On the "requirement" to be a teetotaler

Bob Jones, Sr. on Drinking

http://gulfcoastpastor.blogspot.com/2015/03/bob-jones-sr-on-wine-alcoho…

David R. Brumbelow

Some of the comments above argue that the wine (alcoholic in content) of Bible times was watered down (diluted). (The comments above assert a ratio ranging from 4:1 to 8:1; I’ve more commonly seen the ratio asserted as ranging from 2:1 to 3:1.) Therefore, the argument goes, it was acceptable then, versus now, because the concentration of alcohol was lower.

To that argument, I’ve previously asked a question (in the form of a scenario) that never seems to get a response. I’ll ask it again:

Joe Believer walks into a steakhouse and orders a ribeye. He orders a glass of a red wine (say a cabernet) to accompany it. The glass arrives at his table, containing a typical 6 ounce portion. As he savors the beef, he sips from the wine glass. He also sips from a glass of water, which his attentive server keeps refilled. At the conclusion of the meal, Joe has finished the 6 ounces of wine, but he has also consumed 24 ounces of water.

By my calculation, Joe has just diluted the wine he was drinking by a ratio of 4:1. Unless there’s a difference between dilution before or during consumption, Joe has just at minimum met (and perhaps exceeded) the standard for “watered-down” wine, right?

David, if you think that wineskins in smoke is an allusion to boiling grape juice, get down to a local BBQ (I hear there are some good ones in Texas) and find out what happens when you keep proteins at > 200F for a long time. The pitmaster, and your mouth, will tell you they become tender and soft as the long protein chains break down. Look up the history of the Donner Party as well—there are some interesting things that will happen if you heat a wineskin, but I guarantee you it won’t hold any liquid very long.

Reality is that the ancients smoked wine for the same reason people smoke tea (lapsang souchong), cheese, and cured meats at low temperatures; to impart flavor and preserve them. That said, it’s a cool smoke.

Regarding the claims you re-make, I never denied that it could be a “boutique” product, but rather that it could be a significant portion of the crop. Geography (lack of fuel), nutrition (lack of vitamin C), and archeology (lack of places to do it) show this. Moreover, the typical cauldron used in those days was made of lead. Mmmm…… Thankfully for the Greeks and Romans, they didn’t use much of this, or else the lead would show up in their bones.

Which is exactly my point. Sweet syrup for use as such? Sure. A little bit, or else we will (per Solomon) vomit. Evidence that what Jesus made in John 2 was such? Again, let’s look to Luke 5 and elsewhere for this; no, the old (fermented, drier) wine is better.

Sorry, David, but selectively mixing the writings of Prohibitionists with a couple of modern sources while ignoring the real Biblical and scientific evidence that most people in ancient times, including Christ, made and drank real wine is just fraud, not research.

A video of someone who had a little more success with boiling down wine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjdPcs6LVuA

As to scurvy and vitamin C, ancients had multiple ways of preserving different kinds of wine, and other fruit and vegtables. That they would get scurvy from drinking boiled wine is like saying you would get scurvy today from drinking diet Coke. We may drink diet Coke, but we eat and drink other things that do have vitamin C. Ancient people did too.

Unfermented wine was easier for ancients to produce and preserve than alcoholic wine. Methods included boiling down fresh wine to a thick consistency that would not spoil or ferment. When ready to drink, they simply added water. This thick, strong wine (grape molasses, pekmez, vincotto) was also used for cooking.

But there were other methods. The grape harvest lasted six months and certain type grapes would keep fresh for months. These grapes could be pressed into wine at any time of the year (Genesis 40:11). Dried grapes or raisins were re-hydrated and pressed into fresh un-intoxicating wine, a practice used by many Jews right up to modern times. Ancient warriors were issued cakes of dried grapes to make their own wine as needed. Nonalcoholic wine was also often preserved with salt and lactic fermentation.

