Soil, Soul, and the Sacred Cup: Wine in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament with Mark Scarlata

Natalie MacLean
Jun17th

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Introduction

How did wine transform biblical meals into symbols of the covenant in the ancient world? Why did overflowing vineyards and giant clusters of grapes become such powerful symbols of the Promised Land? Why did religious leaders label Jesus a glutton, a drunkard, and a friend of sinners?

In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with Professor Mark Scarlata, author of Wine, Soil, and Salvation in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.

You can find the wines we discussed here.

 

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Highlights

  • What makes the Bible’s first meal with bread and wine so significant?
  • Why does the “cup of salvation” become one of the Bible’s most enduring images?
  • How did wine become the ultimate symbol of communion in the Christian faith?
  • Why did the spies return from the Promised Land carrying an enormous cluster of grapes?
  • Why do biblical visions of salvation so often involve overflowing wine and lavish feasts?
  • Why was abundant wine associated with the coming of the Messiah?
  • What was Jesus communicating by turning water into wine at Cana?
  • How did the prophets transform the “cup of salvation” into a symbol of judgment?
  • Does Proverbs contain what may be the world’s first hangover story?
  • Why was Jesus accused of being a drunkard and a friend of sinners?
  • What does Jesus really mean by new wine and old wineskins?
  • What does the terrifying winepress imagery in Revelation actually symbolize?
  • If Mark could share a bottle of wine with anyone in history, why would he choose Moses?
  • What can wine teach us about humanity, community, and our connection to the world around us?

 

Key Takeaways

  • How did wine transform biblical meals into symbols of the covenant in the ancient world?
    • Had Melchizedek brought out bread and water, if he just gave Abraham sustenance, it would have been fine. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it would have been a sign of kind of okay, here’s some bread and water. This will sustain your body. But once you include wine in that meal, something elevates that meal and some biblical scholars will say that that becomes a type of covenant meal, a covenant meaning a legal agreement in the ancient world, that bound you to somebody else. What’s so wonderful about that is Abraham has saved the day and he’s done all this military stuff and driven out the bad kings and brings peace to the land. And there is something about how that then relates to a kind of celebration, and the joy and the victory in this case that God has given Abraham that Melchizedek celebrates as well. It gives us a sense of the importance of sitting down with somebody and breaking bread and drinking wine.
  • Why did overflowing vineyards and giant clusters of grapes become such powerful symbols of the Promised Land?
    • That wonderful story of them coming back with the grapes on the pole is a wonderful vision of the fruitfulness of the land, but not only the fruitfulness, but the fact that you can make so much wine. And we see similar things. There’s an ancient Egyptian text that talks about the wine flowing like rivers in the land of Canaan. The Egyptians always used to go and attack the land of Canaan, and they talk about the king’s armies when they went there because the wine flowed like rivers. The army was just drunk every day. So there’s all these testimonies of this wonderful fertility of the land. But then the fact that the vines grow and produce so much wine is part of the mystique of the Promised Land. It’s just this place that’s bursting with abundance and wine and life and all these types of things.
  • Why did religious leaders label Jesus a glutton, a drunkard, and a friend of sinners?
    • N: Jesus did drank wine and did drink wine and was called a glutton and a drunkard and a friend of tax collectors and sinners. How did he react?
    • M: I guess he did and he didn’t. The interesting thing that I think Jesus would have experienced in his lifetime is that they didn’t level these criticisms against him without some element of truth being involved. And the likelihood is that Jesus would have, as a typical Jew growing up in Galilee around that time, celebrated the Sabbath every week and most likely they would have had wine at the Sabbath if they were able to afford it. He certainly would have had wine growing up at the Passover festival, at other festivals that they celebrated throughout the year. And so I think the criticism of him as a drunkard and a glutton means that the element of truth is that he was out eating and drinking with people who were the people that the Pharisees thought were the sinners of society.

 

About Mark Scarlata

Mark Scarlata is Senior Lecturer in Old Testament at St. Mellitus College, London. He is also the Vicar-Chaplain at St. Edward, King and Martyr, Cambridge, and the Director of the St. Edward’s Institute for Christian Thought. He has spoken on wine and faith internationally and continues to write on the subject.

 

