PROPOSITION. “WINE” IS A COMMON WORD IN BOTH THE OTⁱ AND NT FOR ANY STAGE OF GRAPE JUICE TO FERMENTED DRINK. “FRUIT OF THE VINE” IN THE GOSPELS IS AN UNFERMENTED STAGE.

When we begin considering the communion cup, the first question that comes to mind is, should it be wine or grape juice? Some might say it doesn't make any difference whereas others are just as certain that it does.

A neighbor once enlightened me that she was a member of a “new church”, formed as I recall by dissatisfied members of a denomination. I was curious. What is involved in establishing a new “Christian” denomination? I recall that there were several policy meetings of the new members to decide their basic beliefs. One factor that I recall was they were debating the Lord's Supper. There was much discussion, as I recall. One day I asked how the Lord's Supper factor was coming along. She said, “Oh. We've solved that problem.” O.K. What was decided? “We couldn't agree on it so we decided to not observe it.” Now I couldn't imagine a group that would claim to be followers of Jesus and yet decide they were not going to observe doing what Jesus asked much less what He commanded. This group, she said, decided not to do it at all. Period. Now is that loving Jesus?

O.K., I've heard people who wanted to observe the Supper but claimed that Jesus wanted them to use what He used; i.e., alcoholic wine. They knew this from the word “wine” in the NT addressed with this logic: because grape juice ferments into “wine” and since Welch's wasn't around 2000 years ago, it had to be fermented wine. What about this logic: I have read that distillationⁱⁱ wasn't discovered until a few hundred years ago, so why couldn't we conclude that it had to be grape juice? Of course both would be wrong.

What mystifies my thinking is why we have to think that the ancients were too barbaric to be as smart as we are and able to solve their problems. Does modern man have a monopoly on imagining how best to do a thing? There are those that in spite of the physical evidences, let's say of the pyramids, will argue that alien beings from outer space were responsible for any hints of “advanced technologies” since it required a level of intelligence. Pride in one's thinking of himself as a evolution product, I suppose, makes “modern man” say that anything we know today could not have been reasoned and solved by our ancestors. Were Jesus and the apostles knowledgeable of how to preserve grape juice? Or did mankind have to wait for Welch to be born?

Looking at the New Testament “gospels” the only beverage that's identified for us that Jesus used during the Passover feast is the expression “fruit of the vine.” One might conclude that grape juice is what Jesus is talking about since that's what fruit is produced on the vine. But it appears that there are those that say the Jewish Sederⁱⁱⁱ was what the “last supper” of Jesus and His twelve was observing. And since the Mishna's Seder uses the expression “fruit of the vine” when referring to the alcoholic wine that is served by them, readers judge that Jesus had to have used alcoholic wine. But the NT does not mention any Seder nor any Mishna.

HISTORY OF SEDER. What these people are not aware of is that the Mishna^iv is a later product of an attempt to write down the oral Pharisaic “traditions” a couple centuries after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. The Mishna was not in existence for Jesus to approve or disapprove. He certainly would not have been complying with an non-existent creed. We also know from the “gospels” that He did not approve of the Pharisee “oral traditions” (e.g., washings, Sabbath observance, etc.). Jewish Rabbis during Jesus' time is also reported to have argued over whether Exodus 13:7 even allowed alcoholic wine during the Passover.^v This raises the question then whether the “fruit of the vine” expression in the Mishna was influenced by the two century old proliferate New Testament for the Jews devising the Mishna. The Rabbis' arguing over what was allowed at Passover also counters any definitive view that Jesus would have been using alcoholic wine.

What archaelogy and historical records reveal to us is that the ancients not only knew how to preserve grape juice, necessity made them do it. In addition, what we call “souped-up” wine today was unknown to the ancients. There was one generic word for grape juice and its various stages of fermentation and it was called “wine.” Wine was a purposely preserved juice and/or purposely made alcoholic. Plus, the first century customs of both Roman and Greek societies required that they dilute fermented drink at decent parties with as much as from 3 to 20 parts of water.

SECULAR SOURCES FOR PROVING GRAPE JUICE BEING OINOS, “WINE”

"Squeeze the grape, let out the wine (oinos)" Anacreon (c. 500 B.C.)

Nicander (2nd century B.C.): the produced juice is oinos.

Papias (A.D. 60-130) mentions that when grapes are crushed they yield "jars of wine (oinos)"

Greek Papyrus letter ( A.D. 137): “fresh wine (oinos) from the treading vat"

Athenaeus (AD. 200) speaks o a "sweet wine (oinos)" that "does not make the head heavy". In another place, he writes of a man gathering grapes who "went about, and took wine (onios) from the field" (1.54). ^vi

The legend of the origin of the word “oinos” is said to have been coined from the name of a person who gathered grapes.

SCRIPTURE REFERS TO GRAPE JUICE AS OINOS, “WINE.” The Jewish population had been scattered into the world since the Babylonian Empire of the sixth century B.C. “The repercussions for Jewish religious life were significant, especially since much of the Jewish population had lost their Hebrew.”^vii Jewish scholars in Alexandria, Egypt, translated the Hebrew Bible into the Greek LXX which helped prepare the world, Jew and Gentile, for the advent of the Christ.

