Cana

Cana of Galilee (Κανὰ τῆς Γαλιλαίας; قانا الجليل ) is the location of the Wedding at Cana, at which the miracle of turning water into wine took place in the Gospel of John. The location is disputed, with the four primary locations being Kafr Kanna, Khirbet Qana and Reineh in Lower Galilee and Qana in Upper Galilee. The Arabic name "Qana al-Jalil" has been said to apply to a number of sites, but is of doubtful authenticity. The name possibly derives from the Hebrew or Aramaic word for reeds. Wedding at Cana Among Christians and other students of the New Testament, Cana is best known as the place where, according to the Fourth Gospel, Jesus performed "the first of his signs", his first public miracle, the turning of a large quantity of water into wine at a wedding feast (John 2, ) when the wine provided by the bridegroom had run out. Although none of the synoptic gospels record the event, mainstream Christian tradition holds that this is the first public miracle of Jesus. The other biblical references to Cana are also in John: John 4 (), which mentions that Jesus is visiting Cana when he is asked to heal the son of a royal official at Capernaum; and John 21 (), where it is mentioned that Nathanael (sometimes identified with the Bartholomew included in the synoptic gospels' lists of apostles) comes from Cana. The Book of Joshua mentions one city () and one brook (; ) named Kanah (Cana) – neither is likely to be the Cana of Galilee. In secular history, the annals of Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III, who conquered the Galilee in a 733 BC campaign, contain a badly preserved list of cities that had been thought to mention a certain Kana. It relates that six hundred fifty captives were taken there. However, a revised transliteration revealed the one well-preserved syllable to be Ku, not Ka. Flavius Josephus mentions more than one place named Cana. In the context of the Galilee, there are two mentions in his Life: one is a place on the road from Iulias, and the other is a place where he resided, about a day's walk from Tiberias.