Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.  (John 20:30-31)

John concludes the reason for presenting a new account, it is to provide signs that might convince that Jesus was divine.  A sign, the Greek is σημεῖον (semeion) points the way, and is an indicator but in the New Testament, sign synonymous with the performance of a miracle, a reversal of or prevalence over natural laws. John provides seven signs authenticate Jesus, turning water into wine (2:1-11) healing a nobleman’s son (4:46-54) and a paralytic man (5:1-15), feeding a multitude (6:1-15), walking on water (6:16-21), healing a man born blind (9:1-7) and lastly, the raising Lazarus from the tomb (11:1-44).  It could be argued that the greatest sign of all was Jesus own resurrection, but that was a work of the Father, the previous was those performed by the Son.

But why these, and why only seven?  As John says, and the synoptic gospels attest, Jesus did many, many others.  There must be an underlying reason for their selection.   

That there are seven is to set limit; John concludes his gospel thus:

Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.  (ibid 21:25)

And seven has particular biblical significance, being a number that is associated with divine perfection or completion of God’s purposes, based on the seven days of creation.  (While the month is set by the lunar cycle and the year by the sun’s, a week of seven days, has not natural origin, it is divinely decreed.)

So that there are seven signs can be explained – but why these seven?

John’s was the last Gospel to be written, some forty or fifty years after the synoptics between 90-100AD.  By this point, a generation had passed since Jesus died, and with very few exceptions so had all the eye witnesses to his ministry.  The other apostles had been martyred (by tradition) and John was now old.  While much of the canon of the New Testament existed, it was yet to be collected.  Doubtless, John wrote from concern, if always inspired.  How would the gospel, the great news that God would redeem humanity be known?  Whence the next generation of believers?  And in what would they believe?  Already Gnostics tried to take the gospel and mould it to their esoteric god and spirit structures.  Or was Jesus fated to be rolled into the syncretical pantheon of gods that included Roman Emperors?  Moreover, Jews had rejected Jesus and had settled back into their old religion, prompting the book known as Hebrews (circa 60 AD) to be written to halt the growing Jewish apostasy.  Therefore, he was moved to write an account different to that of Mark (Peter’s amanuensis) Luke and Matthew. Paul had written earlier:

For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.  Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,but we preach Christ crucified.  (1 Corinthians 1:22-23)

John decided more ‘signs’ were needed and he decided to write a book of selecting critical sayings and key indicators of Jesus divinity.  But he would reverse Paul’s assertion, he decided to provide signs for the Gentiles and wisdom for the Jews.  To the latter, John records seven ‘I am’ statements as fulfilment of Scripture, but these stand for reference, for as John says in his prologue:

(Jesus) was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.  He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.  (John 1:10:11)

The church which began exclusively Jewish including the Hellenistic Jews like Stephen (and Luke) as well as Pharisees such Nicodemus and Saul of Tarsus and other strict adherents to the Law of Moses, was now largely constituent of gentiles, non-Jews.

So, the people now populating the church came from the pagan Graeco-Roman world, which was cultic in nature and with a plethora of choice.  Unlike the Jews, who had as the foundation, ‘hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one’ (Deuteronomy 6:4), the pagans had many gods and goddesses, and in the emperor, some living!  Primarily, it was for these people, John provided the signs; these being miracles by which Jesus showed his mastery of natural law and phenomena, usually ascribed to one or several deities amongst the pagan pantheon.

The clearest demonstration of this confident assertion is the first sign, turning water to wine.  John describes the scene: Jesus and his family attend the wedding of a cousin.  They travel not half-days walk from Nazareth across to Cana, another nondescript village in the Galilean hills.  The wine runs out and Mary runs to her eldest son, now the head of the family as Joseph had died some years earlier, and demands he do something to avoid this breach of hospitality and deep social embarrassment:

When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 

And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”  (Ibid 2:2-4)

Despite Jesus rebuttal, he turns the water in six huge containers into the ‘very best’ wine.

Now, looking at this anew, this domestic and prosaic faux-pa and Jesus apparent reluctance, tantamount to saying not the problem I came from heaven to sort, what can this possibly say to anyone.  Why is creating wine, albeit on a large scale (the equivalent of a thousand bottles) say of his divinity, just as Jesus himself protests. 

