Kool-Aid or Cana Cocktail?

This morning I want to address the comments left last night on my post, "Jesus and Social Drinking." I'm glad the article generated some discussion. All along, I've wanted Drew's Blog to be a forum where biblical subjects can be freely discussed in hopes of shedding more light on the truth.

What I'm arguing is that Jesus did not make alcoholic wine out of water in John 2:1-11. I'm not arguing that (a) alcohol is inherently evil or (b) all biblical references to "wine" are non-alcoholic. My point in this article is only that John 2 may not be used as a justification for social drinking.

Here's my reasoning:

• The Old Testament under which Jesus and His contemporaries lived strictly condemned drunkenness (Prov. 20:1; 23:35; Isa. 28:1; Hos. 4:11; Amos 6:6; Mic. 2:11).
• The New Testament, which was established by Christ's death (Heb. 9:15), also strongly condemns this vice (Rom. 13:13; Gal. 5:19-21; Eph. 4:18).
• Jesus never sinned (Heb. 4:15). Therefore, He never became drunk, nor did He ever encourage drunkenness.
• If the wine at Cana was alcoholic, then drunkenness would have surely been the result. For the guests had already consumed the initial supply, and Jesus made and additional 180 gallons!

We are left with only two possible conclusions: (1) that Jesus made non-alcoholic wine and remained innocent of sin; or (2) that Jesus made alcoholic wine and encouraged drunkenness. The way I see it, the contextual evidence cannot support the latter conclusion.

Where is the evidence that the wine at Cana was alcoholic? It is claimed that, culturally, weddings were normally celebrated with intoxication. But such a broad claim demands supporting evidence; none was given.

In truth, "wine" referred to alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, and both were popular drinks of the day. The common word for wine in Greek is oinos, which is rather flexible. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, Isaiah declares that "no treader shall tread out wine [oinos] in the presses" (Isa. 16:10). Wine straight from the press cannot be fermented. In Matthew 9:17 Jesus said that men do not put "new wine" into old wineskins. The reason is old wineskins, being brittle, will burst once fermentation takes place. Obviously, "wine" is a word flexible enough to include all beverages derived from the grape.

These were Jews, not pagans, celebrating in Cana. And the Jews had a long background of abstinence from alcohol. The Old Testament prohibitions have already been cited. In addition there is the Nazirite vow, which not only prohibited fermented wine, but also all products of the vineyard (Num. 6). By Jesus' day a new sect had branched off of Judaism, the Essenes, who took the Nazirite vow. To say the customary Jewish wedding involved a week of drunken carousing is to ignore the evidence!

Because grape juice, or sweet wine, was a common beverage, various methods had been developed to keep wine from fermenting. The Roman statesman Cato (234-149 B.C.) writes in De Agricultura, "If you wish to keep grape juice through the whole year, put the grape juice in an amphora, seal the stopper with pitch, and sink in the pond. Take it out after thirty days; it will remain sweet the whole year." In Studies in the Life of Christ, R.C. Foster comments, "A Greek wine ship of the second century B.C. found by divers off the southern coast of France several years ago contained a great number of wine flasks that had been sealed so tight that after more than 2,000 years the sea water had not seeped into them" (p. 1220).

No, alcohol is not inherently evil (cf. 1 Tim. 5:23). But the drinking habits of modern-day Americans are. For this reason, I'm not as eager as others to quibble over the wine at Cana. To me the depletion of the initial supply and the sheer volume of Jesus' wine suggests a non-alcoholic beverage.

True, the bridegroom called the wine "good" (Jn. 2:10). But as my reader pointed out, this may be John's way of alluding to Hebrews 1:1-2, where it is said, in so many words, that God saved the best prophet for last. We can only speculate as to what the bridegroom meant. His statement is too ambiguous for firm conclusions.

On a lighter note, two more things: First it's "Kool Aid," not "cool aide." Allow me to use it in a sentence: "The Kool Aid Man is the greatest character to ever bust through a brick wall on national television" ("Oh Yeahhh!").

Last, a question: Who is George DeBuff?