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Transcript

Natalie MacLean 00:00:00 How did wine transform meals in the Bible into symbols of the covenant in the ancient world? Why did overflowing vineyards and giant clusters of grapes become such powerful symbols of the Promised Land? And why did religious leaders label Jesus a glutton, a drunkard, and a friend of sinners? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions. In part two of our chat with professor Mark Salata, author of the new book wine, Soil, and Salvation in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. You don’t need to have listened to part one first, but if you missed it, go back and have a listen after you finish this one. By the end of our conversation, you’ll also discover why the cup of salvation became one of the Bible’s most enduring images. What Jesus was communicating by turning water into wine at the wedding of Cana. Why? Biblical visions of salvation so often involve overflowing wine and lavish Feasts. Why abundant wine was associated with the coming of the Messiah. How the prophets transformed the cup of salvation into a symbol of judgment.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:09 Whether Proverbs contains what might be the world’s first hangover story. What Jesus really meant by new wine in old wineskins. What the terrifying winepress imagery in revelation actually symbolizes. Why Mark would choose Moses? If you could share a bottle of wine with anyone in history and what wine can teach us about humanity, community, and our connection to the world around us.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:43 Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places, and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean, and each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle, please, and let’s get started.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:25 Welcome to episode 394. What’s new in the drinks world? Well, this week in fur, feathers and fermentation, the lead story goes to a serenading rooster.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:36 Epsilon tequila from Mexico has had a rooster on the bottle ever since its founding, and that is also the symbol of Mexican national pride and of the brand’s attitude. So when the team decided to name the artwork on the new extra anejo a serenata, a romantic Mexican tradition of serenading someone beneath the window, or a very rude early morning wake up from our foul feathered friend. The rooster wasn’t just a decoration. According to the brand, its liquid is serenaded during fermentation. Music and sound waves are played through the distillery, as the yeast does its work, with the belief that the vibrations physically shaped the character of the spirit before it reaches the barrel. So while roosters are not actually serenading the tequila, this does give the brand something to crow about. Meanwhile, canine companions find their refreshment at the Faux Wine Australian LA bakery brand that recently launched Prosecco, a non-alcoholic grape free beverage made especially for cats and dogs. Formulated using coconut, pomegranate and cranberry, the pet beverage allows owners to share a celebratory toast with their pets without a hangover.

Natalie MacLean 00:03:54 I’d say that’s perfect for the dog days of summer. Over in Iceland. A distillery in Reykjavik has tackled the island’s lack of local trees and traditional peat bogs by smoking dried sheep dung for the malt. This centuries old Icelandic smoking method, traditionally used for preserving meat, imparts a surprisingly complex, sweet and earthy flavor profile to the grain, establishing a unique Nordic whisky category. And I’d say that brings this week in for feathers and fermentation to a crappy end, but I think that’s probably just bad humor, Meanwhile, following devastating wildfires, Australian researchers recently discovered that adding a milk protein to smoke tainted wine can bind to the unpleasant ashy compounds, safely, filtering them out. This dairy based fining technique acts like a molecular sponge. Rescuing a vintage from tasting like a campfire without stripping the wine of its fruit characteristics high in the arid Coquimbo Region of Chile. A brewery is using water harvested from thick coastal fog, known as the camanachd, for using fine mesh nets on the mountainside. They capture the microscopic water droplets that roll off the Pacific Ocean, yielding pure, soft water that gives their beer a smoothness and an airy lightness.

Natalie MacLean 00:05:18 These cloud borne water droplets lack the heavy minerals found in traditional aquifers, those large underground reservoirs of water. So the sky really is the limit for beer innovation. Not to be outdone, the Mexican Tourism Board in Berlin, Germany, created a tequila cloud inside a local art gallery using ultrasonic humidifiers to vaporize 100% blue agave tequila into a floating mist. The cloud was programmed to rain drops of liquid tequila into visitors shot glasses whenever it rained outside. Merging meteorology and mixology. A winery in Chile recently released a Cabernet Sauvignon dubbed Medio Prieto, which is aged with a 4.5 billion year old meteorite resting directly in the barrel. The ancient extraterrestrial rock, which crashed into the Atacama Desert thousands of years ago, purportedly imparts a robust and lively tasting note to the wine, giving new meaning to a wine that tastes out of this world. Boy, I’m on a roll today. You’re either gagging by now or rolling along here with me also wanting to be part of the Sky High club, several wineries are sending their vines and wine into low Earth orbit to study how zero gravity affects the aging process.

Natalie MacLean 00:06:39 By monitoring the chemical evolution of these space aged bottles on their return. Producers hope to unlock new flavor profiles that can’t be achieved under normal atmospheric pressure And for your calendar. This week, June 17th, is Eat All Your Veggies Day, a great excuse to pair Sauvignon Blanc with asparagus, a Caesar with celery, or a garden gin spritz that suggests cultural superiority without necessarily having it. June 18th is International Picnic Day and International Sushi Day. Pack a sparkling wine, chilled Riesling or a crisp lager, then pretend you meant to bring chopsticks instead of three forks. June 19th is National Martini Day. The martini might be the only drink that can make silence feel curated. Originally known as the Martinez. Invented during the California Gold Rush in the town of the same name, it’s a cocktail with more opinions attached to it than almost any other. Try a classic dirty or with a lemon twist and a bowl of salty snacks. Order a briny Gibson with three cocktail onions, or try a 5050 gin and vermouth. Split or freeze a batched version into adult popsicles.

