Wine, Dine and Vine's

Ok so it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty of figuring what exactly Jesus made from the water. Most of you would suggest that the ‘wine Jesus created would be a non-alcoholic unfermented grape juice as I used to. My investigations have shown results that would suggest otherwise which I have come to learn to believe and think gives way that Jesus did create wine as we know it today and inevitably suggesting that we can consume alcohol. I followed a process of exegesis looking at what circumstances would have being shaping Jesus actions and how he responded. The other process I followed was to understand how wine could be translated and if there were multiple ones then what wine was used in this case enter Vine’s expository dictionary and Strong’s exhaustive concordance.

My first port of call was using Strong’s to find out the different uses of the word wine. My search of Strong’s turned up to show three main possibilities of what wine may have been used including the option of grape juice wine rather than a cab sav or merlot kind of wine. The wine that suggests non-alcoholic juice in Hebrew is “tı̂yrôsh” which simply refers to a fresh juice from clusters of grapes that would not be fermented. As John was written in Greek (at least suggested by most scholars) a Hebrew translation won’t work so when you derive it into Greek the word refers to a wedding gift, which is symbolic of what Jesus act was but doesn’t solve the alcohol problem. The second possibility would be “γλεῦκος”  (gleukos) which means a newly fermented wine which would be sweet and potent which is more likely then tı̂yrôsh. The last possibility would be “οἶνος” (oinos) which was the generic term for wine in Greek of that time. This was a more matured wine and would thus have more flavour and body. Given that in verse 10 the master of the banquet commented on how this was the best wine not a cheap cask wine (gleukos). I then referred to Vine’s to confirm or discount my theory about this and it suggested that my interpretation was correct, that John would have been talking about oinos and I dare say if you read John in Greek you will see it there. If he used gleukos it doesn’t change the implications.

Understanding the context in which John had written was also useful to understand whether Jesus would indeed create alcohol. In those days wedding celebrations were a big event where lots of people turned up. Celebrations could often end up spreading to being a week long festivety by which time at the end most people would be very drunk and unable to tell the difference between good and bad wine. Usually the good wine was brought out first so that sober heads could enjoy it and as time went on the quality of the wine decreased along with peoples’ ability to enjoy it. We know Jesus would have been sober in avoidance of sinning and ruining his mission. It is this avoidance of alcohol to reduce the ability of sinning that created the idea Jesus made tı̂yrôsh rather than oinos.

Vine's Expository Dictionary, Vine W.E., 1989, Riverside Book and Bible House, Iowa Falls, USA

The New Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Strong J., 1996, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, USA

http://biblesuite.com/greek/3631.htm, 17 June 2012

http://www.churchofchrist.com.au/Tracts/Jesus%20Wine.htm, Ian McPherson, 20 August 2012

 http://theartofbottledpoetry.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/egyptian-wine-jars-louvre-paris.jpg