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You are incorrect. That is why the good wine was prized; it didn't last long. As a Nazarite Jesus couldn't partake of fermented wine. Also Proverbs has nothing good to say about kings and strong drink(aka alcohol). Jesus is King of Kings. The closest he came to that was the Vinegar/gall he took on the cross as he was dieing. Revisionist is those trying to make a Biblical argument for drinking alcohol. There isn't one save the poor forgetting his hopelessness or the sick settling his stomach. Acts also has a sarcastic hint that the apostles speaking in tongues were drunk with new wine as they were known not to drink alcohol. The book is pretty clear.

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Stow your beliefs for two minutes and let's go over the basics of fermentation real quick, shall we?

There principal genus of yeast responsible for alcoholic fermentation is Saccharomyces, which is roughly "sugar eater."  All yeast of this genus, in an oxygen-poor environment, undergo anaerobic cellular respiration with the principal byproduct being ethanol.  They are capable of metabolizing all monosaccharides, ingesting and metabolizing maltose, a disaccharide, and they also excrete several enzymes which allow them to metabolize some other complex sugars.  For example, they can NOT metabolize lactose (as they lack the lactase enzyme required to break the link).  They are present in the wild everywhere in the world and are found principally on the skins and peels of sweet, non-citrus fruit.  It just so happens that grapes are an ideal environment for them and they are found underneath the skins of every grape on this planet.

In order to have grapes that do not spoil or juice that does not ferment, you must kill this natural yeast.  Nowadays, we know about pasteurization and so we do that.  In the case of juice, a low-temperature/long-time (140*F for 20 minutes) is used.  If you boil natural juice, it sets the pectin which causes undesirable haze and cloudiness.  Pasteurization technology has been available for only a few centuries.  Jelly, of course, is boiled in order TO set the pectin, and it is pasteurized at the same time.  Preservatives did exist everywhere in the world during Jesus' time, usually as dried pastes which wouldn't be confused with wine.  You can also use chemical preservatives to kill the natural organisms and prevent spoilage.  That technology has only been available for the last 80 years or so.

Now, your claim is that "good wine" was simply unfermented grape juice.  That is, it was only a day old, at most two, and had not yet begun fermenting in earnest.  While this would certainly result in not-very-alcoholic juice, it's completely impractical for two reasons.  The first and most obvious is that harvest time is only once a year.  You're telling me that Israelites only drank "good wine" once a year?  The second ties into the first.  If the grape harvest only happens once a year, where did they get enough wine to survive?  And yes, it is survival.  Civilization could not exist without alcohol to disinfect the drinking water supply - no known pathogens to the human body can survive in any mixture containing 2.5% ABV or greater - hence, mixing the water with the wine as being a common tradition.  So what else did the Israelites drink?  Anything they could get to bubble, same as every other civilization.  Grain mash, pit fruit (dates, plums), essentially anything with sugar in it for the yeast to eat.

As you can imagine, blending all sorts of fruit and grain together to make Israeli "prison hooch" didn't produce the best-tasting drink.  So these lower-class beverages were generally heavily mulled with spices.  Clove was very common, as I understand it.  But all of it was referred to as "wine," regardless of its composition.  The "good stuff" was actually what was able to be kept homogenous and tasted relatively good.  Cheap wine (blended out of many grape varieties) today is actually pretty similar to what Christ would have drank at the Last Supper, except that His was probably spiced anyhow, as people were used to the taste and there were some religious and traditional overtones to using spice in all food and drink.

The "water into wine" was actually a reference to Christ's esteem as a religious leader.  Back then, families had to bring wine (and food) to the temple to have it blessed.  Note the kosher laws and the slaughtering of animals was carried out under supervision of the pristhood.  Why?  To make sure people didn't eat crap that would make them sick.  Similarly, wine was blessed (given approval) and generally the temple would take a cut of it as a "sacrifice" (tax, for the priests to live on).  You weren't allowed to drink unblessed wine.  But, of course, every house had a jar or two bubbling away to replenish their stock when what they had ran dry.

So here's this party, and the guests drink all the wine.  They have some more, but it's young and unblessed.  Jesus, as a religious leader, blesses the "water" and turns it into "wine."  Did it really change anything?  Logically, it probably didn't but I'd like to believe that it would have tasted better than average.  Jesus was given the esteem and trust of the partymembers, equivalent to that which they afforded their religious leadership.  For Jews, that was a very important symbolic gesture that He had the authority of the priesthood.



Modern technology affords us the luxury of abstaining from alcohol if we so desire.  In the past, that was impossible if you wanted to survive.  A human manually working agriculture needs to consume about 1.5 gallons of water a day.  Without some alcohol to disinfect it, there is simply no way to do that and not get sick.

It's fine if you don't want to drink.  I enjoy alcohol and I appreciate the artistry and skill involved in its production and stewardship, but you certainly don't have to.  However, there's no reason to pretend that Christ didn't consume alcohol for some reason.

There's nothing evil, bad, unholy or what have you about alcohol.  It's only modern social convention that suggests there's something wrong with it.  The weight of history disagrees.