Natalie MacLean 00:07:51 June 19th is also Juneteenth, the U.S. holiday that commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. So poor something worth celebrating. June 20th is National Chenin Blanc day. National Ice Cream Soda Day and National Vanilla Milkshake day. Poor South African Shannon Black would take out Ty, make a sparkling wine float, or spike a milkshake if dessert has a signed release form. National Vanilla Milkshake Day actually celebrates the invention of the electric blender, making it a great excuse to blend dark rum into your ice cream or float a shot of whiskey right on the top of whipped cream. June 21st is World Lambrusco Day, National Smoothie Day, and Father’s Day. World Lambrusco Day was created in 2011 by a group of producers from Italy’s Emilia Romagna region who wanted to promote this delightfully fizzy, sparkling red Papa Chill bottle with charcuterie or a pepperoni pizza poured over ice with an orange slice for a makeshift spritz. Mix it into a fruity sangria pitcher or serve it with peaches and cream. It’s also National Smoothie Day, so a rosé smoothie is on the table, and it lands on Father’s Day and the summer solstice this year, so toasts the man who’s had the most positive impact on your life.

Natalie MacLean 00:09:10 June 22nd is National Onion Rings Day, built for pale ale, dry cider or something bubbly because fried onions understand texture better than most people. June 23rd is International Bellini Day and National Hydration Day. Pour prosecco with a peach puree, make a zero proof peach spritz, or drink water even if you own cocktail glasses. Back to today’s episode. Congratulations to Rocco Fasano from Maple, Ontario, who has won a copy of I Bought It So well, drink It, the Joys or Not of Drinking Wine by Charles Jennings and Paul Kirs, as well as Geoff Kennedy from Durham, England, who has won a copy of The Cheese Cure How Comt and Camembert Fed My Soul by Michael Finnerty. If you’d like to win a copy of one of the six books I have to give away from previous episodes, please email me and let me know that you’d like to win. It doesn’t matter where you live, I’ll choose seven winners randomly from those who contact me at Natalie at Natalie MacLean dot com. Get them for yourself or give them as gifts.

Natalie MacLean 00:10:13 And if you’re reading the paperback or e-book or listening to the audiobook of my memoir, Wine Witch on Fire rising from the Ashes of Divorce, defamation, and Drinking Too Much, a national bestseller and one of Amazon’s best books of the year. I’d love to hear from you at Natalie at Natalie MacLean. Com there’s a terrific free guide for book clubs. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide at Natalie MacLean. Com slash 394. Okay, on with the show. Absolutely. Now, the first meal you say in Scripture is, I’m going to butcher this.

Mark Scarlata 00:10:53 Melchizedek Melton. There you go. Thank you. Melchizedek. Yes, yes, you should do that too, because you know that the largest bottle is called the Melchizedek.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:02 Oh, look, I can barely say Nebuchadnezzar, so.

Mark Scarlata 00:11:05 Yeah. That’s true. Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:07 I should remember that. Okay, so he brings out the bread and wine for Abraham after battle. What pattern starts there and runs all the way? Do you think to the Last Supper? What threads are there?

Mark Scarlata 00:11:19 There’s something about.

Mark Scarlata 00:11:20 Had Melchizedek brought out bread and water? If he just gave Abraham sustenance, it would have been fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it would have been a sign of kind of. Okay, here’s some bread and water. This will kind of tide you over. This will sustain your body. But once you include wine in that meal, something elevates that meal. Some biblical scholars will say that that becomes a type of covenant meal, a covenant meaning just a legal kind of agreement in the Old Testament and the ancient world that bound you to somebody else. And it might very well have been a kind of a covenant ceremony at some point. But but I think the point is that in what’s so wonderful about that is Abraham has to save the day, and he’s done all this kind of military stuff and driven out the bad kings and brings peace to the land. And there is something about how that then relates to a kind of celebration and the joy and the victory in this case, that God has given Abraham, that Melchizedek celebrates as well, early Christian kind of what they call the church fathers.

Mark Scarlata 00:12:24 The leaders of the church interpreted kind of Melchizedek as a foreshadowing of Christ bringing bread and wine in the Eucharist. But I think what it does is it gives us a sense of the importance of wine and sitting down with someone at the table, although it doesn’t say that they’re at a table, but sitting down with somebody and breaking bread and drinking wine, it just becomes this very powerful sign of kind of the bond between humanity. The celebration because of the gifts, God’s given. Again, we have these passages about lifting up the cup of salvation. Where do you do that? You do that around a dinner table. You do it around a table at a feast. It’s like we raise a glass to toast someone, whether at a wedding or a big banquet or whatever it is. And there’s something so powerful about that gathering together and that and doing so over a glass of wine. I think that kind of makes it that much more special, that communion.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:25 And I think I’m really rusty on this. But Jesus said, wherever bread is broken and wine is consumed, there I’ll be.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:33 I’ll be with you when you do this.

Mark Scarlata 00:13:35 Whoever 2 or 3 are.

Mark Scarlata 00:13:36 Gathered in the.

