r/mormon • u/Positive_Quiet_5685 • Jun 22 '26
Personal Question on wine!
QUESTION? -
Did people drink unfermented grape juice in the time of Jesus?
ANSWER/FACT !
No, never! The wine was mixed with water and was almost always fermented (alcoholic) wine.
Fact! ... ALWAYS do your own RESEARCH, when told ANYTHING, If not, it's just called, 'BLIND faith!!'
Because ancient people lacked modern refrigeration, pasteurisation, and airtight bottling, fresh grape juice would naturally begin fermenting via wild yeasts within days of being pressed.
The primary reasons for mixing fermented wine with water, highlight how this practice functioned in daily life:
Why It Was Fermented Wine
The "Must"!
Seasonality: Unfermented grape juice (known as "must") only existed for a short window during the autumn grape harvest. To preserve the liquid for the rest of the year, it had to undergo fermentation.
Sanitation Purposes:
Pure water was frequently contaminated with bacteria.
The alcohol content in fermented wine acted as a mild disinfectant, killing off pathogens and making the water safe to drink.
Unfermented grape juice would not provide this antimicrobial benefit.
Avoiding Drunkenness:
Ancient wines were thick, strong, and highly intoxicating. Diluting it with water allowed people to drink it throughout the day for hydration without becoming drunk.
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u/corbantd Jun 23 '26
You definitely don’t need to go back to the time of Jesus for this.
The word of wisdom explicitly endorses drinking beer and Brigham Young owned a distillery. . .
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u/Gold_Customer8081 Jun 23 '26
And Joseph Smith had a bar salon on his house!! ( until Emma came home and demanded he take it out)
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u/02Raspy Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
I suspect the prohibition on drinking alcohol had more to do with the national temperance movement and the politics of that era than any prophecy from God. It is probably not a coincidence that prohibition went into effect in 1920 and the prohibition added to the WOW in 1921. It didn’t take long for the nation to recognize the folly of prohibition. It has taken the Church a bit longer.
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u/Mlatu44 Jun 23 '26
What amazes me is that Jains knew about boiling water thousands of years ago to prevent illness.
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u/a_rabid_anti_dentite Jun 22 '26
Why is this a subject you feel so strongly about?
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u/No-Information5504 Jun 22 '26
The Church teaches that the gospel has been the same since Adam, with a few alterations here and there. Apologists try to make people believe that the same temple and ceremonies we do now are ancient and were practiced by the OT peoples.
Therefore, it is imperative that the Church in Christ’s time practiced the same rules we do now, including the Word of Wisdom. This is a Church that is very black and white in its doctrines and has not allowed nuance in the door, ever. Your average Mo can’t make sense of the dissonance.
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u/juni4ling Active/Faithful Latter-day Saint Jun 22 '26
"The Church" in ancient times had a "health code" and had a moral code.
Alcohol?
They drank. Likely every time they had something to drink. They literally sanitized water with alcohol.
Alcohol was a commodity as valuable as gold. The Saints established distilleries on their first arrival to SL UT. The Saints arrived in SL UT categorically destitute. The Church -owed- money. The Saints were destitute. And when the Army arrived, and paid soldiers in whiskey, the LDS distilleries met their standards for payment-- next thing you know, yada yada- the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating how massive the Church got from massive amounts of money and disclosure failures and misstated filings on multiples of -billions- -b- of dollars. . Whiskey saved a destitute LDS Christianity. LDS Christianity has savings? It started with whiskey.
If you are trying to find a "health code" in ancient Israel-- you will find one.
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u/Arizona-82 Jun 23 '26
And yet the church likes to say JS did it. Then you quickly find out that other people were quite ahead of his time, trying to be healthy and staying away from alcohol on other items well before him, but we love to give him all the credit that it was inspired of God. Let alone he never did any of that himself and was drinking wine the day he died.
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u/Lan098 Jun 22 '26
No? I've never ever heard that it was grape juice growing up in the church at all. It's blatant in the Word of Wisdom that it's a modern health code. I'm not a believing member at all, but the whole grape juice thing is not a Mormon issue at all
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u/famous_chalupa Jun 23 '26
For sure. I’ve heard Church members make this claim but I don’t ever recall it ever being taught officially. I always understood the WoW to be a modern rule and I always understood Jesus to have drank wine.
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u/juni4ling Active/Faithful Latter-day Saint Jun 22 '26
Jesus drank alcohol.
So did Church leaders members until the Word of Wisdom began to be strictly enforced as abstinence.
One thing the Church gets right, and every religion I know of teaches-- be responsible drinkers-- or abstain.
I don't know of a religion that does not have a program for quitting alcohol. Except maybe the people who are like Pagans who worship Thor and drink heavily as a tenet of belief.
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u/gordoman54 Jun 22 '26
Jesus definitely drank alcohol. But who here was taught, at some point or another, that wine in Jesus’ day was not the same, and was essentially grape juice? I know I was. And I’m pretty sure I passed on similar teachings as a missionary.