Quoted:


Are you telling us that when Jesus turned water into wine, it was actually grape juice? Why then, did the people make the comment about "when men are well drunk"? If it was alcoholic wine (a redundancy) then why would Jesus use something that was forbidden as the symbol of his power and his first miracle? When he said you can't put new wine in old bottles, did he mean unfermented wine? If so, what would make the bottle burst? If Jesus didn't drink fermented wine, why would he say that men called him a winebibber?

Your theory is patently ridiculous.

Quoted:
Stow your beliefs for two minutes and let's go over the basics of fermentation real quick, shall we?

There principal genus of yeast responsible for alcoholic fermentation is Saccharomyces, which is roughly "sugar eater."  All yeast of this genus, in an oxygen-poor environment, undergo anaerobic cellular respiration with the principal byproduct being ethanol.  They are capable of metabolizing all monosaccharides, ingesting and metabolizing maltose, a disaccharide, and they also excrete several enzymes which allow them to metabolize some other complex sugars.  For example, they can NOT metabolize lactose (as they lack the lactase enzyme required to break the link).  They are present in the wild everywhere in the world and are found principally on the skins and peels of sweet, non-citrus fruit.  It just so happens that grapes are an ideal environment for them and they are found underneath the skins of every grape on this planet.

In order to have grapes that do not spoil or juice that does not ferment, you must kill this natural yeast.  Nowadays, we know about pasteurization and so we do that.  In the case of juice, a low-temperature/long-time (140*F for 20 minutes) is used.  If you boil natural juice, it sets the pectin which causes undesirable haze and cloudiness.  Pasteurization technology has been available for only a few centuries.  Jelly, of course, is boiled in order TO set the pectin, and it is pasteurized at the same time.  Preservatives did exist everywhere in the world during Jesus' time, usually as dried pastes which wouldn't be confused with wine.  You can also use chemical preservatives to kill the natural organisms and prevent spoilage.  That technology has only been available for the last 80 years or so.

Now, your claim is that "good wine" was simply unfermented grape juice.  That is, it was only a day old, at most two, and had not yet begun fermenting in earnest.  While this would certainly result in not-very-alcoholic juice, it's completely impractical for two reasons.  The first and most obvious is that harvest time is only once a year.  You're telling me that Israelites only drank "good wine" once a year?  The second ties into the first.  If the grape harvest only happens once a year, where did they get enough wine to survive?  And yes, it is survival.  Civilization could not exist without alcohol to disinfect the drinking water supply - no known pathogens to the human body can survive in any mixture containing 2.5% ABV or greater - hence, mixing the water with the wine as being a common tradition.  So what else did the Israelites drink?  Anything they could get to bubble, same as every other civilization.  Grain mash, pit fruit (dates, plums), essentially anything with sugar in it for the yeast to eat.

As you can imagine, blending all sorts of fruit and grain together to make Israeli "prison hooch" didn't produce the best-tasting drink.  So these lower-class beverages were generally heavily mulled with spices.  Clove was very common, as I understand it.  But all of it was referred to as "wine," regardless of its composition.  The "good stuff" was actually what was able to be kept homogenous and tasted relatively good.  Cheap wine (blended out of many grape varieties) today is actually pretty similar to what Christ would have drank at the Last Supper, except that His was probably spiced anyhow, as people were used to the taste and there were some religious and traditional overtones to using spice in all food and drink.

The "water into wine" was actually a reference to Christ's esteem as a religious leader.  Back then, families had to bring wine (and food) to the temple to have it blessed.  Note the kosher laws and the slaughtering of animals was carried out under supervision of the pristhood.  Why?  To make sure people didn't eat crap that would make them sick.  Similarly, wine was blessed (given approval) and generally the temple would take a cut of it as a "sacrifice" (tax, for the priests to live on).  You weren't allowed to drink unblessed wine.  But, of course, every house had a jar or two bubbling away to replenish their stock when what they had ran dry.

So here's this party, and the guests drink all the wine.  They have some more, but it's young and unblessed.  Jesus, as a religious leader, blesses the "water" and turns it into "wine."  Did it really change anything?  Logically, it probably didn't but I'd like to believe that it would have tasted better than average.  Jesus was given the esteem and trust of the partymembers, equivalent to that which they afforded their religious leadership.  For Jews, that was a very important symbolic gesture that He had the authority of the priesthood.



Modern technology affords us the luxury of abstaining from alcohol if we so desire.  In the past, that was impossible if you wanted to survive.  A human manually working agriculture needs to consume about 1.5 gallons of water a day.  Without some alcohol to disinfect it, there is simply no way to do that and not get sick.

It's fine if you don't want to drink.  I enjoy alcohol and I appreciate the artistry and skill involved in its production and stewardship, but you certainly don't have to.  However, there's no reason to pretend that Christ didn't consume alcohol for some reason.

There's nothing evil, bad, unholy or what have you about alcohol.  It's only modern social convention that suggests there's something wrong with it.  The weight of history disagrees.

Quoted:
TrojanMan for president.

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I just had to chime in here and tell you what an awesome post I think this is. Well done.