Mark Scarlata 00:13:38 Certainly in the upper room, it’s the drink this in remembrance of me. This is my blood of the new covenant. It’s the preparation for the actual Eucharist. The words that the priest would say. The Institute, the Eucharist. But yeah, that’s exactly it. It’s that reminder of. And I think, obviously in the Christian faith, that’s where wine becomes the ultimate symbol in the Eucharist. Christians believe that it depends on what Christians you talked to you about that. So the blood of Christ is the wine. And so there is this kind of very significant moment of what’s happening there, but it’s being done through wine and through bread at the table. Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:15 Now the 12 men that Moses sent out to scout the promised land bring back clusters of grapes so heavy two men have to carry it in on a pole between them. So I guess grapes are visual proof that the Promised Land is worth fighting for.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:29 This is the symbol again. Another wine symbol that this is what we’ve been waiting for. Right.

Mark Scarlata 00:14:36 Yeah.

Mark Scarlata 00:14:36 I think that wonderful story of them coming back with the grapes on the pole. And That’s the national symbol of Israel of the current. The modern state of Israel is a wonderful, just a wonderful vision of the fruitfulness of the land. But not only the fruitfulness, but the fact that you can make so much wine.

Mark Scarlata 00:14:52 And we see similar.

Mark Scarlata 00:14:53 Things, you know, it’s Oh, I can’t remember the name of the text, but there’s an ancient Egyptian text that talks about the wine flowing like rivers in the land of Canaan. The Egyptians always used to go and attack what was called Palestine, of the land of Canaan, which is modern day Israel and modern day Palestine and parts of Lebanon. And they talk about when they went there because the wine flowed like rivers. The army, they were just drunk every day.

Mark Scarlata 00:15:17 So it sounds like a good time to me. Exactly. Yeah. I don’t know that your army would be worth very much if they were a jug every day.

Mark Scarlata 00:15:23 So there’s all these kind of testimonies of kind of this wonderful fertility of the land. But then the fact that the vines grow and produce so much wine is part of the mystique of the Promised Land. It’s just this place that’s bursting with abundance. Yes. abundance and wine and life and all these types of things. Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:15:42 Yeah. Because I think, I don’t know if this is the same thing you’re referring to, but you note that the Hebrew prophet Amos writes that the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. It’s a beautiful metaphor or visual evocation. And then Isaiah’s feast to mark the end of the world features, well aged wines strained clear on God’s holy mountain for all peoples. Why do you think it was well aged wine rather than young? And why open to everyone rather than just Israel?

Mark Scarlata 00:16:12 So, well, aged wine. Even the ancients knew that wine that is older usually gets better, so they knew that they also would have wine fresh. Exactly. But they knew that the good stuff exactly was stuck somewhere in an amphora, in a cool space.

Mark Scarlata 00:16:27 That was when it was broken out. It was something absolutely special. And so there are some funny there’s some good quotes from Greek and Roman authors about the natures of old wine and how the old wine always better. It’s always the preferred wine. So the fact that God serves well aged wines to his people and invite and creates this banquet. One of the things that’s fascinating about that passage that I find particularly fascinating. I was doing my research. Is that in correspondence with that? So there were these Canaanites or these other tribes that lived around Israel when they lived in the land, had their own myths, and they had their own gods and all these other kinds of things. And there’s a story of one of their gods, this god called Baal. And after his great victory, he and the other gods are, I think, seven days or 14 days or something, like just having a bender, drinking so much wine and God. And it’s like, this is what the gods do. And what’s so fascinating about the biblical text is it’s not God kind of drinking excessive and copious amounts of wine.

Mark Scarlata 00:17:28 It’s God actually preparing a banquet table for his people to come and to drink wine. These well, aged wines that were probably only reserved for royalty. And there’s something really very different about how the biblical authors understood kind of the nature of God and the nature of his relationship with his people. And I think that banquet motif is such a critical one, and that carries over also into the New Testament. And that’s part of the reason why it’s so important that Jesus was associated with wine is because so much in the so about 200, give or take, 200 years before Jesus is born. So before kind of zero A.D., there were all sorts of different Jewish writings that aren’t in the Bible, but, you know, you can read them. And one of the things that was so interesting that I found was that there was an association with the Messiah, or the person who was to come and save everybody in connection with the fertility of the vine. And so there are these passages where the vine produces so many grapes, and one grape makes 50 bottles.

Mark Scarlata 00:18:33 So it was just this kind of like. He’s like obscene numbers. But all kind of representing this time of joy and celebration and salvation. Which is why when Jesus changes so much wine, so much water into wine at the wedding of Cana, there is this underlying message there that this is the one that this is. This is not how we envisaged it. This is not exactly how we envisage it. But like he’s the one who brings the banquet to his people.

Natalie MacLean 00:19:03 Now the Cana, he converted. I guess the specifics are not the point of the story, but I’m fascinated by 20 to 30 gallons of water into 900 modern day bottles of wine, you say, are four 5400 glasses now. Was that for a big wedding or a wedding festivities that were going to go on all week? I mean, why so much wine? That was just an incredible thing. I just want to make a real point. Look, I can do it.

Mark Scarlata 00:19:27 People make the statement. Yeah, I think there’s all sorts of answers to that, probably.

