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 most 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.

The Greek word oinos was used by secular and religious authors in pre-Christian and early church times to refer to fresh grape juice. Anacreon in 500 B.C. writes, “Squeeze the grape, let out the wine (oinos)”. (b) Nicander (second century B.C.) writes of squeezing grapes and refers to the produced juice as oinos. (c) Papias (A.D. 60-130), an early church father, mentions that when grapes are crushed they yield “jars of wine (oinos). (d) A Greek papyrus letter (A.D. 137) speaks of “fresh wine (oinos) from the treading vat”. (e) Athenaeus (A.D. 200) speaks of a “sweet wine (oinos)” that “does not make the head heavy”.

As in secular Greek and the O.T., an examination of N.T. passages reveals that oinos may mean either fermented or unfermented wine. In Eph. 5:18 the command, “be not drunk with wine (oinos),” refers to alcoholic wine. On the other hand, in Rev. 19:15 Christ is described as treading out the winepress. The Greek text reads: “He treads the winepress of the wine (oinos),” the oinos that comes forth from the winepress would be grape juice (Is. 66:10, Jer. 48:32-37). In Rev. 6:6 oinos refers to grapes on the vine as a crop not to be destroyed. Thus, for believers in N.T. times, “wine” (oinos) was a general word that could be used for two distinctly different grape beverages, fermented and unfermented wine.

Ancient Roman writers have explained in detail various processes used in dealing with freshly squeezed grape juice, especially ways to preserve it from fermenting.

Columella (On Agriculture), 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.

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 of the amphora to remain above the surface. After forty days take it out. It will remain sweet for a year” (first century A.D.) 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,).

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 syrup.

USE OF WINE IN LORD’S SUPPER

And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.

Did Jesus use fermented or unfermented grape drink when He instituted the Lord’s Supper?

Neither Luke nor any other Biblical writer uses the word “wine” (Gk. Oinos) in regard to the Lord’s Supper. The first three Gospel writers use “fruit of the vine”. Unfermented wine is the only true natural “fruit of the vine,” containing approximately 20 percent sugar and no alcohol. Fermentation destroys much of the sugar and alters what the vine produced. Fermented wine is not the product of the vine.

The Lord’s Supper was instituted when Jesus and His disciples were eating the Passover. The Passover law in Ex. 12:14-20 prohibited, during Passover week, the presence and use of seor (Ex. 12:15), a word referring to leaven, yeast, or any agent of fermentation. Seor in the ancient world was often obtained from the thick scum on top of fermenting wine. Furthermore, all hametz (anything containing any fermentation) was forbidden (Ex. 12:19; 13:7; 13:7). God had given these laws because fermentation symbolized corruption and sin (Mat. 16:6, 12, I Cor. 5:7-8). Jesus fulfilled the law in every requirement (Mat. 5:17). Thus, He would have followed the law for the Passover and not used fermented wine.

In the O.T. fermented drink was never to be used in the house of God, nor were the priests allowed to draw near to God in worship while drinking intoxicating beverages (Lev. 10:9). Jesus Christ was our High Priest of the new covenant and would not have defiled Himself.

The value of a symbol is determined by its capacity to conceptualize the spiritual reality. Therefore, just as the bread represented the pure body of Christ and had to be unleavened (uncorrupted with fermentation), the fruit of the vine, representing the incorruptible blood of Christ, would have been best represented by juice that was unfermented (1 Pet. 1:18-19). Since Scripture states explicitly that the process of corruption was not allowed to work in either the body or blood of Christ (Ps. 16:10; Acts 2:27; 13:37), both of these are properly symbolized by that which is uncorrupted and unfermented.

Paul instructed the Corinthians to put away spiritual yeast, the fermenting agent of “malice and wickedness,” because Christ is our Passover (I Cor. 5:6-8). It would be inconsistent with the goal and spiritual requirement of the Lord’s Supper to use something which was a symbol of evil, something with leaven or yeast.

WINE MIXED OR FULL STRENGTH?

