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 in the celebration of the Eucharist.
Why then do several Protestant denominations in America—including many Methodist and Southern Baptist churches—claim that Jesus never drank alcohol?
029
Ironically, it was the European wine industry that put in motion the idea of a teetotaling1 Jesus, by financing Louis Pasteur’s research to find a method to destroy the bacteria that were spoiling their vintages.
In 1865 Pasteur discovered that the bacteria in liquids such as wine, beer and milk could be killed by heating the liquid to a temperature of about 140°F for about 25 minutes. The process, which came to be known as “pasteurization,” did not alter the liquid’s taste or alcohol level.
Pasteur’s experiments were noted across the Atlantic Ocean by a Vineland, Massachusetts, dentist named Dr. Thomas Bramwell Welch. Welch, a pious Methodist communion steward, was becoming increasingly disturbed that many of his fellow parishioners were having a hard time stopping with just one drink at communion on Sundays. Welch felt they were profaning the Sabbath by continuing to drink in their homes and in taverns after services. He set out to produce a preservable nonalcoholic grape juice.
Welch simply applied the pasteurization process to freshly squeezed grape juice, rather than the fermented juice Pasteur used. In 1869, he succeeded in producing the first preserved nonalcoholic fruit juice.
Welch’s invention rapidly took off due to both his religious conviction and his astute business sense.
Gradually, religious communities began serving what they called “unfermented sacramental wine” at Sunday communions. The Evangelistic Department of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in 1874 included a division devoted entirely to securing the use of unfermented wine at the Lord’s Table. In 1891, Tennessee Baptists proposed a resolution requiring churches to serve only unfermented wine, but the motion created some controversy among those Baptists who interpreted the Bible literally. The resolution was tabled. The Congregationalist Moses Stuart advanced a “two-wine theory,” using scriptural and historical evidence to suggest that the Bible must be describing two types of wine—fermented and unfermented. Jesus, they proposed, drank only the latter. Some Baptists as well as Christians from many other traditions adopted Stuart’s view. Yet this view was refuted by John A. Broadus, a prominent 19th-century Baptist scholar who claimed that Jesus drank wine simply because it was part of his culture. If Jesus had lived in the 19th century, Broadus suggested, he would have drunk coffee or tea. Gerrit Smith, a New York philanthropist active in the temperance movement, argued that if Jesus had known about the evil effects of alcohol, he would have used grape juice. He also claimed that those who followed Jesus’ practice and drank wine at communion were committing a sin.2
Welch’s son Charles, who introduced thousands to grape juice at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, wrote in his will: “Unfermented grape juice was born in 1869 out of a passion to serve God by helping His church to give its communion ‘the fruit of the vine,’ instead of the ‘cup of devils.’”3
Proponents of a teetotaling Jesus have gone to great lengths to argue that Jesus abstained from alcohol. Some have argued that pasteurization was known 2,000 years before its inventor was born, while others have made the equally absurd claim that all of the wine in the Bible was freshly squeezed grape juice.
But wine was esteemed in Jesus’ world, as is reflected in the use of the Greek word for wine (oinos) 26 times in the New Testament. This elite heritage is mirrored in the Hebrew Bible, where four terms for grape wine (yayin, tirosh, hemer and asis) occur 185 times.4 These biblical citations include prohibitions against drunkenness—further evidence that the biblical beverage was most certainly not nonalcoholic (Proverbs 20:1; Isaiah 28:1; Titus 1:7).
Jesus’ imbibitions of alcohol are by no means a negative aspect, however, as consuming both wine and beer in moderation is frequently praised in both the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah 24:9; Proverbs 31:6; Ecclesiastes 10:19) and the New Testament (1 Timothy 5:23). Wine is consumed in the covenant meal between Moses and Yahweh on Mt. Sinai’s summit (Exodus 24:11). If libations can be understood as alimentary in function, than ancient Israel clearly believed God had a deep thirst. The Israelites offer Yahweh libations of 3 1/3 hins (about 13 bottles) of wine on the first of each month (Numbers 28:14) and four hins (about 8 cases or 192 12-ounce cans) of beer (shekar) per week (Numbers 28:7–10).5
Textual evidence, as well as preserved ancient wine and wine residue, all indicate that Jesus’ wine—like that drunk throughout the Greco-Roman world—was likely sweeter, more concentrated, and held a higher level of alcohol (15%) than most modern vintages (12.5%).6 (For more on the kind of wine drunk at the Last Supper, see the forthcoming article by Elizabeth Lyding Will in BR’s sister magazine, Archaeology Odyssey.) However, wine was rarely consumed undiluted in first-century C.E. Israel. So the Book of Maccabees recommends: “Just as it is harmful to drink wine alone, or, again, to drink water alone [!]…wine mixed with water is sweet and delicious and enhances one’s enjoyment” (2 Maccabees 15:39).
The faulty notion that Jesus drank nonalcoholic grape juice simply places the cultural baggage of the modern temperance movement on first-century C.E. Israel.
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 […]
You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.
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.