The LXX translated all products of the grape juice as oinos, “wine.” “Oinos can and does refer to either unfermented or fermented wine in the Septuagint."^viii

The LXX's OT in every case but one (Isaiah 65:8) translates Hebrew tirosh^ix by the Greek oinos.^x Hebrew's "tirosh" was “new wine”.^xi

EXAMPLES OF OT.

Isaiah 65:8 (KJV), "Thus saith the LORD, As the new wine^H8492 is found in the cluster"^xii LXX has "oinos." Proverbs 3:10, "So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine." Deuteronomy 11:14, "That I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine, and thine oil" (gather in "wine"). Compare Deuteronomy 33:28.

Joel 2:24, "And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the fats^xiii shall overflow with wine and oil." Isaiah 24:7, "The new wine mourneth, the vine languisheth, all the merryhearted do sigh." [This happens when the land is afflicted]. Nehemiah 10: 37a, "And that we should bring the firstfruits of our dough, and our offerings, and the fruit of all manner of trees, of wine and of oil, unto the priests, to the chambers of the house of our God." Firstfruit of the vines offered: oinos.

Jeremiah 48:33, “And joy and gladness is taken from the plentiful field, and from the land of Moab; and I have caused wine to fail from the winepresses: none shall tread with shouting; their shouting shall be no shouting.” The winepress was a wine vat (either the lower one, into which the juice drains; or the upper, in which the grapes are crushed). In either the juice is referred to as “wine” (LXX, oinos^G3631).

The Greek New Testament also refers to both juice and the alcoholic drink as being “wine” (oinos).

In Ephesians 5:18 the command "be not drunk with wine (oinos)" obviously refers to fermented wine.

But in such passages as Revelation 19:15 Jesus is treads out the winepress: "He treads the winepress with wine (oinos)"; i.e, grape juice. Revelation 6:6, oinos equals grapes on the vine as a crop not to be destroyed.

HISTORY. How was the grape juice preserved? "In Hebrew, Chaldee, Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Latin, and English, the words for wine in all these languages are originally, and always, and inclusively, applied to the blood of the grape in its primitive and natural condition, as well, subsequently, as to that juice both boiled and fermented." ^xiv Genesis 40:11 tells of the mere expressed juice of the grape was wine without fermentation. The cupbearer took the grapes, expressed the juice into the cup and gave it to his master. Adam Clarke Commentary says this was the yayin wine of the Hebrews, the oinos of the Greeks, and the mustum wine of the Romans. “As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one says, ‘Do not destroy it, for a blessing is in it’ ” (Isaiah 65:8, NKJV).

1. COOLED & SEALED. Columella (on Agriculture, 12.29)^xxii : Juice will not ferment if kept cool (under 50 degrees) and oxygen free: "That your grape juice may be always as sweet as when it is new, thus proceed. 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 on the amphora to remain above the surface. After forty days take it out. It will remain sweet for a year." Pliny (1st century AD) 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."

2. BOILED. Ancient historians referred to this boiled juice as wine (oinos). Canon Farrar states that "the wines of antiquity were more like syrups; many of them were not intoxicant."^xv The fresh grape juice was boiled until it was a thick paste or syrup, a “grape honey”, and then stored in large jars or skins. It could later be used as a jam on bread or dissolved in water to make juice again. ^xvi

3. DEHYDRATION. The grapes could be dehydrated to a proper point, sprinkled with olive oil to keep them moist, and then stored in earthenware jars.^xvii Later, water is added and steeped by boiling. Polybius indicated that the Roman women of his day could drink this beverage, but were not allowed to drink fermented wine.^xviii Filtration was also used. Filtering and fumigating the juice with sulphur were also used to delay fermentation. ^xix

MIXED WINE WITH WATER. Greek and Roman authors gave various ratios of mixing water with either dehydrated grapes or fermented drink. Wine socially was served as a water mixture. One ancient writer wrote, “We call a mixture 'wine', although the largest part is water.” One mentioned a ratio of eight parts water to one part wine.^xx

What would the faithful Jews drink especially on a holy day? The Passover Law prohibited the presence of seor (Exodus 12:15-20) in the house;, i.e., a fermenting agent. Seor (yeast) in the ancient world could be obtained from the top scum of unfermenting grapes. For example, if you notice white powdery substance on the top of a bunch of grapes, that is yeast.^xxi Isn't it logic that anything containing any fermentation or its agent was forbidden (Exodus 12:19; 13:7)? Further, the Lord's Supper is a memorial to the God's acceptable sacrifice of His Son for us. The Law was clear on the subject, “Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven” (Exodus 34:25).

CONCLUSION, “Wine” translates the Greek word “oinos” Strong's # G3631 and is a generic term in both the OT and the NT for any stage of grape juice from being unfermented to fermented. Jesus would have followed God's Law for the Passover and not have used leaven with the wine. If we wish to remember acceptably Jesus' sacrifice at His table (1 Corinthians 10) then should we not respectfully use the unadulterated drink that fitly represents Jesus' blood?

- Gaylon West

Throw Out the Lifeline

edited by Janie R. Ward and Mary L. West