ROUGH DRAFT—NOT FOR CITATION

Originally Published in Expository Times 115.10 (2004): 328-31.

 

“The Third Fifth Day?”

John 2:1 in Context

 

Thomas E. Phillips

            In John 1, the temporal framework of the narrative is developed as a series of events occurring on a consistent and daily schedule with each subsequent set of events introduced as occurring on the next day (TÞ �paÀrion, 1:29, 35, 43). In John 2:1, however, this temporal framework is altered as the reader suddenly encounters a curious reference to events which occurred on the third day (tÞ Óm™r‹ tÞ tr°tÛ).  This note will seek to explain the textual strategies within 1:1-2:12 which provide significance to the seeming alternation of the temporal framework between chapter 1 (where events follow one another on a daily basis) and chapter 2 (where the first event occurs on the third day).

            Most interpreters have understood the reference to the third day in 2:1 to be a continuation of the sequence of days begun in 1:19 where the gospel transitioned from prologue to narrative.  Thus, according to most reckonings, the events which the narrator locates “on the third day” (2:1) are generally deemed to have occurred on the sixth[1] or seventh day[2] of the narrative.  Because it is obviously not the third day of the narrative, many interpreters have suggested that the temporal expression tÞ Óm™r‹ tÞ tr°tÛ (2:1) means that events narrated in 2:1-11 occurred on the third day after the events narrated in 1:43-51.[3]  In this reading, tÞ Óm™r‹ tÞ tr°tÛ (2:1) is taken to mean “on the third day after the previous account,” essentially as “on the day after next.”  Such readings are problematic, however, for three reasons.  First, John’s gospel typically expresses the idea that some event occurred a number of days after another event by the use of met€ (“after”) as in the expressions met� #dš #t�v #dÀo Óm™rav (“after two days,” 4:43) and meq@ Óm™rav ìktð (“after eight days,” 20:26).[4]  Second, John’s gospel typically uses the dative (without �n, as here in 2:1) to express the idea that something occurred on a particular day (e.g., tÞ dš miŽ tòn sabb€twn, “on the first day of the week,” 20:1; tÞ ×m™r‹ �ke°nÛ tÞ miŽ sabb€twn, “on the first day of the week,” 20:19; and tÞ �paÀrion, “on the next day,” 6:22; 12:12).[5]  Third, when tÞ tr°tÛ means “on the day after next” in past-time narratives like John 2:1 (e.g., Luke 13:32 and Acts 27:19), the intervening days in the sequence are often indicated by ›xÒv (“the next day,” Acts 27:18) and by sÐmeron (“today”) and aÈrion (“tomorrow,” Luke 13:32).  Admittedly, predictions of future events (particularly Jesus’ resurrection) typically lack such references to the intervening days (e.g., Mt. 17:23; 20:19; Luke 18:33), but clearly John’s reference speaks of the narrative past (where reference to the intervening days would be expected) and not to the future events (where reference to the intervening days would not be expected).

            John’s designation of the sixth or seventh day of the narrative as the third day has lead to many competing explanations for this reference to the third day, none of which is completely satisfying.  Several interpreters have suggested that the text is allowing adequate travel time for Jesus to travel to Cana for the wedding.[6]  Of course, this suggestion does not explain why the events in 2:1 are set specifically on the third day and thus some interpreters have further speculated that the specific three day time frame allowed enough time for Jesus and his disciples to cover the distance to Cana only if they moved with utmost haste.  According to this reading, the reference to the third day is taken to emphasize how quickly Jesus’ changing of the water into wine followed on the heels of his promise to show the disciples “greater things” (1:50).[7]  Several factors argue against these suggestions.  If the text simply was emphasizing the immediate fulfillment of Jesus’ prediction, it could have simply repeated the already used tÞ �paÀrion (“on the next day,” 1:29, 35, 43; cf. 12:12).  If the text was simply indicating the passage of time, it could have employed its more common met� toÂto (“after this,” 2:12; 11:7, 11; 19:28) or met� taÂta (“after these things,” 3:22; 5:1; 6:1; 7:1; 19:38; 21:1).  Given both John’s general disinterest in geographical and chronological accuracy and the fact that this narrative has Jesus traveling only from an unspecified location in Galilee (1:43) to the town of Cana in Galilee (2:1), speculations based on the requirements of travel time seem inadequate to explain why the events in chapter 2 begin on the third day.  Why then does this sign take place on the third day?

