On the "requirement" to be a teetotaler

A good general rule in the ancient world as to whether wine was fermented or unfermented:

Fermentation took the sweetness away.

Sweet wine was generally unfermented.

Unsweet, rough, bitter wine was generally fermented.

Of course you could spike anything, but this was generally understood.

The people did not understand the details of alcohol, but did know some wine made you drunk, and some did not; and they knew how to make and preserve both.

Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” -Nehemiah 8:10 (ESV and others have, “sweet wine”).

Aristotle said sweet wine does not taste like wine, and does not inebriate.

“Wine which you wish to have rather sweet you will have to preserve on the day after you take it out of the vat, but, if you want it rather harsh in flavor, on the fifth day. -Columella

David R. Brumbelow

[JD Miller]

Bert, I have to admit that I did not know that there was a technical threshold for the buzz. I was just going by what the people in the bar were describing to me. In an earlier time in my life I spent a lot of time in bars even though I did not drink myself. Seeing the results up close and knowing that the bar was the best place to find my dad may have had something to do with my choice to abstain way back in my teen years.

My thoughts are that vs 31 -where it starts to go down more smoothly and sparkles more- would go along with someone “feeling very friendly.” I stated that I felt vs 31 was about the “buzz,” and the other verses were about full drunkenness. I view vs 29-30 and vs 32-35 forming a Hebrew chiasm with vs 31 in the middle. Thus we find the warning to stop sandwiched between the extremes of drunkenness. The “chiasm” was a Hebrew form of communication where you would typically find an ABC CBA pattern. In other words it would start and end with a similar idea with a point in the middle.

No technical threshold, but what I’ve seen is the use of “buzzed” as a reference point on the way to “wasted” or “plastered”, which seem to me to correspond a bit better to the levels described in verses 33-36 and 29-30. That said, I’ve also heard it used by people trying to minimize their drinking, which I think is what you might have heard. Here’s the “Urban Dictionary” on the term, for what it’s worth.

Regarding verse 31, I’m thinking that what’s being pictured is simply how it looks when it’s being mixed. Let’s face it; fermentation makes the solids drop out, and love it or hate it, the stuff does sparkle. And when one gets too much of it, it bites just like a snake—it almost seems that’s the word picture he’s drawing.

[TylerR]

It is now 0820 (PST). The clock is running, Bert. Don’t let us wait too long …

If David’s going to keep claiming that, in an age where intestinal diseases, there was no advantage to fermented wines, that “new wines” are uniformly non-alcoholic (Acts 2:13 describes a nasty sugar high, evidently), and that wine is “bitter” (it’s actually acidic), and the like, why?

92 minutes. I’m disappointed!

The technical issues on this are out of my league, honestly. I’m just planning on reading the BJU Press book referenced before. I’ve always found the arguments for “wine” being “grape juice” special pleading, honestly. I always viewed them as a sign of desperation, but I haven’t taken the time to look into it. I will, sometime soon.

:^)

Seriously, Tyler, most “Prohibitionists” works that go beyond “in light of drunkenness, it’s good to abstain” follow a very familiar pattern.

1. A very selective reading of ancient texts, and one that is not overly critical at times, often through a filter of other Prohibitionist authors. Emphasize the things that are compatible with unfermented beverages; downplay or even belittle those that endorse fermented ones.

2. Rejection of scientific reasons that the testimony of the ancients is either not true, or not relevant to Israeli society. Make sure you downplay the reality of waterborne disease, ignore the relative lack of fuel in the Holy Land, and absolutely don’t let anyone know how pervasive and persistent the yeast fungus is. Nobody should know, for example, that beer and wine are historically fermented cool for a number of reasons—lagers at 40F, just like the sourdough bread I made last night.

3. Ignore the 20 centuries of translation of and commentary on the Bible, as well as much of the best analysis of the ancient languages, to argue things like “new wine has no alcohol” (Acts 2:13).

4 Finally, endorse a completely inconsistent hermeneutic regarding the words for “wine” where we assume that good uses of the word are always grape juice, but bad uses are always alcoholic wine. Ignore the fact that for any issue that is not “hot button”, we would never dare to use such a hermeneutic lest we lose all our credibility.