But for the pagans reading this, if not the Jews, this would have resonated because one of the largest and most established cults of the time was that of Bacchus.  Based on the myths of Dionisis, it was this god of the vine who held the power to turn water to wine, it was his signature sign.  As the god of excess and debauchery Bacchanalian rites were drunken orgies.  Understandably, his cult flourished and many new Christians saw no need to relinquish their celebrations.  Indeed, the agape-feasts, against which Paul rails were the very same:

When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat.  For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in?  (1 Corinthians 11:20-22)

John’s next two signs involve healing miracles, the first is the royal official’s son with a life-threatening fever and the second is an invalid of thirty-eight years.  Both miracles have distinctive features; the official’s son is healed without Jesus ever meeting the boy and the second because the man has a life-long condition reversed.

For pagans, this would powerfully challenge the authority of their god, Asclepius, not least, because the site of the second miracle happened at a dedicated Asklepion or healing temple. At the time of Jesus, the Pool Bethesda was located outside the city walls (if it were within, the devout Jews would be torn it down) and the gospel account confirms it attracted many, like the invalid, awaiting a healing miracle.  It is notable that Jesus, asks the man ‘whether he wants to be healed’ (ibid 5:6), which seemed a redundant question because all knew, including Jesus, why the sick and infirm gathered daily; but of course, Jesus is really asking why he is putting his faith in false notions and implicitly ‘gods’ like Asclepius, when he could turn to the real thing.

And of course, the distance healing of the official’s son, demonstrates that the localised healing, by proximity and location of Asclepius was unimportant, rendering not only the cult, but its temples redundant.

The six sign is also healing miracle, but this likely confronts another cult.  In this Jesus encounters a man born blind from birth, thus changing the conditions of life itself.  The Roman deity challenged is Lucina, the epithet for Juno derived from lux or light.  She was said to bring the newborn into the light of the world, but not of course, if you are blind from the outset.  Jesus as the Light is a common theme in John, beginning with the prologue, ‘in him was life, and the life was the light of men’ (ibid 1:4).

When Jesus walked on water, he demonstrates his power over nature, and specifically challenges Neptune, the Roman god of freshwater and the seas.  The midsummer festival of Neptunalia, held at a time of potential droughts, was enthusiastically celebrated, not least because mixing of men and women was allowed in temporary shelters outside cities – another orgy, in fact.  Jesus, on last day of the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles, where also shelters were built, declared:

‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”’ (ibid 7:37-39)

To the Jews to whom directly addressed, Jesus offered scriptural fulfilment, but pagans reading John’s account would have noted that Jesus denounced Neptune.

Another religion, and perhaps the most widespread of the Roman era, because of the political aspect, was the emperor cult.  Both Augustus, the emperor when Jesus was born, and Domitian, who exiled John to Patmos, styled themselves divine.  The sign of feeding the five thousand, John’s fourth, is interesting because of the resultant challenge to Roman governance by the crowd who wanted to make Jesus king by force (the Greek here is basileus, meaning ruler or emperor; ibid 6:15).  There is no greater sign of authority and might, than the one who ensures the staple food like bread is available to the populace.  Of course, the feeding of five thousand men and their dependents deliberately reference the manna given to the Israelites, but to pagans, this was a sign that god-like power was invested in a man.

The final sign is the raising of Lazarus.  Now this to any human of any culture, bringing someone from the grave where they had mouldered and decayed, had undeniable power; but to the pagan Graeco-Roman world, this showed Jesus’ power over Hades, the God of the Underworld, known to the Romans as Pluto.  But in the era of Jesus, this cult had been overtaken by that centred around Apollo.  He was sometimes called Phoebus, thus, the god of light.  Thus, to pagans, Jesus directly challenges Apollo, not only Juno Lucina, in stating ‘I am the Light of the World.’  But it is his power of death, that would wrest attention; Jesus succeeded in his Orphean powers (Orpheus tried but failed to rescue his wife Eurydice from Hades).  In his last ‘miracle’, resurrection comes the greatest challenge to those who worshipped at the many and popular shrines to Apollo.

Thus, seven signs to show that all their gods were false and that there was one true God, and he had come to earth in the form of Jesus.  In this last part, the pagans would not have struggled as the Jews, for their gods were never transcendent and were always manifesting themselves and getting involved with the works of men and women.