The camel forms the staple wealth of the Arab of the desert, who utilizes every part of the animal, even to the dung, which is used as fuel. Its flesh was forbidden to the Jew (Lv 11^ Dt 14'). Its milk is extremely nutritious, and on fermentation becomes an intoxicant. A thick mat of fine hair
CANA
CANAANITISH
protects the animal against the extremes alike of heat and cold.
The camel is mentioned three times in the C4ospels, on two occasions as a synonym for size or bulkiness; Mt 19=^ ( = Mk 10-^ Lk 18"-'), 'It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God ' ; and 23-^ ' Ye blind guides, which strain out the gnat, and swallow the camel.' In the former of these passages two attempts have been made to evade the Oriental hyperbole, firstly, by reading ko/iiXos, 'a rope,' for Kifj.r)\os ; and, again, by explaining the ' eye of the needle ' as the small door for foot-passengers which is generally made in the frame of the large entrance-door of an Eastern house. The expression 'eye of the needle,' however, is only the English equivalent of the Greek words denoting a ' hole.' The eye of a needle stands for something narrow and hard to pass, as in the Egyptian proverb, ' Straiter than the eye of a needle ' (Burckhardt, 396). A similar proverb is given by Freytag (ii. p. 19), ' Narrower than the shadow of a lance and than tlie hole of a needle.' And in the Koran we have (vii. 38), 'As for those who declare our signs to be lies, and who scorn them, the doors of heaven will not be open to them, nor will they enter Paradise, until a camel shall penetrate into the eye of a needle '-^ that is, never.
In the second of the two passages above, the camel is contrasted with the gnat, ' Ye blind guides, whicli strain out a gnat, and drink down a camel.' The gnat stands for an emblem of smallness in the Koran (ii. '24, ' God is not ashamed to strike a proverb out of a gnat '). In Arabic the elephant rather than the camel is chosen to designate hugeness, as in the song of Kaab ibn Zuheir —
* If there stood in the place which I stand in an elephant,
and the camel is an emblem of patience and silent endurance, and goes by the name of ' the father of Job.' The elephant must have been a not un- familiar object in Palestine in the first century, but would naturally be thought of in connexion with Hellenism ancl idolatry.
Camel's hair or wool, as it is called, is woven by the Arabs into tent-covers, and also into rough outer garments for the peasantry. In Israel this coarse mantle was the badge of the prophet (Zee 13* 'The prophets shall be ashamed eacli one of his vision, when he prophesieth ; and they will no more wear a hairy garment in order to deceive ') ; and in 2 K 1" Elijah is described as being an ' owner of hair ' {ilia Sys, that is, wearing this garment of the prophets ; AV, ' an hairy man '), and girt with leather. As the successor of Elijah and of the prophets, John the Baptist adopted the same dress (Mt 3*, Mk 1*). It is generally sup- posed that the Oriental mystic or siifi is so named from his dress of wool (siif) ; cf . Rev 1 P.
T. H. Weik and Henry E. Dosker.
CANA (Kara TTjs Va\t\aias) is mentioned four times in the Fourth Gospel. It was the scene of our Lord's first miracle (Jn 2i- ") ; the place to which ' a certain king's oflicer (/SacriXiK^j), whose son was sick at Capernaum,' came to find Jesus (4'"') ; and the native place of the disciple Nathanael (21^). After the miracle, Jesus ' went down ' (KaTi^rf) to Capernaum ; and the king's officer be- sought him to 'come down' (rara/Sj) to heal his son. Those references place Cana of Galilee on higher ground than Capernaum. There is no other direct evidence as to its position.
Josephus states ( Vita, 16) that he resided for a *inie 'in a village of Galilee which is named Cana.' From this village he made a descent during the
night upon Tiberias (17). Later (41) he speaks of residing in the great plain, the name of which was Asochis. If these residences are one and the same place, the Cana of Josephus may well be Khirbet Kana or Kanat el-Jelll, on the N. slojjes of the plain of Buttauf, and about 8 miles N. of Nazareth. This, However, would not decide the site of St. John's Cana. [The Kaxd oiAnt. XV. v. 1 should be, according to BJ l. xix. 1, Karaed].
Etymology and tradition are divided between the above mentioned site on the plain of Buttauf and Kefr Kenna, a hamlet on the direct road to the lake, and about 3A miles N.E. of Nazareth, where there is a fine spring. Etymology certainly favours Khirbet ^ana, the doubling of the medial 'nun' being against Kefr Kenna. Tradition is indecisive. The references in Placentinus (/<in. 4), Phocas, John of Wiirzburg, Quaresmius (Eliici- dationes, ii. 852 f.), etc., favour Kef r Kenna, where the monks of the Greek and Latin Churches have considerable ecclesiastical properties. On the other hand, the notices of Theodosius (A.D. 530), Saewulf, Brocardus, Fetellus, Marinus Sanutus (p. 253), and others, suit the northern site.