By definition, wine is fermented. No doubt some preacher told you this because the Bible accounts ran counter to his anti-drinking sermonizing.

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.

"Gleukos" means juice, "oinos" is fermented wine.
Jesus drank alcoholic wine, no doubts.

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.

We could go round and round for years and never reach common ground. Frankly I have less interest in doing so than I should, which is an admittedly shameful and uncharitable thing for me to say. But I know how this goes on the internet - BTDT thousands of times.

Let me just give you this below, which is what Catholics believe and what we have always believed. Note: We do NOT believe that Christ somehow dies or re-sacrifices himself at every Mass. What we do believe is actually quite simple. Read on:





And here's another useful explanation:

I think it is absurd to believe that persons 2000 years ago were so impractical that they didn't benefit from the storage and sanitizing aspects of fermentation.  If the revisionism fits your anti-alcohol agenda, so be it.

Alcohol is bad.

Wine.  Some churches use grape juice so as to not exclude alcoholics from communion.

That . . . or because they were founded by puritans and prudes . . .

Or because kids participate.  



 

No you are incorrect. Today wine is by definition fermented. It was not always the case. Just like those who would like to read the Constitution with all the current definitions and uses you cannot use modern definitions to wrest the scripture.

Never used the word "forbidden". The question was if Jesus drank wine and obviously he did not. It would not have been impossible for him to produce fermented wine for the wedding accept that the older the wine the more likely it was to be fermented and therefore less desireable. He made the good stuff according to the head of the feast hence, unfermented. Drink all the fermented wine you want, it just isn't for those following in Christ's footsteps.

Never said they didn't let the fruit of the vine ferment, just that Christ couldn't partake.

Or Christians!

Again . . . patently ridiculous.

Except that using grape juice for communion first happened in the 20th century. Give me that old time religion.

Yeah that tiny sip of wine with alcohol in it is going to get them plastered and make them into alcoholics.

I bet the cough syrup I got as a kid had more alcohol in it than your typical communion serving.

You can't argue with ancient Greek. They had highly specific words for literally anything you could think of and even stuff you couldn't think of.... It's one of the reasons it's a dead language.

 

So it's legal to give children alcohol for religious purposes?



 

Kids in France drink wine with their dinners.

Their alcoholism rate is microscopic compared to ours.

Who said anything about alcoholism?  Perhaps people under the age of 21 can't consume alcohol...unless there is some exclusion for religious purposes.



 

In my state it is. ARS 4-249 "The dispensing to or possession or consumption by a person under the legal drinking age of spirituous liquor in the performance of a religious service or ceremony is not prohibited by this title."

Yes.

Indeed, it is central and utterly indispensable to the nation's biggest religion.



 

????
There isn't enough wine consumed to harm a fetus. If you have an entire tablespoon during communion, you are hogging the chalice.

Alcoholics are a different matter; AFAIK even the smell of alcohol should be denied them.

Reading this got me thinking...



This nonsense about using something besides wine for communion is profoundly sacrilegious, it makes a mockery of perhaps the holiest sacrament of all. It's practically blasphemy.



It makes a lot of sense though when you think about all the wacky, freaky shit that parades around under the dubious banner of Christianity. Creationism, televangelism, "megachurches" etc etc.



There seems to be a wanton, promiscuous mentality that is epitomized by drinking coca cola or any other 'alternative' for holy communion.



If the biblical warnings against the dangers of false prophesy are any indication, people would do well to remember that there is a bit more to christianity than rolling around babbling like a 2 year old, or the "inspiration" of some guy from the street who decides one day he's a priest and can start up a church.

It was Purple Drank, yo.

I think we're done here.

• Jesus drank wine, though some deny this rather obvious conclusion for various reasons
• Some churches use wine for communion some don't
• Some folks think the choice of fluid is really important. Others don't think it matters
• Churches differ on what they think "happens" during the ceremony/ritual
• At least a few folks think the whole practice is wrong or meaningless, others place great importance and significance on it.
• Nobody is going to convince anyone of anything.

