Subject: making wine.Did Jesus make a mistake. |
Bible Note: Greetings Johnny! It is good to hear from you my friend! Your example of Paul and Timothy is an excellent example of the problem I have been trying to address. We read 'use a little wine' and we automatically assume that Paul was telling Timothy to mix alcohol and water, simply because that is the meaning 'wine' has for us today. However, there is very good historical evidence that in the area of the world where Timothy was ministering, people would keep bags of grape jam which they would use to put into their drinking water to remove the acid from the water. It seems quite clear that this is the practice to which Paul is referring. Even it weren't, naturally fermented wine (very weak in alcohol content anyway) mixed with a larger part of water would not compare in any way to the distilled alcoholic beverages of today which can literally poison a person to death with in a very short amount of time. My point, over and over again, has simply been that we must not assume that Biblical words meant exactly the same as they do today. Your Brother in Christ, Tim Moran |