My nickel bet is that I might find a lot to agree with with Jaeggeli’s book, including the principle of grace towards those who have been alcoholics, even though I believe I disagree with his application. For that matter, I’m wandering through Teachout’s dissertation to get a better picture of what I claim here in points 1-4. He actually has some fun things about the ancient languages, but a lot of what he’s arguing just doesn’t pass linguistic or scientific muster.

[Mark_Smith]

I know David brought this up earlier in a different context, but I have always though that the pro-choice crowd (that is choice to drink alcohol in moderation) , if they were serious, would bring a bottle of Jack Daniels to the next church picnic. You could line up a row of shot glasses, pour it all out, and let everyone have a shot. Only one mind you.

Has you ever seen that? I wonder why not?

This reminds me of the somewhat sarcastic proverb, “Where two or three are gathered, there He is with them, and where there are four Episcopalians, there’s a fifth.”

Really, the major reason you wouldn’t do this is that those in categories C and D don’t deny the need to be careful among those who have had a problem with drinking. We may disagree (as I do) that merely seeing someone have a drink or buy liquor will set them off, but inviting someone to have a drink would both force them to admit their problem in public and refuse an act of hospitality. It’s a far bigger deal than even the “traditional abstentionist” view claiming that seeing someone drink may help them fall off the wagon.

Plus, since hard liquor is by far the easiest way to get drunk, that magnifies things a lot, especially for “bottom shelf” brands like Jack Daniel’s.

And really, the long/short of it all is that even as a C/D, I’d be very careful about even beer or wine in such a setting. Whiskey? Let’s not go there.

[Bert Perry]

Mark_Smith wrote:

I know David brought this up earlier in a different context, but I have always though that the pro-choice crowd (that is choice to drink alcohol in moderation) , if they were serious, would bring a bottle of Jack Daniels to the next church picnic. You could line up a row of shot glasses, pour it all out, and let everyone have a shot. Only one mind you.

Has you ever seen that? I wonder why not?

This reminds me of the somewhat sarcastic proverb, “Where two or three are gathered, there He is with them, and where there are four Episcopalians, there’s a fifth.”

Really, the major reason you wouldn’t do this is that those in categories C and D don’t deny the need to be careful among those who have had a problem with drinking. We may disagree (as I do) that merely seeing someone have a drink or buy liquor will set them off, but inviting someone to have a drink would both force them to admit their problem in public and refuse an act of hospitality. It’s a far bigger deal than even the “traditional abstentionist” view claiming that seeing someone drink may help them fall off the wagon.

Plus, since hard liquor is by far the easiest way to get drunk, that magnifies things a lot, especially for “bottom shelf” brands like Jack Daniel’s.

And really, the long/short of it all is that even as a C/D, I’d be very careful about even beer or wine in such a setting. Whiskey? Let’s not go there.

I realize that this thread may be exhausted. I wanted to comment that when my wife and I were back living in France a few years ago we helped facilitate a church plant in our town outside of Paris. At our church dinners it was not uncommon to have a couple bottles of wine (but never hard liquor). Here in Philadelphia we do not have alcoholic beverages at church dinners which we have every week after the service for the reasons Bert alluded to. I much prefer the French model but my present context is different. God has given so many varieties of grape from which different wines are produced and then paired with various foods that it would seem a shame to only make grape juice IMO.

Here’s what Randy Jaeggli says in his book Christians and Alcohol concerning Isaiah 1:22 and the dilution of wine.

In addition to denying that Old Testament people diluted their wine as a common practice, Gentry also asserts that the one time the Old Testament explicitly mentions wine that has been diluted with water, it is in a negative context. The verse at issue is Isaiah 1:22, which says, “Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water.” In context this verse describes one aspect of the deplorable conditions that existed in Judah. Jerusalem had degenerated into a city of spiritually (and probably physically) adulterous people. Instead of being inhabited by the righteous, now it was full of murderers (1:21). The rulers were companions of thieves, and bribery was rampant. Justice was being trampled in the court system (1:23). Sandwiched between 1:21 and 1:23, the statement about impure silver and adulterated “wine” must, indeed, be negative.

