1 Timothy 5:23
Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.
Can’t Bring Yourself to Type the Word “Ass”?
Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!
Interesting. Maybe if the illiterate shepherds and tribesmen of the pre-modern era would have taken some time to actually make connections between gastrointestinal disturbances and the source of their drinking water, and notice that their animals were drinking from, shitting in, and pissing in the same water they themselves were taking water from, they wouldn’t have become a bunch of winos. Perhaps religions wouldn’t have developed so much influence on human societal organization, if people had attempted to listen to the people who did make those observations instead of burning them at the stake or lopping their heads off for contradicting the religious leadership. Leadership, that I suspect had a financial and political stake in keeping people drunk and unhealthy to maintain their influence.
Even I am sometimes amazed at what humans think are My words.
I am what am
@1 It seems to me if they didn’t understand the connection between the cleanliness of drinking water and intestinal upsets, then they would have made their wine from the same dirty drinking water with the same results.
P.S., You might want to think twice before drinking wine made in 5,000 B.C.
@3 Water used in wine? What are you drinking?
@1
Even if the noticed what were their options?
No fences to keep the animals out of the water.
No plumbing system to bring in fresh spring water to where they were camped. They would have to send someone to carry the drinking water back to camp everyday.
Pretty wise advice, from my perspective.
This is the sort of verse that leaves the fundamentalists holding their chest and gasping for air. Paul, their very favorite apostle, is telling them to “drink wine”.
Hey Puddy, any thoughts on this one?
A priest I knew in college wrote a biography of Paul and sent it to me years ago. I haven’t read it yet, but I’m having some wine right now.
Fer Christ’s sake, Jesus had wine at the ‘last supper’.
8
He also turned water into wine at a wedding, presumably so that everyone might enjoy themselves a bit more. Christians who don’t drink ignore the Gospel. Puddy, thoughts?
proud leftist,
He did…and there are more than a few fundies who will NEVER forgive him for that.
The Christianist clerics’ take on this verse would be prefaced with the phrase: ‘What God really meant was, blah, blah, blah,….’
Ancient men learned that alchohol, vineger, and salt were safe preservatives and reduced disease. Few communities in the Middle East and N. Africa had little access to safe running water from the hills. Jerusalum at least had an underground tunnel system to bring in water from springs during seiges and for general use. In the old testiment, you see a lot of fighting going on over access to, and control over, wells. A lot of time wine would be mixed with water for everyday drinking purposes (anyone who drinks just wine would become dehydrated, and the alchohol in the wine would help kill bacteria).
This passage reflects common usage at the time. The discussion arose because there was general confusion over whether, and to what extent, Jewish dietary laws applied to Christiams. Some Jewish Christians continued to follow the Jewish dietary restrictions, and insisted that the gentiles convert to the Jewish practices. Others claimed that the Jewish Christians still had to follow the Old Testiment rules, but gentiles were free to ignore them. Others said both Jews and Gentiles were free of the old rules.
Add to this the admonitions against drunkenness and glutony, as well as Pentecostal Christians being subjected to claims that they were drunk on wine, rather than “drunk on the Holy Spirit”. So some first century Christians decided that they should abstain completely. Timothy was warning against that, in the quoted passage.
The modern “temperance movement” began in the mid-1880’s as an outgrowth of calvinist/puritan ideology, and as a response to the rather unhealthy levels of alchohol consumption at the time. During the Civil War there were frequent references to a rather astounding level of consumption of alchohol, especially among the officers. In society generally, beer consumption was encouraged by the fact that beer goes bad rather quickly in warm weather and without pasteurization of refrigeration, so it wasn’t unusual for common workers to buy beer by the bucket from the tavern and drink it all in one night, every night. Improved sanitation of water supplies made the reduced alchohol consumption possible.
So the explanation you often hear from Evangelicals is that this is an “obsolete” passage, made unnecessary due to advances in the safety of water supplies. Of course, that’s a rather slippery road for those who insist on literal interpretation of the Bible and it’s applicability in it’s entirity to modern life.
I like my own pastor’s take on it. Nobody’s going to go to hell for light drinking. But lots of people can’t drink lightly. So some of us (myself included) generally abstain as an example to others. But I even make the exception for business dinners, when I am required by foreign custom to use alchohol during “toasts”.
Gee, looking back at my spelling in my previous post, it looks like I was guilty of TWI (typing while intoxicated).
Now who gets to decide that certain passages of the Bible are “obsolete”? Sounds like someone is changing God’s rules here.
@ 14
“Gods” rules. Written by men with agenda. Who needs “god” when you can claim to speak for him? God doesn’t enter the picture except as a fall guy for the clergy to lay blame on for their own behavior, and the rules they write to maintain their employment status as his representatives, so they don’t ever have to sully their hands with real work.
Why plow a field when you can convince the people who do, to hand over their hard earned money to you for the benefit of some obscure myth? It’s the oldest form of snake-oil.
No doubt one of the many reasons why the clerics resisted translation of the Bible into something readable by the common man. They not only see the contradictions and foolish commandments, they encroach on the clerical monopoly of interpretation. Better to have the word of God handed down through a human intercessor who can filter out the “inappropriate parts” of any given book.
Notice how all the Bible Thumpers like Puddy have disappeared from this site? Better to stick to friendly territory like their Bible Study Fellowship meetings.
If ancient Jews had discovered cannabis instead of wine, history would definitely be different!