You have to remember that the climate in that area NOW, the desiccated wilderness that exists NOW, at one point did NOT exist.
The Middle East used to be greener and wetter than it is now. The cedars of Lebannon were not fiction, although they no longer exist.
Changing climate, deforestation, and soil depletion led to the present landscape of the Middle East. It didn’t always look like that.
I DO know enough about grape juice and wine to know durn good and well that it’s PROBABLY wine by the time it reaches the consumer’s table somewhere in 33 A.D., REGARDLESS of where it came from…
whenever anyone tries to tell me that the wine Jesus and friends drank was just grape juice, I send them to read the story of the Marriage at Cana where Jesus turned water into wine. (John 2: 1-11) the high quality of the wine Jesus made was noticed and people remarked that usually the best wine was served first, and the lesser quality wines served once the guests had well drunk of the first, better tasting wine. This one story pretty much refutes the grape juice theory for me.
I’m a Methodist, and we use grape juice for communion, to avoid problems for those who have problems with alcohol.
I was raised Methodist, and I had plenty of little thimble sized glasses of grape juice in my youth. And I have heard plenty of arguments about who’s doin’ it wrong, the Catholics, the Methodists, the Baptists…
Still have a hard time believing that two thousand years ago, people walked into a public house and ordered a big ole frosty mug o’grape juice.
Uh, so this thread gets all the way to #25 and nobody says…
WELCOME BACK MASTER WANG-KA OH GOD WE’VE MISSED YOU
I believe that was quickly mentioned in another one of his very recent threads.
And will continue to be mentioned in his next thread! 
So far, since his return, Sir Ka has only made 3 or 4 posts–so there are, unfortunately, many Dopers who have not yet been informed of the good news.
Spread the word!!!
I knew Israel wasn’t a desert, but I was astonished to find out just how lush some parts are. Tel Aviv looks much greener than LA (which is actually a desert town).
Merely a tiny remnant of what was once a magnificent forest.
The lily-white folks at my luke-warm baptist church didn’t go the pure “Grape juice” route. They would tell us kids that the wine they had back in the bible was “Not like todays wine. It was a lot closer to grape juice.” So apparently they just debated the ABV, not the presence of alcohol or lack thereof. A lot harder to argue since it’s about degree rather than a black/white issue. But, by god, we used grape-juice for the communion.
Yer elders’ statement is debatable, but certainly not necessarily false. I think I prefer it to Vince’s ironclad statement that Jesus drank the moral equivalent of Welch’s.
In mat 26:29, we have a reference to tou genematos tes ampelou, the produce of the grapevine, clearly a translation of the Hebrew phrase pri hagafen used to refer to wine in Jewish ritual.
In John 2:9, we have it clearly stated that Jesus turned the water into oinon, wine.
The Methodist church I attended in my old town used red wine for Communion, with white grape juice for people who for whatever reason did not want or could not have alcohol.
In fact, Welch’s hit it big because they were the first company to figure out a way to make grape juice stay non-alcoholic long enough to store and sell it. Before then, unless you picked and squeezed the grapes yourself, grape juice just wasn’t a thing.
But that’s precisely what we should all do. A faith that can be shaken by a measly grape isn’t real faith. It’s blind adherence to an oligarchy (or mob, or cult…).
Would you hesitate to “shake a man’s faith” in his belief in a flat earth? Or in “all dogs are boys and all cats are girls”?
Or his belief that he can take a pizza out of the oven bare-handed? No, you’d tackle him and then refute it.
Actually you can–with care. I bake my pizza on a stone. Obviously, I have to be very careful not to touch the stone. But the crust itself won’t be that hot. Also avoid touching the cheese. YMMV
You’re more venturesome than me. The most I can steel myself to do is grab the teabag from my hot tea with my bare fingers if the paper tab has fallen in and I don’t want to look for a fork. Requires some speed in order not to feel a slight bit of pain in the fingers.
Perhaps what I should have said was “I hate to make a man suffer needlessly.”
A crisis of faith can kick the guts out of a fella. On the other hand, I STILL REMEMBER listening to that chucklehead rattle on and on and on and ON for HOURS… as if SHEER REPETITION AND PERSISTENCE will somehow get people to See The Light, as opposed to annoy them half to death…
A faith you never wrestle with is one not worth holding, IMHO, but I can see how others would feel differently.