Mark Scarlata 00:19:31 But I think one of them, on a practical note, which is why Mary, his mother, says to him, hey! They’re out of wine. Which in Jesus’s day would have been just such a shameful sign. The shame of the family is that they have this wedding, and the weddings back in Jesus’s day would usually last up until a week. They’d probably be about a week long, so you can imagine that there was lots of wine consumed. And probably I’m not sure how big, but you’ve got to think in that village. I don’t know, maybe kind of 100, 2 to 200 people, maybe something like that small kind of small village in Galilee. And yeah, I’m sure that everybody would have been a part of it and it would have been a part of the festivities. And I’m sure there was some that drank more than others. But the fact that there was this, this wedding and this kind of crisis in the wedding of how do you in some ways, because the question is almost like, how do you celebrate without wine? Former Pope Francis’s question how do you keep this celebration that’s so critical to the life of the family, to the life of the community, to everybody’s celebration.

Mark Scarlata 00:20:33 And then Jesus provides this absolute extraordinary amount. And I think that is such a critical part of saying that Jesus coming in the New Testament and certainly in John’s Gospel, it’s not just about he’s coming to do a job or something like that. He’s just coming to do this one thing. It’s about this explosion and celebration of life that if this truly is the Son of God, then the earth is going to respond. Wine is going to be consumed. Because the other great kind of metaphor in the Old Testament for God’s salvation is the wedding banquet. This great feast, as you mentioned before. And so. Yeah, so symbolically and physically, it’s amazing. Yeah, I have a good story on that one. We take a we just take a group of students to Israel. So when I first started this was before pre-COVID. We haven’t done it in a while, but we used to take kind of busloads of students who wanted to go to see the Holy Land. And we would go and we’d always go up to Galilee and go to Cana.

Mark Scarlata 00:21:29 And so one year, I think it was the first or second year that we went. We stopped by the little village and a friend of mine said, oh, we have to buy a bottle of wine. And so we cracked it open that night at dinner. And no offense, maybe their wine’s gotten better. I don’t want to diminish the wine of Caner, but it was just one of the worst wines I think I’d ever drunk. And we just both started laughing. And we put down our glasses and we said, this is why the miracle was so amazing is because it says Jesus produced something. Exactly. He produced something that was actually people wanted to drink. It was very fast. It was very funny. It was one of those.

Natalie MacLean 00:22:08 That’s a great story. But you’re right, it’s not just the quantity. You also note in your book that the chief steward says, why did you save the good wine until now? Because traditionally they serve the good wine first. And then as people became more and more inebriated in their senses, more numb, they would bring out the schlocky stuff and people would notice.

Natalie MacLean 00:22:27 But okay, they ran out and they came to Jesus and he performed the miracle. But it was the best wine too.

Mark Scarlata 00:22:33 Yeah, yeah. Saving the best for now. And that kind of that now is critical in John’s gospel and the stories of Jesus, because that now is about this time in history, this moment where the Son of God has come. So. Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:22:46 Yeah. The best one is now he is here. So now you count 26 vine related metaphors in the Bible, and note that 22 of them appear in prophecies of harsh judgment. So why did the prophets reach for wine when they wanted to warn people?

Mark Scarlata 00:23:01 I think, again, it goes back to the similar to the idea of what we were talking about before that wine becomes this sign of salvation. You have the cup of salvation. And I think the prophets in the Old Testament are the poets of the Hebrew Bible. They’re not just these predictors of the future. They’re artists. They’re poets. They use language in such a powerful way.

Mark Scarlata 00:23:23 Like a poet or a playwright would. And so what my sense of it is that they take the symbol. Essentially, that kind of holds together this idea of God’s blessing and salvation, which is the cup of wine. And they take this symbol and then they invert the metaphor. So what the cup of salvation is, becomes the poisoned chalice. It makes sense because for the average Israelite, that cup of salvation and drinking that wine would have been one of the greatest things in life. And then to hear the prophet a listen, if you live this way, if you live unethically, if you abuse people, if you cheat people, if you do all the things that I’ve told you not to do, then it’s going to be like drinking from a poisoned chalice. And so I think it just is one of these things that I like about metaphor theory and why metaphors are so powerful, because they connect us to our physical experiences in the world, and then they create that bridge between our physical experience and then what we can understand theologically or philosophically.

Mark Scarlata 00:24:32 And so I think that was probably why the prophets used that, you know, and then it comes in the book of revelation at the end of the Bible as well. But use that idea of drunkenness and this poisoned chalice as something, as a sign of kind of God’s judgment. I think the other thing in the drunkenness part is that if you’re inebriated, it’s a good time for your enemy to attack because you’re not going to be able to defend yourselves. And so oftentimes that metaphor gets used in a way to say drunken Israel or Israel has drunken from this cup, this cup of wrath, this cup of God’s wrath. And because they have done so, they’re enemies now. The Assyrians later, the Babylonians are going to come and destroy them. And so, yeah, so it becomes a really important poetic tool, as it were. It is very interesting to compare the two. When you think of this idea of the cup of salvation in this blessing in life and all these great things. But then, if you’re not obedient to God’s command, a cup of salvation just becomes this cup of wrath and becomes this poisoned chalice.