Historical data concerning the making and use of wine by the Jews and other nations in the Biblical world indicate that it was (a) often unfermented and (b) normally mixed with water.

One method was to dehydrate the grapes to a proper point, sprinkle them with olive oil to keep them moist, and store them in earthenware jars. A very sweet grape beverage could be made from these stored grapes at any time by later adding water and steeping or boiling them.

Another method was to boil freshly squeezed grape juice until it became a thick paste or syrup (grape honey); this process made it storable, removed any intoxicating quality because of the high concentration of sugar, and preserved its sweetness. This was then stored in large jars or skins. The paste could be used as a jam for their bread or dissolved in water to make grape juice once again. “It is probable that the grape was largely cultivated as a source of sugar: the juice expressed in the ‘wine press’ was reduced by boiling it to a liquid…known as ‘grape honey’. References to honey in the Bible frequently refer to grape honey (called debash by the Jews) rather than to the honey of the bee.

Water, then, could be mixed with dehydrated grapes and with grape syrup, as well as with fermented wine. Greek and Roman authors gave various ratios that were used. Homer mentions a ratio of twenty parts water to one part wine. Plutarch states: “We call a mixture ‘wine,’ although the larger of the component parts is water.” mentions a ratio of eight parts water to one part wine.

Among Jewish people in Bible times, social and religious customs mandated never serving unmixed wine, especially if it was fermented. The Talmud (a Jewish work that describes the traditions of Judaism from about 200 B.C. to A.D. 200) discusses in several tractates the mixture of water and wine. Some Jewish rabbis insisted that unless fermented wine was mixed with three parts water, it could not be blessed and would defile the drinker. Others demanded that ten parts of water must be mixed with one part of fermented wine before it could be acceptable.

An interesting passage emerges in the book of Revelation: when speaking of “the wine of the wrath of God,” an angel declares that it will be “without mixture,” i.e., full strength (Rev. 14:10) It was stated in this way because the readers normally would expect all grape beverages to be mixed with water.

The normal uses of wine by the Jews in Biblical days were not the same as today. It was (a) grape juice freshly squeezed, (b) grape juice preserved, (c) juice from dried grapes, (d) grape wine made from grape syrup and water, and (e) unfermented or fermented stored wine diluted with water at a ratio as high as 20 to 1. If the wine was fermented and served unmixed, it was considered barbaric, defiling, and incapable of being blessed by the rabbis.

In the light of these facts, it is impossible to defend the modern-day practice of drinking alcoholic beverages on the basis of the Jews’ use of “wine” in Biblical times. They are clearly not the same. Furthermore, Christians of Biblical days exercised a more careful attitude towards the various kinds of wines than did the Jews (Rom. 14:21, I Thes 5:6, I Tim. 3:3, Titus 2:2).

JESUS GLORY MANIFESTED THROUGH WINE

John 2:11 “This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.”

In his second chapter, John records that Jesus made “wine” out of water at a wedding at Cana. The question is, “What kind of wine?” As we have seen, it could be fermented or unfermented, full strength or diluted. We must determine our answer to this question by contextual implication and moral likelihood. The position of this study is that Jesus made wine (oinos) that was pure unfermented grape juice.

The primary object of this miracle was to “manifest forth his glory” (John 2:11) in such a way as to induce personal faith and confidence in Him as the Messiah. To suggest that Christ showed forth His deity by miraculously creating gallons of intoxicating wine for a drunken party (John 2:10, which implies that the people had already drunk freely), and that this was immensely important to His Messianic mission, requires an irreverence few are willing to display. It would testify more to the honor and glory of Christ, to believe that He supernaturally created the same juices of the grape that grow annually through the process of His natural created order. This miracle, therefore, points to Christ’s sovereignty over the natural world and becomes a symbol of His power to transform sinful people into the children of God (John 3:1-15).

