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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | Was the wine alcoholic or not | John 2:10 | kathy | 375 | ||
Was the wine alcoholic or not | ||||||
2 | Was the wine alcoholic or not | John 2:10 | EdB | 243336 | ||
Part 1 Wine in the New Testament Luke 7:33-34 "For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, he hath a devil. The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners." WINE: FERMENTED OR UNFERMENTED? The following is an examination of the midst of common Biblical word for wine. The Greek word for "wine" in Luke 7:33 is oinos. Oinos can refer to two distinctly different types of juice of the grape: (1) Unfermented juice, and (2) Fermented or intoxicating wine. This interpretation is supported by the following data. (1) The Greek word oinos was used by secular and religious authors in pre-Christian and early church times to refer to fresh grape juice (see Aristotle, "Metereologica", 387.b 9-13) a. Anacreon (c. 500 B.C.) writes, "Squeeze the grape, let out the wine (oinos)" (Ode 5) b. Nicander (2nd century B.C.) writes of squeezing grapes and refers to the produced juice as oinos (Gerogica, fragment 86). c. Papias (A.D. 60-130), an early church father, mentions that when grapes are crushed they yield "jars of wine (oinos)" (cited by Irenaeus, "Against Herecies", 5.33.3-4) d. A Greek Papyrus letter (P. Oxy. 729; A.D. 137) speaks of fresh wine(oinos) from the treading vat" (see Moulton and Miligan, "The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament,p.10) e. Athenaeus (AD. 200) speaks of a "sweet wine(oinos)" that "does not make the head heavy" (Athanaeus, "Banquet",1.54). In another place, he writes of a man gathering grapes who "went about, and took wine (onios) from the field" (1.54). For more detailed discussions on use of oinos by ancient writers, see Robert P. Teachout, "The Use of “Wine†in the Old Testament" (Th.D. dissertation, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1979) (2) The Jewish scholars who translated the O.T. into Greek about 200 BC used oinos when translating several Hebrews words for wine. In other words, the writers of the NT knew that oinos could either be fermented or unfermented juice from the grape. (3) As in secular Greek and the OT, an examination of NT passages reveals that oinos may mean either fermented or unfermented wine. In Ephesians 5:18 the command "be not drunk with wine (oinos)," refers to alcoholic wine. On the other hand, in Revelation 19:15 Christ is described as treading out the winepress. The Greek text reads: "He treads the winepress with wine (oinos)"; the oinos that comes forth from the winepress would be grape juice (Isaiah 66:10; Jer. 48:32-37). In Revelation 6:6 oinos refers to grapes on the vine as a crop not to be destroyed. Thus, for believers in NT times, "wine"(oinos) was a general word that could be used for two distinctly different grape beverages, fermented and unfermented wine. (4) Finally, ancient Roman writers have explained in detail various processes used in dealing with freshly squeezed grape juice, especially ways to preserve it from fermenting a. Columella (on Agriculture, 12.29), knowing that grape juice would not ferment if kept cool (under 50 degrees) and oxygen free, writes as follows: "That your grape juice may be always as sweet as when it is new, thus proceed. After you apply the press to the grapes, take the newest must (i.e. fresh juice), put it in a new container (amphora), bung it up , and cover it up very carefully with pitch lest any water should enter, then sink it in a cistern or pond of cold water and allow no part on the amphora to remain above the surface. After forty days take it out. It will remain sweet for a year" (see also Columella, "Agriculture and Trees"; Cato, "On Agriculture"). The Roman writer Pliny (1st century AD) writes: "as soon as the must (grape juice) is taken from the vat and put into casks, they plunge the casks in water till midwinter passes and regular cold weather sets in" (Pliny, "Natural History", 14.11.83). Israel would have had no problem in applying the above method (Deut. 8:7;11:11-12; Ps. 65:9-13). b. Another method to keep grapes from fermenting was to boil them into a syrup Ancient historians actually referred to this product as wine (oinos). Canon Farrar (Smith's Bible Dictionary, p.747) states that "the wines of antiquity were more like syrups; many of them were not intoxicant" Also, The New Bible Dictionary (p. 1332) notes that "there were means of keeping wine sweet all year round." cont 2 |
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