Cana

Cana of Galilee (Ancient Greek: Κανὰ τῆς Γαλιλαίας; Arabic: قانا الجليل, romanized: Qana al-Jalil, lit.

[4] 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[5] that had been thought to mention a certain Kana.

[citation needed] There is a minority view that the gospel was written for a gentile audience, and those who take this view assert that the description in the passage about the marriage at Cana of "six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification", in spite of reflecting good knowledge of the ritual washing habits among Jews at the time,[12] is specifically for a gentile audience, who would not know the topography of the Holy Land.

[citation needed] There are four primary locations which have been under consideration as the New Testament Cana:[13] The village of Qana, about 18 miles (29 km) from Tyre, Lebanon, is traditionally held to be the correct site by most Christians, and is Eusebius's pick in his 4th century Onomasticon.

[17] The first time this site is associated with New Testament Cana is in a mid-17th century report to the Pope by Francesco Quaresimo, the papal emissary to Palestine, where he noted there were two possible candidates: Khirbet Qana and Kafr Kanna.

Some scholars believe, according to archaeological evidence, that the identification of Kafr Kanna was the result of the decline of Khirbet Qana beginning in the Mamluk period.

They note that it was a common practice for new and more affluent and easily accessible sites to be established in place of old ones to accommodate increases in pilgrim traffic, particularly in the late Medieval and Ottoman periods.

A guidebook written by Theodosius between 517 and 527 CE titled The Layout of the Holy Land identifies Khirbet Kana and indicates that two of the vessels were still at the location.

"[21] Just about 1.5 miles northeast from Nazareth is the Arab town of Reineh, and on the way out of it toward Mount Tabor there is a small spring named 'Ain Kânah, which was identified by Claude Reignier Conder his Tent Work in Palestine (1878) as the better candidate for the location of Cana, based on etymological grounds.