It is contrary to Scriptural revelation concerning the perfect obedience of Christ. To suppose that He disobeyed Biblical moral commands, “look not thou upon the wine when it is red…when it moveth itself aright,” i.e., when it is fermented (Prov. 2:31). Indeed Christ came to fulfill the law (Mat. 5:17) and would have supported the Biblical passage which condemns intoxicating wine as “a mocker” and “raging” (Prov. 20:1) and the words of Hab. 2:15; “Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink…and makest him drunken” (Lev. 10:8-11, Num. 6:1-5; Deut. 21:20; Prov. 31:4-7; Is. 28:7; Amos 2:8, 12; 4:1; 6:6; Rom. 14:13, 21).

Furthermore, note the following modern medical evidence. (a) Current leading medical experts on human birth defects have found unmistakable evidence that moderate alcoholic consumption is damaging to the reproductive systems of women of childbearing age, causing miscarriages and births of babies with incurable mental and physical defects. (b) It would be theologically absurd to maintain that Jesus served and encouraged the use of alcoholic beverages at a wedding, which included many women as well as the young bride with the possibility of her immediate conception.

The only sound conclusion rationally, Biblically, and theologically is that the wine which Christ made at the wedding in order to manifest His glory was pure, sweet, unfermented fruit of the vine.

WINE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Num. 6:3 “He shall separate himself from wine and strong drink, and shall drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of strong drink, neither shall he drink any liquor of grapes, nor eat moist grapes, or dried.”

In general, there are two Hebrew words translated as “wine” in the Old Testament.

The first and most common word is yayin, a generic term used approximately 141 times in the O.T. to indicate various kinds of fermented or unfermented wine (Neh. 5:18, which speaks of “all sorts of wine (yayin)”). (a) On the one hand, yayin is applied to all kinds of fermented grape juice (Gen. 9:20-21, 19:32-33, I Sam. 25:36-37, Prov. 23:30-31). The tragic results of using fermented wine are described in various places in the O.T. notably Prov. 23:29-35. (b) On the other hand, yayin is also used for the sweet unfermented juice of the grape. It can refer to fresh juice as it is pressed from grapes. Isaiah prophesies, “The treaders shall tread out no wine (yayin) in their presses” (Is. 16.10); likewise Jeremiah says, “I have caused wine (yayin) to fail from the winepresses; none shall tread with shouting” (Jer. 48:33). In fact, Jeremiah even refers to the juice still in the grape as yayin (Jer. 40:10, 12). Further evidence that yayin at times refers to unfermented juice of the grape is found in Lamentations, where the author describes nursing infants as crying out to their mothers for their normal food of “corn and wine” (Lam. 2:12). The fact unfermented grape juice can go by the term “wine” is supported by various scholarly studies. The Jewish Encyclopedia (1901) states: “Fresh wine before fermentation was called yayin-mi-gat (wine of the vat).” Also, the Encyclopedia Judaica (1971) attests to the fact that the term yayin was used to refer to the juice of the grape in several stages, including “the newly pressed wine prior to fermentation.” The Babylonian Talmud ascribes to Rabbi Hiyya a statement concerning “wine (yayin) from the press”. And in Halakot Gedalot it is said, “One may press out a cluster of grapes, since the juice of the grape is considered wine (yayin) in connection with the laws of the Nazarite”.

The other Hebrew word translated “wine” is tirosh, a word meaning “new wine” or “harvest wine.” Tirosh occurs thirty-eight times in the O.T.; it never refers to fermented drink, but always to the unfermented fruit of the vine, such as the juice that is still in the grape cluster (Is. 65:8) or sweet juice from newly harvested grapes (Deut. 11:14: Prov. 3:10; Joel 2:24). Brown, Driver, Briggs (A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament) states that tirosh means “must, fresh or new wine”; the Jewish Encyclopedia (1901) states that “’tirosh’” includes all kinds of sweet juices and must, and does not include fermented wine” Tirosh has “a blessing…in it” (Is. 65:8); fermented wine, however, is a mocker (Prov. 20:1) and brings drunkenness (Prov. 23:31).

