Lady of Mystery wrote:Folk magic is still a huge part of the culture in that part of the world now so with all his healing and turning water into wine it really wouldn't suprise me if he was involved in it somehow.
Being more serious, now, that's what I was thinking. At the time there wasn't much difference between a magician (i.e. sorcerer), a priest, and a doctor.
I tend to go with Fabre, in that this strikes me as a magician-priest's soothsaying bowl. Either it's filled with oil and used for scrying, or oil is dropped into water and the shapes interpreted. There are several known Egyptian oil-scrying rituals like that.
I don't really know ancient Greek, but I know "christos" means "anointed". So we're not getting far from oil in any case.