Mark Scarlata 00:25:34 So yeah, it is an interesting one.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:36 That is. And you just brought to mind something else. Like the cup of salvation, the poisoned chalice. Does Jesus pray in the Garden of Gethsemane? Lord, take this cup away from me.

Mark Scarlata 00:25:48 Yes.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:48 Is that.

Mark Scarlata 00:25:48 One of the.

Natalie MacLean 00:25:49 Metaphors he uses? Right?

Mark Scarlata 00:25:50 Yeah, exactly, exactly. And yeah, I talk a little bit about that in the book and that kind of expresses this, this cup of kind of suffering under the enemy. And Jesus will turn himself over to Rome, Pilate will convict him. And the sense of then Rome will take his life as he’s crucified on the cross. And so that cup of suffering, that cup of bearing a catastrophe, bearing the suffering under Roman power, that in the Christian kind of theology or idea, is that he was the only person who didn’t deserve to drink that cup, The only person who walked the earth that shouldn’t receive that. And yet he chose to to drink from it. So.

Mark Scarlata 00:26:29 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That’s a good point.

Natalie MacLean 00:26:31 Okay, now the wisdom of wine, you say in Proverbs 23, contains what may be the world’s first hangover passage ended with the drunkard saying, when shall I awake? I will seek another drink. That sounds like hair of the dog cure or something. What does it tell us about the sages who had such an intimate, almost comic knowledge of being hungover?

Mark Scarlata 00:26:51 They did. There is some great Egyptian literature on this one as well, about the father going into kind of like the whore house and dragging his son out of his drunk with wine and saying, you need to shape up. Not very unlike today, probably. But yeah, the wisdom literature is wonderful. It’s just that some of it is just very funny. It’s what you said. It’s just a perfect description of.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:12 A buried sentence. If you don’t.

Mark Scarlata 00:27:14 Take it slowly, you can skip right.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:16 Over it.

Mark Scarlata 00:27:17 Yeah. The ancient people knew what it’s like to go out on a drinking bender and then wake up the next day with bloodshot eyes and all of that kind of stuff.

Mark Scarlata 00:27:24 I think the great thing about the wisdom literature is it’s so practical. It’s just these wisdom sayings and teaches you how to live and how to live rightly. And I think one of the important things in that is, is that this is where a lot of the condemning drunkenness comes in, because to be wise, you need to be about your wits. You need to be able to think, you need to be able to act properly. And so you get kind of instructions for how you should behave at a banquet when you’re drinking. And that was actually just as much a part of the Greco-Roman culture as well, and banquet etiquette and things of that nature. But some of the things that I loved in the in the wisdom literature, apart from those stories that you just mentioned, are, again, wine becomes this metaphor for a book. People will call her Lady Wisdom. She’s the one that the parents tell the son, you should pursue this lady wisdom. And there’s this wonderful passage where again, just like you mentioned with Isaiah, that she prepares this feast, that wisdom is like this banquet, this banquet of.

Mark Scarlata 00:28:21 She prepares her wines and it says she has mixed wines. And so sometimes in the ancient world they would mix wines with spices and different things, sometimes hallucinogenic. But in this case, it’s probably more different spices or honey or things of that nature. I think the Greeks were known for mixing their wines, usually with water or salt water even. But this idea that wisdom is this banquet. If you live a wise life, if you act according to wisdom. It’s like sitting down at this banquet with these lovely mixed wines and all of this wonderful stuff. So yeah, yeah, I think the Proverbs and another book is Ecclesiastes. And then there’s not it’s not always included in the wisdom kind of category, but the Song of songs of Love, poetry and the Bible, all of them highlight wine, which again, it’s just one of these things. Again, I wasn’t expecting there to be so much written about wine there, but it is.

Natalie MacLean 00:29:12 Absolutely like, as you mentioned, the Song of Songs, the woman is saying, your love is better than wine.

Natalie MacLean 00:29:17 It’s just it’s a very romantic kind of description as well. So from wrath to romance. Just. Yeah, it really does cover the whole gamut. Now, John the Baptist did not drink wine and was called demon possessed. Jesus did drink wine and was called a glutton and a drunkard and a friend of tax collectors and sinners. He accepts the second label. He doesn’t defend himself against it. Why doesn’t he argue with how they’re describing him? They even use the word. The Greek word on a something means drinker, but with a taste.

Mark Scarlata 00:29:49 Yes, yes.

Natalie MacLean 00:29:51 Yes, yes. But it’s closer to drunkard. So what did he have to say about that? How did he react? Or just. He didn’t?

Mark Scarlata 00:29:59 Yeah, I guess he did. And he didn’t. I think he goes on and uses a story to. He talks about new wine and old wineskins and things of that nature. But the interesting thing I think Jesus would have experienced in his lifetime is that obviously they didn’t level these criticisms against him without some element of truth being involved.

