I thought Jesus was from East Los Angeles. I must be thinking of a different Jesus.
Fortune and dauer:
Quite right... in fact my response brought up point that both of you make:
Luke 7
33For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, "He has a demon.' 34The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, "Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' 35But wisdom is justified by all her children."
John the Baptist abstained from drinking wine; Jesus did not abstain (indeed, people called him a drunkard! Although certainly not true, it would be difficult for this charge to have been made had Jesus only drunk grape juice). Both respected one another and both recognized that their individual lifestyles were not universal principles. One man may choose not to drink; another may choose to drink. We ought not condemn another servant of the Lord for his choice.
Some take the words for wine to mean 'grape juice.' If this were so, then why would there be prohibitions against drunkenness? One cannot get drunk on grape juice. Further, Jesus' first miracle was changing the water into wine at the wedding of Cana in Galilee. He made between 120 and 180 gallons of wine! Even if this had been grape juice, it would soon turn to wine because the fermentation process would immediately begin. But it most certainly was not grape juice: the head waiter in John 2:10 said, "Every man sets out the good wine first, then after the guests have drunk freely, the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now." The verb translated 'drunk freely' is almost always used of getting drunk (and is so translated in the NRSV here). In the least, the people at this wedding feast, if not drunk, would certainly be drinking alcohol fairly freely (if not, this verb means something here that is nowhere else attested). And this makes perfect sense in the context: The reason why a man brings out the poorer wine later is because the good wine has numbed the senses a bit. Grape juice would hardly mask anything. Note also Acts 2:13--"they are full of sweet wine"--an inaccurate comment made about the apostles when they began speaking in tongues, as though this explained their unusual behavior. The point is: If they were full of grape juice would this comment even have made any sense at all? That would be like saying, "Well, they're all acting strange and silly because they have had too much orange juice this morning!"
Re: the Nazarite vow (Numbers 6:3):
The very fact that the Hebrew text makes a distinction between wine and grape juice implies that when 'wine' is spoken of, the fermented drink is in view.
Nick...
Take it easy...
that Jesus and I can't help it if we were named after a god's son.
I just asked Jesus what he preferred to drink, he said… “Tequila!” Oh wait, I thought you meant Jesus Garcia…. Sorry, my bad.
Someone asked me one day, they said “Yoda,
would you smoke your herb in the presence of Jesus?” I said, “Sure, I don’t say nothing about His wine, and He don’t say anything about my bud.” :wink:
To each his own.
