If You're Going to Quote the Greek...

This article was originally published on TheBeerean.com. I made the decision to leave the article intact including references to TheBeerean.com.

I love my wife. I do! She’s fiercely loyal, stubborn in all the good ways, has a deep, abiding love for the Lord, and can attract all sorts of controversy with an innocuous Facebook post. I’m not kidding.

We had a date night, as all you men should have with your wives, and she said on her Facebook something to the effect of, “Had a glass of wine with my hubby; it’s okay, Jesus made it,” in a double reference to John 2 and Psalm 104:15.  Some self-righteous young man posted on her wall that “This was going to be fun.”  You know, ‘cause it’s fun ripping into your brothers and sisters in Christ.

He then proceeded to deconstruct the Greek, which is amazingly fun as well, like watching the terrible sitcoms that were supposed to teach you German or Spanish or French or Swahili or the language with clicks.  This young man claimed that the “wine” in John 2 at the wedding in Cana wasn’t wine but that the Greek word oinos means some sort of unfermented juice, and that same word was never used anywhere to talk about anything fermented.

I know what you’re thinking: “I came to your website for the beer, not the wine, and the beer tips, not the exegeses or hermeneutics or whatever you kids are calling it these days.” And trust me, I feel you, so I won’t use the word “perspicuity” (fun to say though it is; seriously, try it out. Per-spi-cuity! Pure genius, that word.), but since I like beer and it is fermented hops, and I like the Bible and it says things about fermented stuff, I had to get this off my chest. Besides that, we’ll learn an important lesson about trying to make the Bible fit what you believe and how that’s bad. Then you can use it on your friends!

Now, I can read (English, not Greek) so I decided to read some books on Greek (in English). Unfortunately for our young man, I own William D. Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words, Spiro Zodhiates’ Complete Word Study Dictionary of the New Testament, and Warren Trenchard’s Complete Vocublary Guide to the Greek New Testament. These aren’t fringy documents; biblical scholars use them all the time. Looking up the word "wine" in Mounce, I found that he says that “Jesus, like most people, likely drank wine, as can be seen by the exaggerated accusation that he was a ‘glutton and drunkard,’ used by his opponents to mean that he did not fast nor abstain from wine.” Thanks, Dr. Mounce!

Trenchard offers some variations on the word, oinos, including paroinos, or drunkard. Now, I’ve been to some crazy Lord’s Suppers in my day, but I have never seen anybody go Corinthian and get drunk off of the Communion grape juice. Which reminds me, do NOT let me forget to tell you about my first experience with Communion wine at a Lutheran church in Lawrence, Kansas. Apparently, if you don’t know what’s coming, you don’t shotgun it.

Zodhiates pointed out something else to me. “Oinos” is used in Mt 9:17 with the bursting of the wineskins in that parable.  Here is the deal…they can’t burst unless there is fermentation. You know, wherein sugar is converted to alcohol, usually by the addition of yeast, resulting in tasty, tasty wine or beer. So yeah, I guess oinos does mean wine in other sections of the Bible, not Welch’s.

We don't try to make the Bible say something it doesn't to fit our agenda

As Christians, if we agree that Bible is true, we also have to make another agreement: we don’t try to make it say something it doesn’t to fit our agenda. Study the book, and repent when you find out you are wrong. I’ve had to do it. I had to apologize to a buddy of mine who stood quietly while I trampled all over his theology, only to study the Word and find out I was wrong about it. To be honest, another reason I love my wife is that she forgave me for being a legalistic tightwad like our young man when it came to how the Holy Spirit can and does work in our lives when I should have seen the Bible tell me I was wrong.

So repent of your self-righteousness; be humble, even when you disagree and maybe you to will see things differently than you had because you submitted to the Bible and didn’t try to make it submit to you. And if you are going to quote the Greek, you best be damned sure you are right!