[af_vet_1981]

At Jewish weddings (which could go on for the better part of a week) plentiful abundance of wine held significance as representative of God's blessings, and even "life" itself. The wedding toast pronounced over the wine, L'Chaim == To Life.

If you mean the seven blessings (שבע ברכות), the wedding has already occurred. As regards L'Chaim as a toast, it was a later custom.

Let’s look briefly at l’ḥayim’s history. The earliest mention of it in Jewish sources in the context of drinking can be found in the 13th-century Italian rabbi Tsedakiah ben Avraham Anav’s guidebook to Jewish ritual, “Shibbolei ha-Leket.” There he writes: “And when drinking a glass of wine… it is customary to respond [to anyone reciting the blessing over it] l’ḥayim, that is, ‘May what you drink bring you life and not harm.’” In medieval times, in other words, when the practice first originated, l’chaim was said not by a toaster in our sense of the word, but rather by anyone hearing the borei p’ri ha-gafen, the “Blessed are You O God our Lord, King of the Universe, who creates the fruit of the vine.” This is a custom observed to this day by Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jews in Israel and elsewhere, who, during the Sabbath and holiday Kiddush, exclaim l’chaim after the Aramaic call to order savrei maranan, “Attention, my masters,” that precedes the actual blessing.

L’chaim, in other words, did not originally mean “[Let us drink] to life;” it meant, “[May you be consigned] to life,” the life in question being that of the blessing’s reciter, not life in general. In such a case, ḥayim does not take the definite article and l’chaim, not la’chayim, is correct.

Among Ashkenazi Jews, under the influence of the European custom of toasting (in the Muslim Middle East, where alcohol was not openly consumed, it didn’t exist), the l’chaim of the blessing over wine became the l’chaim of a toast without the l’ changing to a la-, so that today it seems to us that we are saying, “Here’s to life!” And indeed, if we don’t mind being ungrammatical, that is what we are doing. Grammar, I repeat, isn’t everything.

[BlueDragon]

Ok mr. know it all -- Explain why Christ included "my hour is not yet come" in his response to Mary.

What else but the sort of thing I just went over with you works better?

It cannot be limited to being that the "hour" Jesus was speaking of be only the time when He performed miracles, or possibly even that He was speaking of that sort of "hour" at all --- by even your words.

Yet we are supposed to consider that it was chiefly for cause that He was doing "Mary" a big favor, showing her He would always be there for her =--- oh, and these "bonds of the holy spirit" you mention --- is that to imply that Mary knew all about it, knew what He could do in the way of miracles, and so went to Him asking for one?

What a load of supposition and *special pleading*.

And that, for as you just said -- the wine produced by such a miracle to be simply and merely for wine for the people there to drink???

The wedding was over (so you say)... so the wine there in that setting not symbolize life and abundance?

No, you are simply wrong regardless of some obscure internet link which suggests the toast I mentioned by traced no further back than the 13 century, for the concept I was hoping one would open themselves to seeing does not rely upon the "toast" but is reliant upon what wine represented in the cultural setting which this miraculous occurrence took place.

If one desires to more fully understand the Gospels, and the rest of NT teaching, the more which is known and accepted as real of Hebrew traditions and religious concepts the more complete the picture of what He was saying and doing becomes. One can know the traditions and the setting -- without having to adopt them entirely, any more than we would have to have an actual time machine to travel back to nearly 2000 years to be able to understand today -- what was said then, and what it meant at THAT time.

One may turn their back upon those traditions of the Jews, close eyes-ears-and mind to all of it (or nearly all?) but do not expect me or anyone else with a lick of sense to then take serious appeals to "tradition" which can be as much as anything just mere custom which has arisen in the intervening centuries.

You did just say;

They needed wine. Sometimes people needed food. He went about doing good. His mother had faith to ask him to help others.

The miracle of Jesus having turned water into wine at the wedding of Cana goes so far beyond and deeper than that to render that sort of explanation, that sort of view or response to be missing the meaning for having over-emphasized Mary's own role.

But how so utterly "cult of Mary" type of thinking -- which as often is the case leads one astray from the message and Word which God was revealing -- to the Jews first, for salvation is of the Jews...