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To: imardmd1

You went into a long explanation of why the sentence structure in Greek indicates that the translations are wrong, but in no way connected that explanation with the idea that the “oinos” was alcohol-free.

In fact, the use of the word wine, and the later comment by the servant: most hosts serve their best wine first, then when everyone has drunk that wine, serve the lesser wine clearly implies that the host had already served some (alcoholic) wine and had run out. Mary pointed this out to her Son, Who made some more wine, better wine, for the wedding.


9 posted on 01/17/2016 6:04:29 AM PST by Chicory
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To: Chicory; Craftmore
You went into a long explanation

I reviewed the grammar to show that, according to the the writer John, there was no wine being offered at the feast. There is no reason not to believe that the participants shunned the recreational use of intoxicating beverages. The text clearly says that the wedding activity was devoid of wine. Jesus' mother said, "They are not having wine" with "at this wedding" being implied; to which Jesus essentially asked what that had to do with Him or her. To get anything else, the reader must make some assumptions and draw conclusions that are not warranted.

As to the use of the word "wine" to translate "oinos," the definition of what the word means is rather more narrow in English today than it is in the Greek of the first century being translated, and also than in the Elizabethan definition of "wine." In the Koine, "oinos" could be either unfermented or partially-(anaerobically)-fermented juice of the cluster. Which form it takes is determined by the context, if at all, and in John chapter 2 it is not defined. There nominally it could be either. What it could not be is "ogzos" (from which we get "oxygen"), fully fermented to vinegar (acetic acid) because of free access to air during the reactions, with presence of ethanol being only a minor and passing constituent.

When Jesus gave the illustration of storing wine in leather "bottles," He called freshly-pressed liquor of the grape clusters as "new wine"; nevertheless it still was just was "oinos" translated as "wine." But though He used this to picture the process of the New Covenant versus the Old Covenant, the Age of Law, it would be wrong to confer His approval on the drinking of literal wine from its illustrative use in the figurative-literal parable. The Greeks had no word for "grape juice," so they just called it . . . wine.

Regarding the beverage made by Jesus from ritually purified water, it is not clear to me why people seem to insist that it be the same as the filthy stuff made by people stomping grapes in a stone pit with dirty feet in sweaty and otherwise defiled clothes, and transferred into unhygienic goatskins for final fermentation and settling of the sediment; for this is what the non-thinking wine-drinking hypothesizers must have it to be.

To me, it makes a lot more sense that the product of this transformation from clean, pure water could just as well have been a clear, sweet, delicious beverage, of which our store-bought Welch's grape juice (made from concentrate) would be a typical example. Being made without the yeasty content of toe-jam and sweaty human skin-flakes and clothes (and other stuff) it would still have all the fruit sugars and flavonoids and anthocyanins needed to make it "wine"--new wine--the blood of the grape--the fruit of the vine. Such a wine would be that which He drinks with us, sometime in the future, at the Wedding Feast of The Lamb, eh? I see no reason why He would have made His new wine, 150 gallons of it, to be loaded with the intoxicating poison of ethyl alcohol, to harm the emotions and confuse the thinking of both children as well as adults at the feast. Can you find a legitimate reason?

As considering the "governor" of the feast, the caterer/M. C., when the water-made-wine beverage was brought, and he tasted it, apparently he thought it was "the good wine" (and here you need only dwell on the taste which is the only quality separating the "good" from the "worse," not the alcohol content). He then noted that feasts commonly begin with the "good wine" being served at the outset, but commended the bridegroom (who determined when the wine would be served) for strategically (he presumed) not serving the "good wine" at the beginning of the feast, but postponing its serving until the middle of the feast, thus economizing the cost, regulating the crowd's behavior, and ensuring that everyone would think well of his libation's quality.

Clearly, your assumptions, which you take to be fact and which are not fact, are not supported by the text when it is thought out properly. What that line of thinking involves is jumping from the translation(s) (and rather poor ones in this passage) directly into a legend based on unsupportable assumptions, without having applied a literal grammatical syntactical cultural scientific historical technological interpretation to the translation, thereby arriving at a misleading or false conclusion.

Here's the fact: from this text, you cannot prove that: (1) any wine was served at any time in the feast prior to the arrival of the beverage made by Jesus at the M. C.'s table; (2) that the wine made by Jesus was intoxicating; or that (3) the participants would not otherwise have been merely drunken revelers.

And furthermore, if any of these factors had been as you claim, demonstrate how that vignette would bring glory to The Christ of God, or persuade anyone to believe in his Deity.

The answer is that you cannot, and neither can this concocted story by Charles Henrickson. I believe he owes a deep apology to the Lord, and to anyone he has convinced the the Lord Jesus Christ approves of intoxicants as beverages approved for Christian diet or "enjoyment" purposes.

Including use in the Breaking of Bread, the Remembrance Supper.

11 posted on 01/18/2016 3:08:42 AM PST by imardmd1 (Fiat Lux)
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