Now that which was prepared daily was one ox and six choice sheep. Also fowl were prepared for me, and once every ten days an abundance of all kinds of wine. -Nehemiah 5:18

Cakes of raisins and figs were also common.

Then Abigail made haste and took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five sheep already dressed, five seahs of roasted grain, one hundred clusters of raisins, and two hundred cakes of figs, and loaded them on donkeys. -1 Samuel 25:18 (also 2 Samuel 6:9; 16:1; 1 Chronicles 12:40;…)

David R. Brumbelow

It is worth noting that there are many examples of mixing wine—some good, some bad—but this is historical narrative and not prescriptive instruction. Wines were mixed with water, each other, spices, sugar sources (especially for inferior wines), and then you’ve got Isaiah 1:22. Sometimes the mixing is described in a positive light, and at other times it’s described in a very negative light.

One possibility, beyond considerations of hygiene, is simply that in the millenia before the “bubble cork” and other methods to keep oxygen away from wine were developed, and before modern cultivars of grapes were hybridized, most wine would have “off” tastes that could be mitigated by mixing it with water, spices, and honey. To draw a picture, my mom had a conversation with someone from Europe where the subject of wine coolers came up. He didn’t know what they were, and when Mom explained, he said “Oh, so you’ve got a lot of bad wine.”

So I don’t know that we can infer a whole lot about how those who choose to drink ought to from these passages, though I do wonder, come to think of it, whether the guy in John 2 was tasting the wine primarily to figure out how to mix it well. He was expecting Mogen David (aka “Mad Dog”) and got Chateau Mouton Rothschild instead.

The above reference should be 2 Samuel 6:19, rather than 6:9.

David R. Brumbelow

David, given that boiling grape molasses requires both the cutting of large amounts of wood and tending the pot, I find your contention that it would be “easier” to be nothing short of preposterous. Easier to do all that in addition to simply picking, pressing, and storing in vats or skins? Seriously?

Same thing with your contention that harvest could last for months; sorry, but unless you’ve got optimal weather year round, modern hybrids, and mechanical watering, none of which Israel had, the grape harvest is going to be well defined and limited to a few weeks or so. That is why, after all, the Bible speaks of the time of grape (or wine) harvest.

Any thoughts on this command, and it’s implications for NT priests (i.e. everybody who is saved) who are each individual “temples” of the Lord, whose duty it is to continually offer “spiritual sacrifices”?

Bert,

Some haven’t done much gardening or reading ancient gardening literature.

If one would go to the trouble of reading “Ancient Wine and the Bible,” the documentation is there in abundance.

If one would bother to read “Food in the Ancient World from A to Z” by Andrew Dalby, it is there.

If one would bother to read Columella, an ancient Roman farmer, it is there.

They had early ripening grapes, they had late ripening grapes. They had grapes that could produce two crops in a year. They had grapes that ripened after a frost.

While not a grape, I have a single fruit tree that provides ripe fruit six months out of the year.

And yes, it is a fact, whether you like it or not, that some grapes can be preserved fresh as a cluster for months. The documentation, ancient and modern, are in my book. But then, some do not seem to be interested in documentation and proof.

David R. Brumbelow

[David R. Brumbelow]

Bert,

Some haven’t done much gardening or reading ancient gardening literature.

If one would go to the trouble of reading “Ancient Wine and the Bible,” the documentation is there in abundance.

If one would bother to read “Food in the Ancient World from A to Z” by Andrew Dalby, it is there.

If one would bother to read Columella, an ancient Roman farmer, it is there.

They had early ripening grapes, they had late ripening grapes. They had grapes that could produce two crops in a year. They had grapes that ripened after a frost.

While not a grape, I have a single fruit tree that provides ripe fruit six months out of the year.

And yes, it is a fact, whether you like it or not, that some grapes can be preserved fresh as a cluster for months. The documentation, ancient and modern, are in my book. But then, some do not seem to be interested in documentation and proof.

