Earlier today, I heard a lady talk about how some Christian sects teach that Jesus drank grape juice, not wine. I’d heard that before I got interested in fermenting and didn’t think much about it. Today, though, my immediate response was, “Hang on a minute! They had to be drinking wine. Fermenting was the only way to preserve grape juice in the Middle East before canning was invented.”
Food starts to spoil the moment it is harvested. You either eat it quickly or you have to preserve it in some way. Most of the methods for food preservation were discovered in pre-history. But the only methods for preserving fresh grape juice — canning and freezing — were not invented until long after Jesus’ time.
- Boiling bath canning = 1790s.
- Pressure canning = 1851.
- First commercial ice-making machine = 1854.
- First refrigerator for home use =1913.
I’m Catholic, so the Jesus and wine issue is not theologically interesting to me. I understand that those who believe in the grape juice theory have a biblical argument that they find compelling. However, from a food preservation history point of view, I don’t see how people in Bible times could have had access to unfermented grape juice outside of grape harvest season, which in Israel is June through September. The Last Supper was in April.
Sources:
- http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/nchfp/factsheets/food_pres_hist.html
- http://www.homefoodpreservation.com
- http://extension.psu.edu/food/preservation/news/2012/grapes-and-grape-juice
- http://www.examiner.com/article/10-food-preservation-methods-for-fresh-table-grapes
- https://www.gci.org/law/festivals/harvest
polination.blog 
Even my mother, a strict teetotaler who thought no Christian had any business using alcohol, was not ignorant enough to think that Jesus drank only unfermented grape juice, or that He turned water into unfermented grape juice at the wedding in Cana. When I asked her why wine was okay for Jesus but not for us, she employed some rather tortured reasoning to justify her position; it had something to do with the fact that without refrigeration, fermentation is inevitable, etc. In any case, I found it unconvincing.
I was in my mid-teens the first time I encountered someone who rejected the idea of Jesus turning water into wine. A speaker at a conference I attended stated emphatically that it would have been IMPOSSIBLE for Jesus to turn water into wine, since (in his words) fermentation is a process of death, and Jesus is life, and life can’t cause death. Although I knew very little about nutrition at the time, I knew enough to know that this was BS. I may never have heard of kefir or kombucha, but I knew that yogurt is fermented milk, and yogurt is good for you. Process of death, my fat Aunt Fanny.
LikeLike
It’s a shame the gymnastics we go through sometimes to justify a doctrine or a theory. My Catholic apologist buddies sure go above and beyond too often, but not as far as some of the haters. And I think the atheist-apologist scientists of ill-repute (esp, climate gurus) go farther than anybody has ever taken it. I suspect there are voodoo priestesses in Haiti who are blushing because they didn’t think of Michael Mann’s or Al Gore’s schtick first.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Fermenting is life. It preserves food and makes it more nutritious and delicious.
One small example … fermenting cabbage produces Vitamin C. Long before they even knew what Vitamin C was, ship captains knew that taking barrels of sauerkraut on long voyages prevented scurvy.
Wikipedia says, “Scurvy often presents initially with fatigue, followed by formation of spots on the skin, spongy gums, and bleeding from the mucous membranes. Spots are most abundant on the thighs and legs, and a person may look pale, feels depressed, and be partially immobilized. As scurvy advances, there can be open, suppurating wounds, loss of teeth, yellow skin, fever, neuropathy and finally death from bleeding.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
I got a cabbage in my CSA box this week. I guess I know what I’ll be doing with it! 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dunno if you have any nori sheets on hand. I have had a package for ages. Although I love the flavor, I don’t like the sheets. I tried making rice rolls and they are so messy … the damp nori is stretchy and hard to bite off. One day I noticed my favorite brand of rice cakes had nori flakes on it. I love them! So I tore up a bunch of my sheets and beat them into bits in my blender. I am now using this as a seasoning. It’s so good! I added some to my last few batches of kraut. YUMMMMMMMM.
LikeLike
Good stuff, Chrissy!
LikeLike
And funny thing … Today’s Verse is Psalm 119:93 “I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have preserved my life.”
LikeLike
To start with, Milady sends her appreciation of your research, chrissy. ♥ As ever.
And I say, those grapes in the picture look delicious (although at first I thought they were blueberries – mmm I’m not a fruity wine drinker, but I do wonder what blueberry wine might be like).
Sorry. Meandering mind. Back to my intended comment.
cth: Jesus drank grape juice, not wine…
As Doc Brown might say, these people just aren’t thinking fourth-dimensionally. You nailed it, of course, chrissy, but I’ll add my 2¢s; anyway.
[Idiot dusts off soapbox, climbs up, clears throat pretentiously as if he knew beans from butter]
‘Twas a different age.
First of all, “don’t drink the water” was the rule. Unsafe at any source. So, people drank fermented beverages. Potable, portable. Alcoholic content surely varied, but it didn’t have to be 100-proof to just be safe, right?
To my reading, Jesus was (at least) twice offered “vinegar” on the cross. The gospel accounts of these instances are scant and perhaps a bit confusing – um – anyway, to a poor student of scripture like m’self. Today, if someone said “Got anything to drink?” and you gave them what we call vinegar, you’d think it was a cruel joke. That’s what Luke 23:36 reads like. But folks – especially Roman soldiers – drank a common sour wine – sometimes called vinegar. They may have been mocking him (part of the job requirement for Roman executioners), but what the soldiers offered when Jesus needed to un-parch to say his final words (e.g.. Matt 27:48, John 19:29) was presumably genuine thirst-relief, not a mean trick.
Which should not be confused with that sop Jesus refused because it was poisoned (Matt 27:34). Some folks took it upon themselves to sneak poison to the condemned to dull their pain or even hasten their death. I’m sure many a suffering crucifixee was glad for the mercy-relief of suicide, but Jesus, of course, refused the narcotic.
Huh. I thought I was just making all this stuff up, but then I read about Gall in the Christian Answers dictionary. (Heh.)
And I’ve never thought it trivial that when Jesus, at his mommy’s urging, let slip a bit of divine authority at the Cana shindig, he didn’t just make “vinegar.” The Best Man, host of the feast, had no clue that the wine was of miraculous origin. We have the eternal testimony of his mistakenly saluting the Father of the Bride on saving the best stuff for last! That weren’t no grape juice! That was six (wasn’t it? pardon me not running to BibleGateway again) big water-jugs of the finest wine.
Of course, they didn’t have water for the purification ceremonies, but nobody noticed because then the party really got into full swing, and late the next day, everyone was amazed they had no hangovers. Um… that part may be apocryphal.
Be of good cheer!
LikeLiked by 1 person
No hangovers. LOL.
LikeLike