inquisitive01

Once again, did God say this, as you suggested earlier? Was it God that was using what you have interpreted as being an "approving tone?"

chapka

Yes, as I've already explained. See e.g. Matthew 26:27 ("Then he took the cup, gave thanks, and offered it to them, saying, 'Drink from it, all of you'") and John 2:1-11.

inquisitive01

First, Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Word in the flesh, and is said in the Bible to sit "at the right hand of God" (meaning, Jesus is not God himself, although some seem to believe this).

Second, Matthew 26:27 does not say whether this was (fermented) wine or not (I don't think the word "wine" is even used in Matthew 26), and neither does John 2:1-11. Even if it the drink from Matthew 26:27 were fermented wine, I'm not seeing "Drink from it, all of you, and get drunk." Also, in Matthew 26:29 (2 Verses later) Jesus says the following:

"But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine (sounds like fruit from a vine to me) until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom."

Of course, if you wish to assume that everyone in Matthew 26:27 and John 2:1-11 got drunk on what they were drinking, that's your choice (but these Verses do not say that anyone got drunk, do they).

chapka

Yes, it does say whether this is wine or not. It says that this happened at the passover seder, on the first night of the feast of unleavened bread, where the haggadah specifies the drinking of several cups of wine. It says that this happened in the Passover season, which is not near the harvest season, which means the beverage options were pretty much limited to wine and beer.

Read it again, and then explain to me how the story makes any sense if the guests weren't getting at least tipsy. The plain meaning is this: the master of revels was used to people starting out with the good stuff, then switching to the plonk when the guests had already had a few and were less likely to notice.

Of course not. Nor has anyone argued this. The statement that you were disagreeing with was about wine being a benefit to mankind, not about drunkenness. For the last time, drinking is not the same as drunkenness. This was even more true in Biblical times, where people would be drinking wine or beer throughout the day. Drinking several glasses of wine with every meal simply wouldn't have been seen as drunkenness.

And an hour or so after the dinner, he was arrested. Did the Romans serve wine to their prisoners? Or is it plausible to assume that Jesus meant, "This is my last round, beacuse I'm going to be dead in the morning."

And "the fruit of the vine" is a conventional synecdoche for wine. Or do you think he was drinking solid fruit, rather than a liquid?

Also, please answer one of my earlier questions. If they weren't drinking wine, what were they drinking? What nonalcoholic beverages do you think were available?

inquisitive01

You must first give the "goat herders" (um, sheep herders) more credit when it comes to their knowledge of fruit preservation . . .

http://www.andrews.edu/~samuele/book...e_bible/3.html

. . . and then you must also drop the assumptions:

http://www.andrews.edu/~samuele/book...e_bible/4.html

tommyc

Maybe a split would work here if inq and chapka wish to get into the finer details of whether or not the bible condemns the consumption of alcohol??

diana

There's that story about Jesus making water into wine at Cana. He wasn't imbibing himself, but the act itself would strongly suggest that he not only didn't condemn drinking, but condoned it. I was always taught (being raised in a teetotaler family) that the alcoholic content of that "wine" was so low that you'd practically drown yourself with drinking it before you'd catch a buzz, so it didn't count.

This is bullshit, of course, and isn't supported by the text. Usually, "the good wine" is served until the party members get too drunk to tell (or care, one may infer) what they're being served, at which point the governor of the feast brings out the Mad Dog. His remark is probably equally about what a mark of class it is to continue serving "the good stuff" even after the wedding party is too far gone to know or care, as well as an observation that someone's wasting good wine on drunk people.

I don't expect a non-drinker to understand this nuance, exactly, or to even know to look for it. The common-sense approach to drinking parties is to give everybody the best stuff you have when they first show up and they're sober. Their taste buds are at their finickiest at this point. As they become more lubricated, however, their taste standards can be compromised, as their sense of taste is dulled and they become thirstier as they drink.

The "saving the good wine for last" comment doesn't make sense if you insist the wedding party was drinking non-alcoholic vino.

d

[Edited to add: I see chapka already hit this point but I think it's worth saying again. Flatly denying it was real alcoholic wine that made people drunk then pretending the point isn't worth addressing won't make it go away.]

Barefoot Bree

This discussion has been split from here.

Carry on.

Barefoot Bree
MD Mod

chapka

Based on the quality evidence at that site, no doubt, such as the bit indicating that the Hebrews could keep fruit ripe for a hundred years without refrigeration? Or the drying and pickling techniques?

Frankly, if you think that the preservation techniques given there are a plausible way of extracting a significant amount of juice, you should try it sometime.

I think what you mean to say is, "you must make assumptions." This is what your link does: while it stretches to incredible lengths to try to raise the possibility that everyone was drinking something non-alcoholic, the only actual positive evidence it presents that this was the case was that it must be, because Jesus wouldn't drink, because drinking is evil. In other words, it assumes its conclusion.

In any case, none of your linked material is new to me. It's basically all a rehashing of William Patton's 1871 temperance classic "Bible Wines," which is a work of theology pretending to be a work of serious scholarship. And the idea that, given the extensive archaelogical evidence of pervasive, constant drinking of alcoholic beverages throughout the Mediterranean from before the dawn of agriculture until a few hundred years ago, interrupted only by the spread of Islam, the idea that for some reason it was so uncommon in first-century Palestine is pretty silly. In this model, when was alcohol reintroduced to wine?

Of course, what the Bible does or doesn't say about alcohol makes no real difference to me. But I really hate the hypocrisy of people who on the one hand claim that every word of the Bible has an obvious literal meaning and condemn those who try to argue that a word means "age" instead of "day" or "temple prostitute" instead of "homosexual," but on the other hand insist that "wine" suddenly has a different meaning whenever Jesus is around because otherwise the Bible would be saying something they wouldn't want it to say.

Instead of throwing up a few links, next time try actually responding to my points. I notice that you have yet to address the Cana story directly, which is not surprising, since even the version given in your link is, quite frankly, laughable. The wine in Cana was alcoholic; first because, if it hadn't been, the story wouldn't make any sense; and second because there is absolutely no evidence that it was different from any other Jewish wedding feast for thousands of years on either side. Similarly, your link, as far as I could see, fails to address the most significant point about the Last Supper: it was a seder, and seders involve the drinking of wine. (The nineteenth-century apologists got around this through anti-semitism, mostly; modern apologists just seem to ignore it.)

Barefoot Bree

And off to GRD it goes...

[*thwack*] FORE!!!