Except that "HOLY" communion is a Catholic tradition and there are no sacraments in the Bible. Can't be blasphemous if it isn't in the Book. Proverbs 31 for those that care. Jesus did not drink alcohol and neither did the New Testament Apostles. BTW all Christians are Saints and Priests. Don't let some Church stand between you and your God.

Good luck with that.
 

Alcohol is a non-sentient substance.  People may do bad things.  Alcohol is neither good nor bad.

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.

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



 

I'll tell my missionary friends in Africa and Papau New Guinea about your genius. Christ didn't drink alcohol.

Proverb 31 It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine; nor for princes strong drink: Lest they drink, and forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted. Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.

Revelation 19:16   And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.

It is fine for you and you don't have to do mental gymnastics to justify your imbibing adult beverages. For what it is worth, the water consumed by my family and thousands of other families in my area comes from wells, just like the woman in Samaria that had a chat with the Saviour. You could, in fact, drink water without getting sick in ancient times. The idea that everyone constantly drank fermented beverages for survival is just silly.

There is a special, I daresay nearly diabolical queerness to this nonsense about grape juice.



What indeed could be more thoroughly blasphemous than rewriting the bible for the express purpose of making a mockery of the central and most vital and important sacrament of the whole Christian faith.



It strikes just such a target, in just such a seemingly calculated way that one does for a moment take pause and wonder whether really, there actually is something to the Christian cosmology of God's evil adversary.

Are you saying that the devil makes people drink grape juice?

Your well is sealed to survace contaminants.  It's drilled pretty deep, probably 100 feet or more depending on the water table in your area, and the rainfall filtered, re-salted and stored by the earth around the well.

If you think every little town in the Middle East had the technology to dig a 100-foot hole, then I don't know what else to tell you.  That depth of a well takes some serious engineering to complete and they didn't show up until the Middle Ages.  Most wells of Jesus' time were located in a depression or along a riverbank where the water table was relatively close to the surface.  Men dug it with shovels and they're fairly crude devices.  At the bottom is standing water.  Standing water breeds mosquitos, bacteria and other contaminants.  That varies with depth, of course.  Deeper than about ten feet and mosquitos aren't so much of an issue.  Go deeper still and the water gets cleaner.  But don't kid yourself that it was the same as tap water from a modern well.

Was it clean enough that a healthy adult wouldn't get sick drinking it?  Probably.  And there are other water sources available, too.  Rain sisterns, for example.

But people drank alcohol.  It was guaranteed clean and safe to drink.  It preserved your food supply.  It was used to trade with and for tax/religious purposes.  It's not really 'mental gymnastics' to recall the benefits and importance of alcohol to ancient civilizations.

What is mental gymnastics is to assume that Jesus, as an observant Jew, would have prepared a Seder meal without using any alcohol.

Now whether you want to use actual wine today or just a non-alcoholic stand-in is your perogative.  In many ways, the symbolism is more important than the actual substance.  But, if you're going to do it proper, you need wine.  The wine is, quite literally in the case of some faiths, the blood of the covenant that Jesus promissed to keep.  What covenant?  The possibility of forgiveness of sin.  For who?  Everyone.

Now, given the gravity of the matter, does it really matter whether Christ used wine or juice?  No, not terribly.  The promise is far more important than what beverage He drank.  He could have used a jar of olive oil (itself a very symbolic liquid) and it wouldn't have mattered.  But the point is, Christ used wine.  We have both written first-hand accounts and historical evidence to back that up.  We have Jewish tradition that says to use wine and we have the conditions of circumstance that dictate that not only was wine the best available beverage, it was also the most practical.  The factual evidence supporting the use of wine greatly outweighs the anecdotal and wishfulness against its use.