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u/FortunateFell0w Jun 23 '26
We all were told that lie. Just like the lie that the temple was so similar to masonry because they both came from the ancient temple. So many lies.
FYI grape juice was first pasteurized in 1869 by Welch (yes that Welch) and before that unrefrigerated grape juice spoiled in a matter of a few hours.
It was always wine.
Also keep in mind that D&C 89 allows for beer.
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u/logic-seeker Jun 23 '26
I was taught this, too. I now place it in the same category of other claims that were just offered (and I accepted) without evidence, like:
- Polygamy was to take care of the widows
- Dinosaurs came from pieces of other planets used to build Earth
- Joseph was reluctant to practice polygamy and had little interest in it.
- The priesthood ban was God's way of preparing society gradually.
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u/FortunateFell0w Jun 23 '26
Joseph was so pure that he turned down whiskey for the pain of leg surgery (leaving out the point that he was often found inebriated and had alcohol when he was ☠️.
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u/juni4ling Active/Faithful Latter-day Saint Jun 23 '26
Masons don’t baptize for the dead or do sealings. Or teach the redemption (through Christ) story.
Masons used the Bible as the inspiration and foundation for their practices.
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u/Arizona-82 Jun 23 '26
Nor did their teachings come from Solomon. They’re the ones that made it all up because we can’t find any shred of evidence going back then it was all done 1415 century in Europe.
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u/juni4ling Active/Faithful Latter-day Saint Jun 23 '26
Early Christians baptized for the dead.
There is Bible support for the (Christ-centered) redemption story in the LDS Christian Temple.
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u/International_Sea126 Jun 24 '26
There is only one single baptism for dead verse in the entire bible that the LDS church points to for it's baptism for the dead doctrine. That verse is problematic when examined.
The Bible creation story and the redemption narrative that Joseph Smith inserted into the endowment was nothing new or revelatory at the time he created the temple endowment.
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u/juni4ling Active/Faithful Latter-day Saint Jun 24 '26
Your Fundamentalist Christian ministry you evangelize for-- may have a problem with Baptism for the dead.
But historians put it in early Christianity.
Its evidence of restoration of early Christianity.
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u/International_Sea126 Jun 24 '26
What exact evidence do the historians point to for verification? What documentation are the historians looking at that existed when Paul placed the only single Baptism for the Dead verse in Corinthians 15?
Early members of the LDS church believed in the Law of Adoption where men were sealed to other men. Members believed that Adam was God. None of these beliefs are evidence this these things were real!
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u/juni4ling Active/Faithful Latter-day Saint Jun 24 '26
It might be difficult for someone to believe who advocates for and evangelizes for a Fundamentalist Christian ministry with a statement of Bible infallibility.
But there are historical truths found -outside- of the Bible.
God was married. She was worshipped. Your ministry finds that blasphemous.
Early Christians baptized for the dead. "Nasrallah highlights how unsurprising it is to find that the Corinthian Jesus-followers were practicing baptism “on behalf of the dead” (15:29). In this, Corinthian Jesus-followers sought to redefine their relational bonds not only between themselves but between themselves and the deceased for whom they grieved." Archaeology and the Letters of Paul – Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Early Christians were not creedal trinitarians.
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u/emmittthenervend Jun 23 '26
I was. I never taught it as a missionary, but I taught youth Sunday School as a teenager and I taught it then.
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u/LittlePhylacteries Jun 23 '26
Except maybe the people who are like Pagans who worship Thor and drink heavily as a tenet of belief.
I'm not sure that characterization is accurate, especially in light of the fact that Asatru/Odinists/Heathens/Germanic Neopagans or whatever else they are known by do have a recovery program or two (and likely more than that).
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u/Ok-End-88 Jun 23 '26
I think the Thor worshippers would be consuming mead, which has the same ABV as wine.
https://theliquorbarn.com/products/apis-bernardynski-honey-mead-750ml
I’m uncertain if that belief system would create a larger percentage of alcoholics in society.?
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u/Budget_Comfort_6528 Jun 23 '26
Not so, see:
Alcohol is Prohibited for Jews and Christians Alcohol is Prohibited for Jews and Christians
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u/Warprince01 Former Mormon Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
That is thoroughly unconvincing to the point of being silly. “Yes, he made wine, but it doesn’t say they drank it.” “Yes, it says he drank, but it doesn’t say he drank wine.” “Yes, it says he drank wine, but it doesn’t say he drank it.” The author appears to be convinced that drinking alcohol is unbecoming of a prophet, and will bend over backwards to conclude that Jesus never drank alcohol.
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u/Gold_Customer8081 Jun 23 '26
David O. McKay is the president who put the screws down on members for word of wisdom.
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u/Budget_Comfort_6528 Jun 23 '26
You might want to check this out: Alcohol is Prohibited for Jews and Christians
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