It is ascertained that to get drunk in Palestine at the time of this christ was a route many people took to fight against the terrible living conditions under Jehovah God!

Also, nobody had to be caught drinking & driving on the dusty roads leading to Jerusalem; so, the folk drank and invited Jesus to join, what was wrong with that?!…

It is calculated that half of the high-alcohol content drinks on sale at that time was used to help people die happy, according to Proverbs 31:7!!!

 It's fair to note that the passage from Psalms has other words too... the point of the passage is for those in power to defend the oppressed, and that drinking wine/beer (possibly to excess) may impede that mission.

Proverbs 31:2-8 (Today's New International Version)

² Listen, my son! Listen, son of my womb! 
       Listen, my son, the answer to my prayers!    ³ Do not spend your strength ^{a</a>]" style="font-size: 0.75em; line-height: 0.5em; ">[a]} on women, 
       your vigor on those who ruin kings.    ⁴ It is not for kings, Lemuel— 
       it is not for kings to drink wine, not for rulers to crave beer, ⁵ lest they drink and forget what has been decreed, and deprive all the oppressed of their rights.    ⁶ Let beer be for those who are perishing, wine for those who are in anguish!    ⁷ Let them drink and forget their poverty 
       and remember their misery no more.    ⁸ Speak up for those who cannot speak fo themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. 

 

First of all the wine in biblical times was no where near what we have today.  To many times people read the scriptures and try to put them in today's context.  The fermentation process back then did not go on for years like it does today, more like weeks.  This being the case, it was merely a fraction as alcoholic.

 

To pauljohntheskeptic: In Luke 7, what was being pointed out was the hypocritical nature of the people.  John proclaimed the Way as an outcast and was a "demon."  While Christ was amoung the people, "eating and drinking" and he was a "glutton and a drunkard."  This was not meant to be a factual statement about the character of Jesus.

With due respect, "latincanuck" shows how the human ego wants to be its own god. "The human mind is an idol factory," wrote John Calvin. You say that you do not believe, yet there is something about the Christian observance of the Lord's Supper that attracts you. Whether fermented wine is used or not is relatively unimportant. That it signifies the blood of Jesus Christ is very important. That the Bible was written by and for real people does not rule out the possibility that God was the divine Supervisor of the process, even of the words themselves, which are inerrant in their original manuscripts. Noah got drunk, Lot got drunk, Uriah the Hittite got drunk -- they were real people. And these real people interacted with the Living God.

Nor does it rule out the first Pope having been Peter Rabbit but both are without physical evidence so they are equally bullshit.

 

These assertions about ego, and the clarification that Noah, Lot and Uriah got drunk is supposed to prove what exactly ?  IOW. Where are you going with this ?

The drinks may have been quite strong as distillation was a technique that was making its way to Europe. It didn't become popular in the Roman Empire until about 100 AD but there is evidence it was used throughout the Arab world for thousands of years. When you distill wine you can get over 70% alcohol by volume which is then aged to mellow it out. Alcohol evaporates more quickly than water so the alcohol level slowly dissipates and after 40-50 years it will stabilize at around 40% ABV. So it is quite possible that what they called "wine" might have been what we call brandy today or perhaps a fortified wine (where you add brandy to a wine that has not been distilled to increase alcohol content). Given that they probably didn't have the patience to age for 50 years back then anything distilled was probably much stronger than what you would pick up in your local liquor store.

The idea that wine somehow had a lower alcohol content back then is absurd. As latincanuck pointed out, they used pretty much the same process and aging does not make wine stronger. Wine has a pretty stable alcohol level after fermentation and if it changes at all it would become lower, although not enough lower to make any noticeable difference.

Also, there is significant evidence that beer back then was much stronger than it is today and adding water to weaken your beer was a common practice. Could you imagine anyone putting water into their Bud Light? 

 

 

 

                     Wealthy Romans may have aged their wines up to 10 years, mellowing the alcohol as it aged, but not likely the common people of rural Palistine.   Ancient Greeks began their symposiums by first deciding how much to cut the evenings wine supply,  if a long conversation was desired they may cut at 3 parts water to 1 part wine, if a short night was desired the cut might be 1 part water to 4 parts wine; since the symposiums ended when the participents were too drunk to continue [or passed out] .  Weather the guests left that night or slept it off and departed the next day the good host would be at the front gate with one more cup of wine and the blessing "drink this in rememberance of good times, or drink this in rememberence of  me".

 

 

                    I don't recall any passage in the bible that says they cut the wine with water to make it less potent, so those guys must have been sloshing it back straight at 50% to 70% alcohol, then died of liver deseise in  their 40's.