And yet, if you want to believe/observe the grape juice story, then go for it.  I'm not going to try to stop you from worshiping as you see fit.

But you don't need to quote scripture in some sort of claim that "king" always means "king" in the Bible but that "wine" doesn't always mean "wine."

It is indeed blasphemous to pretend that God would play the hypocrite and violate His own principles and violate the pure sacrifice that was the Lord Jesus Christ. And then to use alcohol in the ordinance of the Lord's Supper and have a human proclaimed Priest preside over the ceremony is pushing it just that more into the realm of heresy. Christ's sacrifice was final and finished the office of the earthly "Priest". But of course those priests are sacrificing Christ every time they have mass, one more blasphemy.

Hebrews 10:12
But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;

This is good stuff! No really! And the same Jews who strung their Messiah up on a cross?! You can't make this stuff up! I'm convinced now!

Kinda like the virgin birth, sinless life of Jesus, the resurrection etc, etc, etc. Don't believe the Book. Your choice. Just don't .....

2 Peter 3:16
As also in all [his] epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as [they do] also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

wine.

Keep in mine Jesus didn't have to deal with the United States Congress and a mandatory drinking age of 21.

Heck, back then, if your 2 year old was sick, they probably mixed goat milk with wine and used it for cough syrup.

Heck, when my daughter was teething, I rubbed Crown Royal on her gums.

It doesn't.

Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine.
But Peter standing up with the eleven, lift up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Iudea, & all ye that dwell at Hierusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day.


And my well is 97' but has a head of only 35'.

You're saying that the actions of the Jewish religious elite, whose power was directly threatened by the presence of the Son of God, makes previous Jewish Passover tradition, handed down directly from God to Moses, null and void?

I'll give you that Jesus initiated the New Covenant, but I don't think that you're suggesting that invalidates all previous commands, right?

Otherwise, why would you cite Proverbs to prove a point, as it would be included in the Hebrew tradition?



Here's another nugget for thought:
If your claim is still that Jesus simply used fresh-pressed juice which had not yet fermented, consider the callendar of events.  Passover is when?  Sundown on the first Sabbath after the first full moon post the Spring equinox.  Late April to early May, in that timeframe.

And harvest time is when?  Late August to early September, right?

So half a year has passed between harvest and Passover, and that grape juice is supposed to still be fresh and unfermented?  Not terribly likely.


Like I've been saying, you're free to believe whatever you like, but the evidence is squarely on the side of Jesus having used alcoholic wine.

The question was wether Jesus did or not. The passover bread is part of the ritual, the drink was not. Just away doing some reading, The book of Matthew quotes Jesus as partaking of the fruit of the vine. Would that have been better stated as wine? Why not say wine. It is used pleanty of other places. Just thinkin'.

What?  Of course wine is an integral part of the Seder meal.  Bread, too, and also specific spices and other foods.

Can I get a scriptural reference for this.  I'm am working on an argument against following Torah law.  Thanks.

Yes, Great post x10 !!!!!!!!!!!!

MadMurdock, at first I thought your posts were to troll this thread. Now I know you really believe what you post; at least its easy to just scroll past and ignore you.

I don't think it will help you much. Paul gave lots of instructions to the faithful and held them to a pretty high standard, so it's not like he was saying you could do anything you wanted. I think it's more along the lines of "nobody else is going to do it for you so you better get on it." I used it only to suggest that we are responsible for our own spiritual condition, so whatever you believe, it needs to be something that you truly believe and can accept. It's not good enough that someone else believes it. YOU must believe it as well.

Anyway, here's the verse, in context:

Phil.2
[1] If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies,
[2] Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.
[3] Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.
[4] Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.
[5] Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
[6] Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
[7] But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
[8) And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
[9] Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:
[10] That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth;
[11] And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
[12] Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
[13] For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
[14] Do all things without murmurings and disputings:
[15] That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world;
[16] Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain.
[17] Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all.
[18] For the same cause also do ye joy, and rejoice with me.