lol

David,

The answer to your question/riddle is simple, and one that all good Baptists have been taught: the wedding wine at Cana contained so little alcohol it was incapable of making anyone drunk.

That's what we've been told anyway!!!

Ken,

Yes, that's what I've been told, too. Actually, I was taught it had no alcohol at all; but why did it take almost two millennia to figure that out? This is clearly a modern understanding of history.

Maybe a bit of "revisionist history"???!!!

Here is the IFB response: "I'll drink all the wine you can make out of water."

As we all know, NT wine was so diluted that you would have to drink gallons and gallons of it to become intoxicated. You would need "strong drink" to get smashed, because "wine" just wouldn't do the trick. Thus Paul wrote, "Be not drunk with grape juice."

Thanks, Nathan, that clears it up. Now, if someone could exegete Deuteronomy 14:26 for me, it would be very helpful.

You may spend the money [tithe] for whatever your heart desires: for oxen, or sheep, or wine, or strong drink, or whatever your heart desires; and there you shall eat in the presence of the Lord your God and rejoice, you and your household.

As someone who plans to grow wine grapes on his property, I know a few things about wine.

Totally natural fermentation of grapes, without using special yeasts or fiddling with alcohol levels, will yield a wine of about 7-9% alcohol in most cases. You'll find current light whites with this percentage of alcohol. (Many contemporary German wines are in this range.)

To balance the fruit in wines today (because so many desire a "fruit forward" flavor), many wines are in the 10-15% range, especially reds.

Is it more alcohol? Yes. Still, you drink a whole bottle of something in the 7-9% range and you'll be trippin'.

Those that claim that the wine of Jesus' day was boiled or <5% alcohol are grasping at straws. They should also read Psalm 104. And what to think of the fact that Jesus used all those vineyard references in His parables?

Dan,

You definitely know more about this than I do, but in my experience, naturally fermented juice turns to vinegar. Yuck!

You're right, the whole "wine back then was Welch's" story is pretty contrived.

As a Southern Baptist, I still can't figure out why Jesus would have saved the best grape juice until the end. I mean everyone knows that you bring out the new stuff first, let them get drunk and then you bring out the cheap...oh wait, if it was grape juice the account all of a sudden doesn't make sense. Nevermind.