(Biblical Researches in Palestine, 1. 204), and writers who have taken his assertions and citations on trust, have been led by him into the exploded error of confounding the true Cana with the false. (Porter's Hand-book of Palestine, 1. 378.)

The question may be once more set at rest by a careful survey of the evidence.

Let the position be noted on a map. Kefr Kenna stands on a lovely hill, about five English miles from Nazareth, in the direction of north-east, and near to the old Roman road from Sephoris to Tiberias; at the head of those valleys which lead down on one side into Esdraelon and on the other into the Lake Country; so that every one coming up from Capernaum to Nazareth, every one going down from Sephoris to Tiberias, would have to pass through its vineyards and gardens on their way. The ruins of Khurbet Kânâ stand on an isolated tell in a wild and difficult district, six English miles due north of Sephoris, eleven English miles from Nazareth, and separated by swamps and quagmires from the line of the great Roman road. (Thomson's The Land and the Book, 11. 26.)

The only writers, contemporaries with the First Miracle, who mention Cana, are Josephus and St. John; whose references to it are precise enough to suggest, if not to fix, the site.

Josephus speaks of Cana as "a village of Galilee called Cana”: Κώμῃ τῆς Γαλιλαίας, ἣ προσαγορεύεται Κανά (Vita, xvi). St. John, by way of distinguishing it from Cana in Judea, calls it simply Kará vñs Pakıhaías: Cana of Galilee (John I. 1). Josephus says he was staying in Cana, or rather he was posted there, during a critical time in the Civil troubles; and the whole course of his narrative

implies that Cana was a place standing between Sephoris and Tiberias, severing and controlling the two capitals of his district, over both of which it was needful for him to keep watch and guard. Observing the machinations of John of Gischala among the Tiberitans, he could afford to wait in his aërie until that turbulent patriot had committed himself beyond the law, when Josephus tells us that he quitted Cana in the night, secretly, with two hundred men, marched down the wady into the low country, and arrived near the gates of Tiberias by dawn of day, his own messenger being the first to inform the citizens of his approach. It is in the last degree unlikely that a soldier would have been lying at Khurbet Kânâ; a place, if it then existed at all, which would have been out of his way, and cut off by Sephoris from communication with Tiberias by the only practicable military road. It is all but impossible that Josephus could have made his sudden and secret night march from Cana to Tiberias, if his point of departure had been a place six miles beyond Sephoris, through the streets of which city he would have been obliged to pass, and the gates of which he would have found closed after sun-down. (Vita, xvII.)

In like manner the whole narrative of St. John implies that Cana was a hamlet lying on the road between Nazareth and the Lake Country. Jesus, coming up from Capernaum to Nazareth, meets his mother on the way at Cana, where he is invited to the marriage feast. The nobleman, coming up from Capernaum to Nazareth, finds Jesus, returning from Jerusalem, at Cana. After the second miracle, Jesus and his mother simply go down to Capernaum (μετὰ τοῦτο κατέβη εἰς Καπερναούμ) an expression which implies that Cana stood in the hill country of

Galilee immediately above the ascent from the Lake. (John I. 1, 12; iv. 46, 47; xxi. 2.)

These indications of Josephus and St. John, indications slight but significant, go to prove that the true site of Cana is that in which the church traditions have always placed it.

Robinson ventured to dispute the truth of these traditions on two grounds: (1) that he had heard a native call Khurbet Kânâ, Kânâ el Jelîl (Cana of Galilee), which he imagined to be a proper name; (2) that all Christian writers before the days of Quaresmius, with the single and doubtful exception of Bonifacius, had placed Cana in the situation occupied by the ruins of Khurbet Kânâ. (Biblical Researches, . 208.)

That the first piece of evidence, even if it were true, ought to have no weight in the discussion; and that the second assertion is the result of Robinson's misquotations, it will be only too easy to satisfy the reader who will take maps and books in hand.

First, as regards the pretended native name. Unhappily for his purpose, Robinson could not speak a word of Arabic, and he had consequently no means of asking the natives a single question, or of sifting the evidence for any story that he might be told. Now every man who has travelled in Syria knows with what ready invention the natives will answer all leading questions, and with what serpentine guile they will try to make things pleasant, if they can do so at the cost of words. If a traveller can only make up his mind to believe everything he hears, he may collect by means of a shrug, a smile, an emphasis, the premises of any conclusion which he has previously

drawn. It is an old moral of travel in Palestine, that travellers find everything they bring with them.

The truth seems to be clear enough that the term Cana of Galilee was not a proper name; only a method of distinguishing the Cana near Nazareth from the Cana of Judea, as we should say Richmond in Yorkshire when fearing a possible confusion with Richmond in Surrey. Josephus says he was staying in a village of Galilee called Cana (Διέτριβον δὲ κατὰ τὸν καιρὸν ἐκεῖνον ἐν κώμῃ τῆς Γαλιλαίας, ἢ προσαγορεύεται Κανά, Vita, xv.), not in a village called Cana of Galilee; and St. John's expression, Kavá τῆς Γαλιλαίας, is translated in the Authorized Version indifferently Cana of Galilee and Cana in Galilee (John 11. 12; xxI. 2). The real name was Cana; and the two writers used the additions "of Galilee," and "a village of Galilee," so as to prevent any possibility of a Greek reader confusing it with that Cana of Judea which a grand disaster of the Greeks under Antiochus had made famous in history. (Josephus, Bel. 1., iv. 7.)

In speaking to travellers, the natives may call Kefr Kenna Cana of Galilee, and some of them may also call Khurbet Kânâ Cana of Galilee, by way of distinguishing them from any other Canas elsewhere, and because they hear travellers ask for them by this name. But among themselves, they use the proper local names, speaking only of Kefr Kenna and Khurbet Kânâ. Thomson, an American by birth, an Arab by knowledge and experience of the country, could not glean from strict and wide examination of the natives any particle of evidence in favour of Robinson's assertion, that the Arab people call Khurbet Kânâ by the name of Cana of Galilee. Thomson says: "I pestered everybody I could find on the right and

the left, farmers, shepherds, Bedaween, and travellers, with inquiries about the place where the water was turned to wine. With one consent they pointed to Kefr Kenna. Some of them knew of a ruin called Kânâ on the other side of the Bûttauf, but only one had ever heard the word Jelîl as part of the name; and from the hesitation with which this one admitted it, I was left in doubt whether he did not merely acquiesce in it at my suggestion." (The Land and the Book, 425.)

The assumption, then, that Kânâ el Jelîl is the proper native name for Khurbet Kânâ falls to the ground, with all the arguments built by Robinson upon it.

As regards the testimony of early writers, the reply to Robinson is not less certain. The first Frank writer who, in mentioning Cana indicates its locality, is St. Willibald, an English pilgrim who went to the Holy Land in 722. A large church was then standing in the place. Willibald gives neither bearings nor distances; but he tells us that he went from Nazareth to Cana on his way to Mount Tabor; an obvious route if Cana were in his time situated at the present Kefr Kenna; an impossible one if it stood at Khurbet Kânâ (Wright's Early Travels in Palestine, 16). A man going from Nazareth to visit Khurbet Kânâ and Mount Tabor would have to make separate journeys; for the best way to get from Khurbet Kânâ to Tabor would be to come back to Nazareth. The next witness, Sawulf, also an Englishman, who went to Palestine in 1102, is more precise. Indeed, his description, faithfully quoted, leaves no room for doubt that Kefr Kenna is the Cana then recognised by the Greek and Latin churches. Sawulf says: "A Nazareth distat Chana Galileæ, ubi Dominus aquam in vinum convertit in nuptiis, quasi sex miliariis