            In their quest to answer this third day question, several scholars have suggested that this reference to the third day is a literary device that enables the narrative to complete its first week.  Advocates of this approach suggest that the third day in 2:1 is the third day in a new week which began after an implied Sabbath in 1:39-40 and that this reference to the third day therefore completes a seven day week that began in 1:19.[8]  This reading is problematic, however, because it requires the insertion of a Sabbath between 1:39 and 1:40 where the text not only does not mention a Sabbath (cf. 5:9; 9:14) but where the text does not even provide any clear indication of a progression from one day to the next.[9]  Thus, even some of those sympathetic to this interpretation readily acknowledge the limitedness of its plausibility.[10]     

            Some interpreters have sought to avoid the problems associated with the readings above by suggesting a purely symbolic function for this reference to the third day, arguing that this first sign is set on the third day in order to foreshadow the seventh sign, Jesus’ resurrection (on the third day).[11]  Although the association between the third day and the resurrection does run deeply in Christian tradition, this symbolic reading of the third day in 2:1 is unpersuasive both because John’s gospel does not emphasize the association between the resurrection and the third day and because the resurrection theme otherwise plays no role in this narrative of the marriage at Cana of Galilee.  Had John wished to draw a parallel between the marriage in Cana of Galilee and the resurrection (or to otherwise allude to the resurrection in this context), he probably would have set the marriage “on the first day of the week” (tÞ miŽ tòn sabb€twn) as he set the discovery of the empty tomb (20:1).[12]  Other even less plausible symbolical readings take this reference to the third day as an allusion either to the Sinai theopany[13] or to a week of preparation for the Epiphany of Jesus’ first sign.[14]

            This brief critical survey of explanations offered for this reference to the third day may well lead one to conclude with C. H. Dodd that “[t]he difficulty of basing a convincing chronology of events upon this datum is notorious.”[15]  Narratives, particularly those as complex as John’s Gospel, are capable of doing many competing things at the same time, but I want to suggest that the creation of the “notorious difficulty” noted by Dodd may, in fact, be the primary function of this reference and that the history of reader disorientation over this reference to the third day provides an essential clue for developing an alternative reading of this reference.  Specifically, I want to introduce the possibility that this reference to the third day disorients the reader in order to reorient the reader. 

I want to suggest that the reference to the third day does refer to the third day of the narrative, but does so in a manner which disorients the reader for pedagogical purposes.  The temporal framework of John’s gospel does not begin with 1:19, but rather with 1:1 as the gospel echoes the temporal framework of Genesis 1.  John 1:1 echoes Gen. 1:1 (�n ‡rcÞ, “in the beginning”) and then reinforces this temporal timeframe with the widely recognized use of creation language (g°nomai, “create,” 1:3, 10; kçsmov, “world,” 1:10) and motifs in the prologue.[16]  These creation motifs not only inform the Christology of the prologue, but they also provide the temporal framework for all of John 1:1-2:12.  For the reader familiar with Gen. 1, the reference to “the beginning” sets the temporal framework for the opening of John.  The readers’ expectations are fixed.  The first day of creation is followed by the second day of creation, which is followed by the third day of creation and so on.  The repeated temporal formula tÞ �paÀrion (“on the next day”) in John 1 not only echoes the Genesis story, but also reaffirms the readers’ expectations that he or she is reading the story of a new week of creation.

HEn ‡rcÞ Ún é lçgov “In the beginning was the word” (1:1) introduces day 1 (1:1-28)

TÞ �paÀrion “On the next day” (1:29) introduces day 2 (1:29-34).

TÞ �paÀrion “On the next day” (1:35) introduces day 3 (1:35-42).

TÞ �paÀrion “On the next day” (1:43) introduces day 4 (1:43-51).

Just when the reader expects tÞ �paÀrion “on the next day” (1:29) to introduce the fifth day, the reader encounters tÞ Óm™r‹ tÞ tr°tÛ “on the next day” (2:1), the “third fifth” day.[17]  This third day is a non sequitur in a well-crafted sequence.  By this disruption of expectations, the reader is induced to “come and see” (1:39, 46) things in John’s gospel that will exceed the assumed and expected.  The reader, like Nicodemus and the woman at the well, is invited to look beyond the obvious and literal and to think more deeply.  By this textual defiance of the expected form, the reader is challenged to think in new ways.  The reader is being prepared for a world in which the changing of water into wine is not just about beverages and eating of loaves and fish is not just about nutrition.  By this violation of the normal expectations, the reader is invited to reflect upon a meaning beyond the obvious and customary.  For the reader to protest that this is not the third day in the narrative is for the reader to join Nicodemus in his naïveté about the spiritual birthing process and to join the Samaritan women in her naïveté about the mechanics of getting living water from a well deep in the earth.   The “third fifth day” warns: literalists, be wary of reading this gospel.

            For those worried about the remaining days in the creation narrative, the week is quickly finished when Jesus goes to Capernaum and stays “a few days” (oÇ poll�v Óm™rav, 2:12).  With this unceremonious end, the temporal framework of a new week of creation has served its purpose and is abandoned.  With the introduction of the Passover (2:13), the narrative adopts a new temporal framework based on an annual (Jewish) calendar.