We should start our investigation of this verse by noting that the word translated wine occurs only here and two other places in the Old Testament (Hos. 4:18; Nah. 1:10), compared to 141 occurrences of the most common term translated wine. The Hebrew noun is sobe’ and is related to the verb meaning “carouse, drink hard.” Holladay uses the generic word drink to translate sobe’ and speculates that it may have been a type of beer made from wheat. In fact, the Holman Christian Standard Bible translates it as beer. Verse 22 describes Jerusalem in metaphoric terms of once-valuable commodities that have become worthless. Jerusalem is pictured as beautiful silver that has become dross (lead-oxide), the byproduct of the refining process of lead-silver ore. Similarly, Jerusalem is a once-valuable drink that has been adulterated by contamination from some unknown source of water and is now unfit to drink. It is also possible that the sobe’ has been diluted with water by an unscrupulous merchant, so that he is cheating his customer by selling an adulterated product. This is a far different scenario from a customary dilution of wine with water before consumption. Because Gentry rejects the idea that people in Bible times diluted their wine before drinking it, he concludes that it is fine for Christians today to drink the 12-14% ethanol wine available on the market. Such a conclusion is erroneous and dangerous.

Or, rather not quite; my difference with Prof. Jaeggeli is not regarding the analysis of Isaiah—I just looked up the word and the most I could do is maybe quibble with him, but really he’s not making any huge statements there.

Where I do differ with Jaeggeli is simply to point out that the Bible’s teaching on mixing wine is descriptive, not prescriptive, and quite frankly, there are a number of examples where the treatment of wine is ambiguous. For example, when Melchizedek brings out bread and wine to Abraham, did they drink it straight, mix it, or a little of both? What about at the Last Supper? We can guess, we can infer from the teachings of the rabbis, but we cannot with absolute certainly tell you which it was.

Put gently, the evidence he’s using to make doctrine is…ahem…watered down.

[pvawter]

Obviously, that was just a brief excerpt from Jaeggli’s book and a fairly minor point in his argument concerning the dilution of wine. I only shared it because of the discussion upthread about Isaiah 1:22.

No argument that it’s a minor point, but it’s an interesting example because a great part of Jaeggeli’s point was to dispel some of the silly arguments against alcohol that have pervaded our movement for a couple of centuries—and yet we’ve got a little digression from ordinary exegetical principles even there. It illustrates, perhaps, how much we’ll do to maintain our culture in these hot button issues—and of course I refer to myself in this category, too.

No argument that his book was a very welcome addition in this discussion, as a lot of it really defuses a lot of the nonsense in this area. I do wonder, though, if the part we’ve been discussing appears in the original before BJU pulled it.

An elderly Baptist gentleman once explained the following argument to me:

• Levitical priests could not consume alcohol while ministering in the tabernacle
• Jesus was the great high priest
• Therefore Jesus never consumed alcohol
• Therefore the “wine” at Cana wasn’t really wine - it was grape juice

Is this a common argument? I’d never heard it before! I suspect it’s an older one from the “fightin fundamentalist!” days of the 1950s. Thoughts?

The Bible says Jesus made wine, it does not say Jesus made alcohol.

The Bible refers to alcoholic wine, as well as nonalcoholic wine (grape juice), with the same word - “wine.”

In the same verse (Matthew 9:17) Jesus called both unfermented wine and fermented wine by the same name - “wine (oinos).”

The Bible says Jesus made wine. Whether you believe that wine was intoxicating or not, is your interpretation, not you just taking the Bible for what it says.

David R. Brumbelow

Tyler, it strikes me that since Jesus was a Judah-ite and not a Cohen, for Him to be seen as having performed the Aaronic sacrifices would have been a capital crime to the Jews—not to mention a grievous breach of the very Law whose requirements He completed. No? We know for sure that to offer strange fire was a capital crime, and that the king who offered incense had leprosy until his death—again, the Jews knew that being a Judah-ite in certain parts of the Temple was in itself a significant crime.

Besides, Luke 5:39 (and parallel passages in Matthew and Mark) make very clear the Israelite preference for old, fully fermented wines (think “dry reds” today), and that preference is one that His hosts would have heeded when He came into their homes—to the point that Luke 7:34 notes that His opponents called him (H/T Jim) a “winebibber”.

So to argue He didn’t create wine with alcohol is, in the historical and Biblical context, about as logical as saying the boulangers of France make baguette, but not with gluten.

Really, unless someone comes up with some arguments that are a lot more compelling than I’ve seen, what’s at stake here is not merely whether it’s OK for a believer to drink wine or not. It is the authority of Scripture; if it’s OK to redefine a word when it offends our sensibilities in terms of hot button social issues, it is little stretch of the method to start redefining words in terms of theological issues.