Mark Scarlata 00:30:20 And the likelihood is that Jesus would have, as a typical Jew, growing up in Galilee around that time, he would have celebrated the Sabbath every week, and most likely they would have had wine at the Sabbath if they were able to afford it. And I think it would have been an important part of that. But even if someone argues, we can’t say he drank wine at the Sabbath, but I think he did. He certainly would have had wine growing up at the Passover festival, at other festivals that they celebrated, the Jews celebrated throughout the year. And so I think the criticism of him as a drunkard and a glutton means that the element of truth in it is not that he was a drunkard or a glutton, but the element of truth is that he was out eating and drinking with people who were. Yeah, exactly. The people that the Pharisees thought were the sinners of society. And so that’s a fascinating thing, that one they call him that, but two, that they’re so annoyed by it, they’re just really annoyed that he’s out kind of drinking and carousing, which he’s carousing.

Mark Scarlata 00:31:25 But I just I find that fascinating that it says something about, again, how and this is the kind of, I think my argument throughout the whole book. But again, it says something about the importance of wine, the importance not only of sitting down and drinking with other people and eating with other people around the table. But the importance symbolically of Jesus’s connection to his, what we call a messianic or his being, the Messiah. And this idea of, as we said in the wedding of Canada, this idea of the wedding banquet, this idea of God coming to his people and the celebration that’s involved and all of those things, they’re given life or they’re given meaning through the things that he does, whether it’s healing people or doing all sorts of other stuff. But I think the an important part of it is that he sat down with people and drank wine and broke bread.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:19 Level at their humble tables.

Mark Scarlata 00:32:21 Yeah, exactly.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:22 You know. Exactly. His communion was literally like what they were doing because they had foretold.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:26 Some had foretold the Messiah would be coming on a big horse and full of armor and very fancy. But this humble man who’s actually drinking there really bad wine at Cana, or maybe his own good wine. Yeah. And. Yeah, but meeting them where they’re at.

Mark Scarlata 00:32:42 Yeah, yeah. That’s great. And yeah, that’s such an important part about it. And it gets back to that idea of wine being not a drink for the wealthy, but a drink that could have been made by anybody. Even a poor farmer could have dedicated an acre of his land or a quarter acre or whatever it was to produce wine for the family and for himself. And so, again, yeah, just going back to that idea that it was a drink that marked special occasions, but it was just a drink that also marked life and joy and living and Jesus being present with people around the table. I think that is such a powerful witness.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:17 It definitely is. Now, you mentioned this, the parable of new wine and old wineskins.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:22 It’s something we hear a lot these days, used in different contexts. But is this meaning Jesus rejected Judaism for something new? Or you read it almost the opposite way? What was he saying when he said new wine in old wineskins?

Mark Scarlata 00:33:36 Oh, yes. So this is somewhat complicated. It’s not super clear. I’ll try to make it as simple as possible. So the idea is so he says they basically criticize him and John the Baptist, for he’s the drunkard and the glutton, and John the Baptist is this one who’s fasting. And both of them are wrong somehow. And so what he says is, is that no one takes new wine and puts it into an old wineskin. So you can imagine a dried, almost crusty old wineskin. And if you put something new in it, like new wine, that’s maybe. Maybe it hasn’t fully been fermented yet and there’s still some sort of kind of fermentation going on. If it’s in a flexible skin, then it can let out a bit of the gas and things like that.

Mark Scarlata 00:34:15 But if it’s in an old wineskin, it’s going to burst and it’s going to blow up. Now, traditionally, Christians have argued that Jesus is saying all of the old stuff in the Old Testament, all the old laws. That’s like the old wineskin. And Jesus is the new wine. I don’t think it’s saying that at all. So actually, the passage is within the context of discipleship. The Pharisees are criticizing Jesus and his disciples for eating and drinking, basically. And so Jesus is saying, look, you have to take old wine and put it in the old wineskin. There’s nothing wrong with new wine or old wine. Those are the comparison. It’s more of the substances you’re mixing together, the new wine. So he says. So I think what he’s saying is, look, you can’t take the new teachings. So the Pharisees had these Jewish teachers and rabbis had kind of additional teachings to the Bible and to what God gave to Moses in the Old Testament. And so these additional teachings, I would say are like the new wine, and they’re trying to shove them into kind of the old wineskin, which is more kind of Moses and the law and what we think of as given at Mount Sinai.

Mark Scarlata 00:35:23 And so what Jesus is saying is actually that his teaching is like old wine, that you can put in an old wineskin. And then there’s in Luke’s gospel, at the end of that passage, it says, I know one. After drinking, the new will want to drink it because they’ll say the old is better. And that’s classic. And basically in almost all of like ancient Greek and Roman writings, everybody always wants old wine. You just don’t want new wine. I mean, you drink new wine, but you always want the old wine because it’s better. And so the idea is that Jesus is teaching and his coming and his kind of all the things that are happening through him is like old wine in old wineskins. What he offers is the kind of 100 year old Chateau Lafite or something. He’s giving the people the best. Whereas the Pharisees, with their new teachings and their new ways, are actually trying to shove in new wine into what God has already given in this old wineskin, and then it bursts, and then nothing good comes of it.

