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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > April 2002

Jesus the Teetotaler

How Dr. Welch put the Lord on the wagon

By Michael M. Homan, Mark A. Gstohl

Jesus drank wine (Mark 14:23–25; Matthew 26:27–29; Luke 22:17–18). He even produced wine: When the alcohol supply dwindled at the wedding in Cana, a youthful Jesus turned six jars of water—holding 20 to 30 gallons each—into wine (John 2:1–11). Pretty impressive for a guy’s first miracle. For centuries, Christians have commemorated Jesus’ imbibition at the Last Supper by drinking wine during Holy Communion. The Catholic Church has always used wine during eucharistic celebrations, as did all Protestant denominations until just over a century ago. Martin Luther along with John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli agreed that wine should be used […]

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Endnotes

1.

Despite popular belief, a “teetotaler,” a person who abstains completely from alcohol, has nothing to do with tea. Rather, the word stems from a dreidel-like top popular in Europe from the 16th to 19th century. The tops had four lettered sides, one of which was inscribed with the letter T for Latin totum, “all,” signifying “take all.” Thus teetotaler became a term used for somebody practicing total abstinence from something, such as alcohol.

2.

Whitney R. Cross, The Burned Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850 (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 216.

3.

See Betsy A. O’Brien, “The Lord’s Supper: Fruit of the Vine or Cup of Devils?” Methodist History 31:4 (1993), p. 221.

4.

See Carey Ellen Walsh, The Fruit of the Vine: Viticulture in Ancient Israel, Harvard Semitic Monographs 60 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000).

5.

See Michael M. Homan, “Beer, Barley and rK;ve in the Hebrew Bible,” in the Festschrift for David Noel Freedman on His 80th Birthday (forthcoming).

6.

James Davidson, Courtesans and Fishcakes (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), p. 40.