David R. Brumbelow

David, before you ask for a royalty, I’m going to have to see better comparison with the truth on the claims you make. It’s easier to cut half a cord of firewood by hand and stand before a fire for weeks than not to do so? Really? Hand-squeezing grapes into a cup was a common way of making wine, as you claim Genesis 40:11 says? Give it a try, David—all you’ll get is a mess. There are reasons they invented wine-presses.

Delivering wine every ten days corresponds to making wine every ten days, as you claim Nehemiah 5:18 says? Seriously? Keep in mind that if you were correct about unfermented wines, this wouldn’t be necessary at all. (hint; they’re simply delivering or mixing wine, not making it from grapes) You’re simply contradicting yourself because your interpretation is convenient to your thesis. You claim that “wineskins in smoke” is a picture of boiling grape juice, ignoring what heat does to proteins like hide.

Regarding the description of (presumably) Columella’s about boiling the must in a room in a lead pot…keep in mind that the earliest known chimneys date from about 1200 AD, so what you’re saying is that he had a rather barbaric habit of giving his slaves smoke inhalation and heat stress and himself lead poisoning. I’m at a loss to figure out what this practice in Spain means about Israel, or for that matter on what grounds we’d argue that ordinary winemaking is worse.

Besides, Columella lived in a quite different climate than Israel in Cadiz, Spain—far less pronounced wet/dry seasons. His work is apropos…little in terms of what Scripture notes. Again, the grape harvest in Israel is in July and August, and the Bible records them as making raisins and fermented wines. Maybe…just maybe….go with what God’s Word says?

Sorry, but your handling of evidence, and the implications thereof, is a mess. I see no reason to subject myself to more of it.

… the first few sips of beer triggers a release of dopamine, which lights up the reward centers in the brain, making you feel relaxed and possibly encouraging you to drink more.

And while one beer won’t make you go totally wild, it will cause you to start to lose your inhibitions. *

And if the way is too long for you, so that you are not able to carry the tithe, when the Lord your God blesses you, because the place is too far from you, which the Lord your God chooses, to set his name there, then you shall turn it into money and bind up the money in your hand and go to the place that the Lord your God chooses and spend the money for whatever you desire—oxen or sheep or wine or strong drink, whatever your appetite craves. And you shall eat there before the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household.

Deuteronomy 14:24‭-‬26 ESV

The word for “strong drink” is shekar, also translated “similar drink” (to wine). It could be either fermented, or unfermented.

Shekar - “Sweet drink (what satiates or intoxicates).” -Dr. Robert Young, Young’s Analytical Concordance to the Bible, Eerdmans, 1970.
“Not only the word yayin, but also shekar can refer to grape juice as well as to wine (cf. Deuteronomy 29:6; Numbers 28:7; Exodus 29:40).” -Dr. Robert P. Teachout in his doctoral dissertation on The Use of Wine in the Old Testament, 1979, Dallas Theological Seminary.

http://gulfcoastpastor.blogspot.com/2011/08/deuteronomy-1426-does-it-co…

And you shall spend that money for whatever your heart desires: for oxen or sheep, for wine or similar drink, for whatever your heart desires; you shall eat there before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your household. -Deuteronomy 14:26; NKJV

David R. Brumbelow

Jim,

I strongly believe the Bible teaches, both directly and by biblical principles, that we should have nothing to do with beverage alcohol. It is a dangerous, recreational, mind altering drug. The most dangerous drug in America.

Medicine, science, crime, accidents, common sense, destruction of families and morality, etc., also speak against the use of alcohol.

No, I do not believe this is a fundamental doctrine. I believe it is a very important conviction. At times a life-saving conviction. I do not believe it wise to drink, or to tell others it is ok to drink.

http://gulfcoastpastor.blogspot.com/2009/07/biblical-principles-condemn…

David R. Brumbelow

I think the implications of Lev 10 (mentioned earlier, here) are worth discussing as we consider this issue.