Coincidence 3: Why Were the Water Pots Empty?
The Alleged Coincidence
In a story found only in John, Jesus and his mom attend a wedding in Cana, where Jesus miraculously turns water into wine. Before he does so, he requests that the servants fill jars with water. These jars, we are told, are “stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification” (John 2:6). 1
McGrew, however, is puzzled by these jars. If the jars are for purification rites, then why are they empty? McGrew writes: “Wouldn’t they [the jars] be expected to be full of water? Empty water jars aren’t very useful for purification rites. John doesn’t bother to give any further explanation of those rites or of the empty jars.” 2
The answer supposedly comes from Mark. When some Pharisees and scribes become upset that Jesus’s disciples eat with unwashed hands, the author of Mark explains why:
For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders, and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash, and there are also many other traditions that they observe: the washing of cups and pots and bronze kettles and beds. (Mark 7:3–4)
According to McGrew, Mark’s statement explains why the water pots are empty in John’s story of the wedding in Cana: “The pots had already served their purpose and had been emptied in the process; the wedding guests had already ritually washed before eating and drinking at the wedding feast” (original emphasis).
Thus, Mark and John coincide here because the passage in Mark explains the passage in John.
First Failure: No Evidence for Reliability
I’ll agree there is a coincidence here. But as evidence for reliability of the Gospels, this coincidence is pathetic.
All that this coincidence establishes is that the authors of John and Mark, or the storytellers before them, knew that Jews practiced purification rites before eating and drinking. It is not evidence that Jesus and his mom attended a wedding in Cana, that he transformed water into wine, or that he had that argument with Pharisees and scribes about ritual purity.
Thus, the coincidence provides zero evidence for the reliability of the Gospels.
Second Failure: No Evidence for Eyewitness Testimony
According to McGrew, “What the empty water pots do tell us is that John is telling the story in a way that a truthful eyewitness reports—namely, without stopping to give unnecessary explanations.”
As evidence for eyewitness testimony, this argument is also pathetic. No one includes explanations they think are unnecessary, and no one omits explanations they think are necessary. Therefore, that the author of John’s Gospel doesn’t explain why the water pots are empty only tells us that he didn’t think it was necessary to do so. It cannot tell us whether he was an eyewitness or not.
Conclusion: A Failure in Plain View
McGrew seems to acknowledge that this coincidence is, at best, weak. She reminds her readers, “It’s important to realize that the argument from undesigned coincidences is a cumulative argument” (original emphasis). In other words, even if this coincidence is only a feather, it can still help tip the scales in favor of reliable eyewitness testimony. But since John’s and Mark’s stories could have been invented decades later by storytellers who knew that Jews engaged in food-related purification rites, there is no feather to place on the scale.
- Unless otherwise noted, I use the NRSVue for all biblical translations. ↩
- I’m using the Kindle version of McGrew’s book, Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts (DeWard, 2017), making page numbers useless. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from McGrew in this post come from Chapter I, section “3. Why were the water pots empty?”. The question McGrew chose to motivate this coincidence—“Why were the water pots empty?”—is a bit oafish. Obviously the jars are empty because the water has been used. She should have simply asked, “What were the Jewish rites of purification?” ↩