Posted on 08/31/2007 4:49:24 PM PDT by xzins
From my perspective within a family of Italians and Jews, I find this idea *quite* amusing. Yes, we Mediterranean folks have a long, long tradition of grape juice, don't we! ;)
Grape juice...LOL...managgia.
I suppose such people [those who translate the Greek for wine as "grape juice" or "raisin paste"] are blessed with reverent minds which prevent them from drawing irreverent conclusions. . . . Does it not whet your appetite for the critical opera omnia of such an author, where he will freely have at the length and breadth of Scripture? Can you not see his promised land flowing with peanut butter and jelly; his apocalypse, in which the great whore Babylon is given the cup of the ginger ale of the fierceness of the wrath of God?
;-)
I wasn't referring to YOUR perspective...I was alluding to the perspective of God, in the Bible...
Germans have beer in vending machines at their places of employment...What's that got to do with what God says about the issue??? You s'pose God got a little tipsy on ocassion???
That may be since I'm sure that if you drink enough of 'His Blood' at your church, you will get a little tipsy as well...
Actually, I don’t typically drink the Precious Blood because I go to the Old Mass.
I was being a bit glib, I’ll admit. But there’s a real point underlying what I’m saying here. Namely, that these New Testament events didn’t take place in 20th century America, they took place in the Mediterranean 1st century. And those cultures back then (and today) did not by any means have any such severe stricture against fermented wine as some American folks think. If this meant grape juice all along and if wine was condemned, then it’s a little funny isn’t it, that Jews and Italians and Greeks still drink it.
As to new wine (tirosh) being qualitatively different from old wine, may I point out Hosea 4:11 “Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart.” It sounds to me like there were some alcoholic effects in that new wine that Hosea was talking about.
New wine may well have been partially fermented. It may have been made from the must after it was pressed (my dad does this). I don’t think anyone can say categorically it was not fermented *at all*.
Hmm.. I haven’t felt any beholden-ness (is that a word?) to the ‘blessed mother.’ wonder why that is.
I also haven’t felt compelled to regard bread and wine/juice as the literal body and blood of the Lord and therefore idolize it. Hmm... Yet I have survived quite a few of those ‘dark nights of the soul’ — and never doubted the way she seems to have.
I was baptized Lutheran.
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