Many would say that John the Baptist is not a good excuse for the case of abstinence, as he was a Nazarite from birth.
It is interesting that when going over the Nazarite vows, one can see that John may not have been a Nazarite as supposed.
The Nazarite vows were more than abstaining from wine and strong drink, they also could not cut their hair (we find no command that John was forbidden to cut his hair), they were forbidden to eat any thing at all from the vine (John was not given such command, although we know his diet was locust's and wild honey), they were forbidden to be near a dead body (I can not find that command given for John).
Zaccharias was not given instructions as to John following the Nazarite vows completely, so I do not believe verse 15 is referring to a Nazarite vow.
Actually, you have no idea what instructions Zaccharias was given.
All you know is what is in the Bible.
That does not mean those are the total instructions given, unless of course you have a time machine and were there.
The instructions given to Zaccharias were written there in that first chapter of Luke.
IF it were a Nazarite vow, surely the Lord would have told him that John would be a Nazarite as he told Manoah's wife in Judges 13.
'He shall be a Nazarite'
The truth is, that is the only instance of God telling a mother that her son was to be a Nazarite.
One could take the Nazarite vow described in Numbers 6 on ones, own, but there is only one instance of one being a Nazarite from birth.
Brother Bob - Please do not call me ignorant for I am not.
I totally agree that wine can be made by hand - and why I was saying that's probably how the Amish do it!!
LOL - you know, they're not into modern conveniences and such!!
Of course, they DO get around that by using propane and such so they could most certainly have a press but they're known for doing things the 'simple' way.
I was just making a joke.
Loosen up, brother!
Hi Brother Bob... only a handful of good experiences until it got taken over by the same old tired arguments as in every other thread.
I'm sorry if you fail to see one so called "experience".
Regardless of anyone...eh?
What about the Lord of Hosts? Isa 25:6 And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.
Yayin means wine.
In the OT it meant wine, and in the 21st century it means wine.
The fact that it can burst wineskins, make someone drunk, clean wounds and kill germs mean that it's alcohol.
Fermentation does not make something completely different.
Translators regularly encounter single words that mean two different things in other languages.
Please consider the very different meanings of "know" in the Bible.
Or the meanings of the English word "cleave."
A word like this is called a contronym.
Also, from the Jewish Theological Seminary website:
Biblical Hebrew contains a small number of words that bear antithetical meanings. These words are more than homonyms with dissimilar meanings like bear (to carry) and bear (the animal.) Their meanings are diametrically opposed to each other. Moreover, in English, homonyms usually derive fortuitously from different origins, whereas in biblical Hebrew the polarity of meanings seems to inhere by design in one and the same word.
Yet when you look up the definitions of the original word, there are multiple words listed
- yet yayin means just one thing that I've found - wine.
Yayin=wine
I've not seen anywhere that says yayin=wine, juice, liquid from a grape.
John Kersey’s Dictionarium
Anglo-Britannicum, or A General English Dictionary,
published in London in 1708, says: "Wine, a liquor
made of the juice of grapes or other fruits. Liquor or
Liquour, anything that is liquid; Drink, Juice, etc.
Must, sweet wine, newly pressed from the grape."
Benjamin Marin’s Lingua
Britannica Reformata or A New English Dictionary, published
in 1748, defines "wine" as follows: "1.
the juice of the grape. 2. a liquor extracted from other
fruits besides the grape.
Yes - wine is a liquid made from the juice of grapes.
To get to the 'newly pressed from the grape", that is the 6th definition - certainly NOT the standard definition for the day.
Besides, I do not have access to the full definition so I will not be taking that as 'gospel'.
I understand where you got that definition and it is obviously edited from the dictionary.
I wonder why?
What did they remove?
Most "pagans" know intuitively that the prohibitionist position is laughable and laugh at such persons as rediculous.
And most pagans associate such silliness with Christianity though they know intuitively that is problematic
So yes, having a few beers with some "pagans" has proven very productive at times.
It busts up all their stereotypes of Christians of the sorts with beams in their eyes - Christians of the sort who will rant and rant and rant against having a few beers or some wine, which is Biblically permissiable, which is something most pagans know well in their God-given conscience.
"Wow, I thought all Christians were like those small-worlded, mean-as-the-devil, Baptists I grew up around."
"No, not at all, but I sure know what you mean!"
:laugh:
So go ahead.
Feel free to call me a friend of sinners and a drunkard.
I will consider it a true honor.
We have the full definition in God's Holy Word.
He plainly shows wine is both fermented and unfermented.
The dictionaries both affirm this, historians affirm this and yet you and others want to deny it.