opera pedestria, ed. B. Krusch (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores antiquissimi, 4.2), Berlin, 1885, p. 51.
[10] Adomnán of Iona, Life of St Columba, §1.1; 2.1, trans. R. Sharpe, London, 1991, p. 110; 154 (BHL 1886).
[11] Jonas of Bobbio, Life of Columbanus, Life of John of Réomé, and Life of Vedast, trans. A. O’Hara – I. Wood (Translated Texts for Historians, 64), Liverpool, 2017, p. 270 (BHL 8501, §4).
[12] L. De Paor (trans.), Cogitosus’ Life of St. Brigid the Virgin, in St. Patrick’s World: The Christian Church of Ireland’s Apostolic Age, Dublin, 1993, p. 211.
[13] Diodorus of Sicily, The Library of History, §3.66, ed. and trans. C. H. Oldfather (Loeb Classical Library), vol. 2, Cambridge (MA), 1939, p. 14-15.
[14] Pliny, Natural History, §2.106.11, ed. and trans. H. Rackham et al. (Loeb Classical Library), vol. 1, Cambridge (MA), 1949, p. 356-359: Andro in insula, templo Liberi patris, fontem nonis Ianuariis semper vini sapore fluere; §31.13, vol. 8, Cambridge (MA), 1963, p. 388-389: Andri e fonte Liberi patris statis diebus septenis eius dei vinum fluere. See also Pausanias, Description of Greece, §6.26.2, ed. and trans. W. H. S. Jones, vol. 3 (Loeb Classical Library), Cambridge (MA), 1961, p. 156-159.
[15] Pausanias, Description of Greece, §6.26.1-2, p. 156-159. See A. I. Jiménez San Cristóbal, The Epiphany of Dionysus in Elis and the Miracle of the Wine (Plutarch, Quaestiones Graecae 299 B), in R. Hirsch-Luipold – L. Roig Lanzillotta (ed.), Plutarch’s Religious Landscapes (Brill’s Plutarch Studies, 6), Leiden, 2020, p. 311-331.
[16] The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, p. 51-52 (§51.22.9-10).
[17] Ibidem, p. 52 (§51.22.11). On Aion – Osiris – Dionysos and Dushara – Zeus – Dionysos, see J. Fossum, The Myth of the Eternal Rebirth: Critical Notes on G. W. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity, in Vigiliae Christianae, 53.3 (1999), p. 305-315; S. G. Schmid, Un roi nabatéen à Délos ?, in Annual of the Depatment of Antiquities of Jordan, 43 (1999), p. 279-298.
