Talk about stretching and mangling words beyond recognition to force fit a preferred stance.
Drunk means drunk... Full of food means full of food.
Eat And Drink.it speaks of both so one does not mean the other.
2000 years ago they did not have refridgeration.
Fermenting of grape juice (only available for harvest in season) was the only way to store the stuff.
Otherwise you just had rancid putrid likely coagulated, mildly fermented germ ridden slush.
Alcohol free wine is a relatively modern invent .
Just to note. Personally I drink absolutely Zero alcohol.
Though for the sake of communion in fellwship I would do so so as not to offend another.
But I would not impose that upon another.
But nor would I consider having a car trunk Bbq with bears in the sports car park to be Godly behaviour .but a conforming to the world and a terrible witness of Jesus.bringing his Good name into disrepute. (ie, not loving him but rather dishonoring him )
But to mangle words to fit a non scriptural prohibition... Is just dishonest.
2. The Meaning of the Verb Methuo
"Filled to the Full." It is generally assumed that drunkenness occurred at the Communion table of the Corinthian church. But is this true? Those who believe so base their conclusion on the common translation of the verb methuei , namely, "is drunk." The whole phrase in the RSV reads: "One is hungry and another is drunk" (1 Corinthians 11:21). On the basis of this translation many reason that if intoxicating wine was used by the Corinthians without apostolic rebuke, it can also be used by Christians today.
The fundamental fallacy of such reasoning is that it assumes that methuo means only "to be drunk." But our study of its usage in John 2:11 has shown that the verb methuo does not always signify intoxication and drunkenness. The context determines its exact meaning. In this case methuei is used antithetically to peina "hungry" and this requires that the verb be understood in the generic sense of "satiated" rather than in the narrow sense of "drunk."
Leon C. Field makes this point clearly and conclusively: "Methuei , in this case, is plainly contrasted with peina which is correctly rendered as 'hungry.' The antithesis, therefore, requires the former to be understood in the generic sense of 'surfeited,' not in the narrow sense of 'drunken.' The overfilled man is compared to the underfilled man. This is the interpretation adopted by the great body of expositors, ancient and modern."
Scholarly Support. Among the expositors cited by Field are Chrysostom, Bengel, Grotius, Wycliff, Kuinoel, Bilroth, MacKnight, Newcome, Bloomfield, Clarke, Lightfoot, Dean Stanley, and Whedom. Another who could be mentioned is Clement of Alexandria, who lived only a century and a half after Paul. In his Instructor (book 2, 1), Clement, as A. W. Samson points out, "contradicts the suggestion that intoxicating wine was there used. He indicates that it is food rather than the drink of the feast to which Paul refers, and that he reproves them for 'clutching at the delicacies,' for 'eating beyond the demands of nourishment.'"
Adam Clarke makes the same point in his commentary on this text: "The people came together, and it appears brought their provisions with them; some had much, others had less; some ate to excess, others had scarcely enough to suffice nature. 'One was hungry, and the other was drunken, methuei, was filled to the full;' this is the sense of the word in many places of Scripture."
The Greek translation of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint, provides numerous examples where methuo is used in the generic sense of "filled to the full." One of them is Psalm 23:5 which says: "my cup overflows" (methuskon -full to the brim). Another example is Psalm 65:10: "Thou waterest its furrows abundantly [methuson]." Yet another is Jeremiah 31:14: "I will feast [methuso -satiate] the soul of the priests with abundance." Examples such as these clearly show that methuo is often used in Scripture in a generic sense to express full satisfaction, satiety.
http://mijoko55.com/files/Myths about wine and alcohol in the Bible part 2.pdf
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Filled or Drunk?
Because of the general meaning of this Greek word
methuo, some has presumed that
methuo means primarily drunk or drunkenness. With this, John 2:10 can be interpreted so that Jesus intoxicated the people at the wedding feast in Cana, and others interpret 1 Corinthians 10:21 to imply that “the fruit of the grapevine” of the Lord’s Supper was alcoholic and people could get drunk from it. This article proposes upon facts that this is all misinterpretation.This is true. The Greek word
methuo is the word used to show that the act of being filled with an intoxicant is a sin (Rom 13:13; 1 Cor 5:11; 6:10; Gal 5:21; Eph 5:18; 1 Thess 5:7). The word
methuo refers to one being filled with an intoxicant being a sin while not necessarily being intoxicated. First Peter 4:3 has a different Greek word
oinophlugia that is often translated “drunkenness,” but the word is literally made of two different words for “wine” (
oinos) and “filled” (
phlugia).
A Word Study
Here are the uses of
methuo from the Greek Old Testament that show that the word does not exclusively imply intoxication:
- Psalm 23:5, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; My cup overflows.” *Was God getting David drunk in front of his enemies?
- Psalm 36:8, “They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house, And You give them drink from the river of Your pleasures.” *Notice the parallelism between “abundantly satisfied” and “give them drink from the river.”
- Psalm 65:9-10, “You visit the earth and water it, You greatly enrich it; The river of God is full of water; You provide their grain, For so You have prepared it. (10) You water its ridges abundantly, You settle its furrows; You make it soft with showers, You bless its growth.” *These same verses use the words methuo. Here, God waters the earth abundantly, but He does not get it drunk.
- Isaiah 34:5, “For My sword shall be bathed in heaven; Indeed it shall come down on Edom, And on the people of My curse, for judgment.”
- Isaiah 34:7, “The wild oxen shall come down with them, And the young bulls with the mighty bulls; Their land shall be soaked with blood, And their dust saturated with fatness” (cf. Deut. 32:42, Jer. 46:10). *See the parallelism between “soaked” and “saturated”.
- Isaiah 51:21, “Therefore please hear this, you afflicted, And drunk but not with wine.”
- Isaiah 55:10, “For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, And do not return there, But water the earth, And make it bring forth and bud, That it may give seed to the sower And bread to the eater,” *The earth is not intoxicated, but filled with water.
- Isaiah 58:11, “The LORD will guide you continually, And satisfy your soul in drought, And strengthen your bones; You shall be like a watered garden, And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.” *Note the parallelism between “watered garden” and “waters do not fail”. The garden was not intoxicated.
- Jeremiah 31:14, “I will satiate the soul of the priests with abundance, And My people shall be satisfied with My goodness, says the LORD.” *Also, compare “satiate” to its parallel “satisfied”. The priests were not intoxicated.
- Jeremiah 31:25, “For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul.” *Note the parallelism between “satiated” and “replenished”.
- Lamentations 3:15, “He has filled me with bitterness, He has made me drink wormwood.” *Notice also the parallelism between “drink” and being “filled”.
- Haggai 1:6, “You have sown much, and bring in little; You eat, but do not have enough; You drink, but you are not filled with drink; You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; And he who earns wages, Earns wages to put into a bag with holes.” *Again, note the parallelism between “not filled” with “not have enough”.
With this knowledge, one can interpret:
- John 2:10, “And he said to him, ‘Every man at the beginning sets out the good wine, and when the guests have well drunk, then the inferior. You have kept the good wine until now!’” *These are filled, but are not drunk.
- 1 Corinthians 11:21, “For in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others; and one is hungry and another is drunk [filled].” *Each person is filled and not drunk.
Notice also the parallelism in the scriptures above showing that
methuo means to be filled. This is also seen in
Ephesians 5:18, “And do not be
drunk [
methuo] with wine, in which is dissipation; but
be filled with the Spirit”.
*The actual instruction is to not be filled with wine, rather than simply not be intoxicated or drunk.
Reconsider the Biblical Concept of Drunkenness
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They had various ways to preserve grape juice.