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45 3 ReligionandAlcohol the paths of christianity and islam The relationship between alcohol and religion began thousands of years ago. As we have seen, much of the earliest evidence of alcohol, whether in China or the Middle East, has been found in contexts suggesting it was used in religious ceremonies of various kinds. In many ancient and classical cultures, gods were associated with various alcoholic beverages, especially beer, wine, and mead; Bacchus and Dionysus are only the best known. Alcohol was not the only commodity to have dedicated deities—in Greece, Demeter was the goddess of bread, fruit, and vegetables—yet wine and beer were more consistently linked to religion. Why that was so is a matter of speculation. According to one common argument, the feelings of relaxation, light-headedness, and disorientation that result from drinking increasing volumes of alcohol (a progression that is prosaically called mild to severe intoxication) were sensations so different from drinkers’ quotidian experience that they were thought of as “otherworldly.” Alcohol elevated the drinker to sensory dimensions that were understood as having spiritual or religious significance. Positively or negatively, the association between alcohol and religion may be thought of as a historical constant, but Christianity and Islam—two religions that emerged in the same millennium—forged unique, divergent, and persistent relationships with alcohol. Christianity elevated one alcoholic beverage—wine—to a position of centrality in its symbolism and rituals, while Islam is the first major religion known to have rejected alcohol entirely and to have forbidden its followers to drink alcoholic beverages. There were precedents for both. On one hand, wine was central to the ceremonies of the cult centered on Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, and integral to Jewish doctrine and ceremonies; on the other hand, some pre-Christian Jewish sects and secular laws (such as Sparta’s) prohibited the consumption of alcohol. 46 religion and alcohol But these latter were marginal or short-lived bans. In contrast, Christian and Muslim doctrines on alcohol have had long-term meaning for their millions of followers and have endowed alcohol with much of the religious freight it carries to this day. The direct background of the Christian position on alcohol was the Jewish Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament of the Christian Bible), which contains many references to wine and the effects of drinking, as well as a reference to beer in a Greek version (but not in the Hebrew and later translations).1 In the New Testament, however, the grapevine is the most frequently mentioned plant, and there are many references to wine; but beer is not mentioned at all, even though it was widely consumed in the eastern Mediterranean in the first centuries of the Christian era. There is a debate among some biblical scholars and commentators about the meaning of various terms and how biblical references to alcohol should be interpreted. Although some biblical texts can be read as treating the consumption of wine in a positive light, others are neutral, and yet others are indisputably negative. One text in Genesis treats wine in a matter-of-fact way, as integral to dining: “And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine.”2 Another text celebrates wine: “Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works.”3 The therapeutic uses of wine were also recognized. Timothy advises, “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine other infirmities,”4 while Luke alludes to wine’s antiseptic qualities: “And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine.”5 Yet other biblical texts appear to warn against any drinking, such as, “For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink.”6 Many of the biblical texts dealing with wine make a clear distinction between moderate and excessive drinking and condemn the latter : “Be not among winebibbers [drunkards]; among riotous eaters of flesh”7 and “Likewise must the deacons be grave, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre.”8 In these cases, excessive drinking was condemned alongside other forms of excess, such as gluttony and moneygrubbing . It is likely that the abuse of wine, not wine itself, was the specific target of condemnation, just as food and money were not, in themselves, subjects of criticism...

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