That would contradict Jesus’s promise to his disciples that even the tiniest speck of faith would be sufficient to cast a mountain into the sea. Surely the mountain didn’t have to believe in Jesus for that to happen.
If Jesus = God, who got Mary pregnant? Would the Son of God impregnate his own mother? What kind of guilt trip could a good Jewish mother get out of that?
Actually, I got a somewhat different impression from this passage:
It’s like Jesus is a walking reservoir of healing-power and he does not even entirely control it – you can tap into it just by sneaking up and touching him.
The passage in question doesn’t say that Jesus was unable to do miracles because the audience was skeptical, but rather it clearly says the exact opposite.
The only way that anyone could make it look like Jesus was unable to perform miracles in this passage is by chopping off the ending of the last sentence. With that ending it becomes clear that Mark is humorously mocking the rubes in Nazareth for their reaction to Jesus’s healing powers.
I often wonder, because, when I was younger I’d say things like, “I’d make a deal with the devil for X”, or, “God strike me down, NOW!” and I would half expect some little red imp to come up and say, “Let’s make a deal!”, or a lightning bolt from nowhere. as time got on niether happened and so I wondered…
To understand the episode of Jesus turning water into wine, you need to understand some facts about the culture in which it took place. First of all, the Jews and others at the time rarely drank wine straight up. Instead they drank it watered down, several parts water to one part wine. Hence providing people with a lot of wine shouldn’t be viewed as an incitement to drunkenness. Wine was the beverage at the time. Other than water, there wasn’t much else to drink in quantity. Wine’s social meaning was thus different for them than for us.
Second, this particular miracle was not only about giving people something to drink. The social institution of a wedding feast played a much larger social role back then than a wedding reception does now. The consequences for running out of wine would be more than a little embarrassment for the guy in charge.
That doesn’t really seem to disagree with j_s_g5’s argument. Allowing the guy in charge to not lose face doesn’t really strike me as being particularly noble, either. It’s a nice favour.
Mythologically speaking, it was just Jesus performing the miracle of Dionysus - Dinoysus was the god of the grape vine which literally changes water into wine. You’re still right about the social implications (and that fact that the wine was watered), but the story is obviously not historical.
Also, if you drank water straight in those days, it might not agree with you. (The principles of sanitation being poorly understood.) There was just enough alcohol in the wine to kill microorganisms. (The existence of microorganisms, and the existence of alcohol, being not at all understood, but they knew what did and didn’t give you the runs.)
Jesus was quoting in saying He could only do what He saw the Father doing. The Father was not into “stupid God tricks”, nor did He need to prove Himself in that way.
The Father works on hearing from our heart. If Jesus was moved to work beyond human ability, the Father heard it and provided the miracle.
I’m not sure if you’d call it a theme, but the idea that you can pray to saints for intercession, but they don’t answer prayers themselves, is one I’ve not run into elsewhere. Generally, if there’s an entity worth praying to, it’s considered to answer your prayer (or not) under its own power.
But I’m not aware of any story or myth from Christianity that isn’t a fairly blatant rip off of other earlier religions. Which does not make it unique; most religions are fond of plagiarism.