In addition to these two words for wine, there is another Hebrew word that occurs twenty-three times in the O.T. and often in the same context—shekar, usually translated as “strong drink” (Num. 6:3). This translation is unfortunate, since it implies “distilled liquor,” a drink that did not exist among the Hebrews in Bible times. Some scholars say shekar most often refers to a fermented drink, perhaps made from palm juice, pomegranates, apples, or dates; some interpreters include beer as a “strong drink”. The Jewish Encyclopedia (1901) suggests that when yayin was distinguished from shekar, the former was a form of fermented drink diluted with water whereas the latter was undiluted. At times, however, it can refer to a sweet satisfying unfermented juice (Robert P. Teachout, “The Use of Wine’ in the Old Testament. Also Robert Young, Analytical Concordance to the Bile, under “strong drink”). Shekar is related to shakar, a Hebrew verb that means “to drink deeply,” not “to become drunk.” In most instances, it is best to understand that when yayin and shekar are used together, they form a single figure of speech referring to intoxicating beverages.

THE OLD TESTAMENT PERSPECTIVE ON FERMENTED WINE

There are various places in the O.T. where the use of yayin and shekar as fermented beverages is condemned.

The Bible first describes the evil effects of intoxicating wine in the story of Noah (Gen. 9:20-27). He planted a vineyard, harvested it, made intoxicating wine from the grapes, and drank from it. Doing so led to drunkenness, immodesty, indiscretion, and the family tragedy of a curse placed on Canaan. At the time of Abraham, intoxicating wine was a factor in the incest that led to the pregnancies of Lot’s daughters (Gen. 19:31-38).

Because of the corrupting potential of alcoholic drinks, God commanded all priests of Israel to abstain from all types of wine and strong drink during their time of ministry unto Him. God regarded the violation of this command sufficiently serious to warrant the death penalty for the offending priest (Lev. 10:9-11).

God also revealed His will concerning wine and strong drink by making abstinence a requirement for all who took the Nazarite vow.

Solomon’s God-given wisdom led him to write: “Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise” (Prov. 20:1). Alcoholic beverages can cause one to mock God’s standard of righteousness and to lose self-control with regard to sin and immorality.

The Scriptures unequivocally state that in order to avoid woe and sorrow and instead to follow God’s will, the righteous must not even look upon or desire any fermented wine that can intoxicate and cause addiction (Prov. 23:29-35).

THE NAZARITE AND WINE

Nazarites were expected to declare that all Israelites should live on as high a level of separation and commitment to God as they themselves did (Num. 6:2). God gave them clear instructions concerning the use of wine.

The Nazarite was to abstain from “wine and strong drink” (Num. 6:3, Deut. 14:26); in fact, they were not permitted to partake of any product made from the grape, either in liquid or solid form. Most likely God gave this command as a safeguard against the temptation to use intoxicating drinks and against the possibility of a Nazarite drinking alcoholic wine by mistake (Num. 6:3-4). God did not want a totally devoted person to be exposed to the possibility of intoxication or addition (Lev. 10:8-11; Prov. 31:4-5). Thus, the highest standard put before God’s people concerning alcoholic beverages was total abstinence (Num. 6:3-4).

Drinking alcohol often leads to various other sins (such as sexual immorality or criminal activity). The Nazarites were to eat or drink nothing that came from the vine in order to teach them that they must avoid sin and anything that borders on it, leads to it, or tempts one to commit it.

God’s standard for the Nazarites of total abstinence from wine and strong drink was ridiculed and rejected by many of those in Israel during Amos’ day. This prophet stated that the ungodly of Israel “gave the Nazarites wine to drink” (Amos 2:12). The prophet Isaiah also declared, “The priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness” (Is. 28:7-8). This occurred because these leaders refused God’s high standard of total abstinence (Prov. 31:4-5).

The essential spirit of Nazaritism—total consecration to God and His highest standards—is a demand placed upon the believer in Christ (Rom. 12:1; 2 Cor. 6:17; 7:1). Abstinence from anything that might draw one into sin, stimulate a desire for harmful things, open the way to drug or alcohol addiction, or cause a brother to stumble is as necessary for the believer today as it was for the Nazarite in O.T. times (I Thes. 5:6,Titus. 2:2).