Mark Scarlata 00:36:25 So that’s my that’s my interpretation. Some disagree with me, I’m sure, but it’s but I think that’s what he’s saying.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:31 That works for me. Now in revelation has Christ treading the great winepress of God’s wrath with blood flowing as high as a horse’s bridle for a distance of about 200 miles? Is this just like a vision? What does it mean?

Mark Scarlata 00:36:47 Yes, yes. So my take. Yeah. So my take on the book of Revelation is this. That all of these symbols, it’s what sometimes is called an apocalyptic text, meaning apocalypse means, just means to unveil something, to lift up and to see. And so there’s very specific symbolism going on. And so that graphic symbol of. Kind of miles and miles and gallons of blood like wine, I think, is ultimately a symbol for Christians who are reading this that God will ultimately destroy all evil. That there is a time, and I think this is one of the messages of revelations, is that there is a time when Christ will come and that, again, that excess of Christ treading on the grapes and blood pouring out for miles, it’s just really gross and really graphic.

Mark Scarlata 00:37:37 But I think the symbolism of it is that everything that is not good will be destroyed. And then ultimately, in the end of revelation, you have this wonderful vision of the kind of New Jerusalem coming down in this stream, flowing out and flowing out to the nations and on either side, or these trees that are constantly blooming. And so I make a fairly spurious argument that potentially on those trees would have been vines, because it wasn’t uncommon in the Old Testament period to grow fig trees, and sometimes they would trellis the vines up the fig tree, so the trees would basically act as trellises for the vines. And so it’s very possible that some of the fruit that is growing on those trees are grapes for the New Kingdom. And one of my friends disagrees with me on this one. But but I’ll still hold. I’ll still hold to my guns.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:29 I’m not gonna prove it one way or the other.

Mark Scarlata 00:38:31 Exactly. We’ll have to wait and see.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:34 In the end, we’ll all find out exactly what Jesus said he was.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:40 He is the vine. It was just so much that we could explore. But since we don’t have till the end of time, let me ask you if you could share a bottle of wine with anyone outside the wine world, living or dead, who would that be for you, Mark? And which one would you open?

Mark Scarlata 00:38:55 Oh, gosh. Oh, that’s a tough one. Obviously, it would be really fun to be a fly on the wall or sit down at the table with Jesus and the other kind of sinners. to the top table. I mean, that would be really fun. But I think as an Old Testament scholar, I think I would have loved to sit on the top of Mount Sinai with Moses, and I would crack open a it would have to be a simple one. It couldn’t be something overly fancy, or maybe something from southern Italy, like Abruzzo or something like that. It would have to be a simple kind of a basic wine, maybe something from southern France or something like that.

Mark Scarlata 00:39:34 Yeah, I think I’d just love to have a chat with Moses over just a really lovely, simple glass of wine. Ask him. I don’t know what I would ask him. I would ask him about you. Ask him how do you feel after the Exodus? I don’t know. How do you feel about going to the Promised Land? But yes, I could imagine myself on the top of Mount Sinai with the sun going down out of pottery and just sipping something with Moses. I think that would be a I think that would be a treat.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:01 Well, that sounds like the end of our movie. naturally closing. And there they are on the hilltop. The sun.

Mark Scarlata 00:40:07 Sets. Exactly, exactly.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:09 That’s perfect. Mark, this has been wonderful. Is there anything we haven’t covered? I know there’s a lot we haven’t covered, but is there anything you wanted to mention as we wrap up?

Mark Scarlata 00:40:18 No, I think we’ve covered so much. It’s been it’s been an amazing conversation. I think we’ve actually covered almost the whole book.

Mark Scarlata 00:40:25 Yeah. No, it’s just one of these lovely things. It’s I think the other thing, and this is just the other part of what comes out in the book, is just the importance of not only wine in kind of terms of the joy of our humanity and all these other types of things. But wine, as it informs us about who we are as human beings, but then also how we relate to God’s creation. And I think that’s one of the other things that’s so critical that wine can teach us. I do have a throw a plug in. It’s not going to come out until probably next March or something like that. But I’ve written a more kind of popular level book with the title The Cup of Salvation How the Fruit of the vine can save the world. And so it’s a it’s a watch. I’ll send you a copy when it comes out. But it’s but it’s about again what it means to be human. And we’re living in this age. That is there are just so many questions being raised, whether it’s with AI or just the technologies that we have about what it means to be a human being.

Mark Scarlata 00:41:24 And some of the stuff that we were talking about sitting around the table, having a feast, having a banquet, paying attention to one another, not looking at your phone, all of these things, I think, are ways that wine can help us reconnect with not only who we are as human beings, but how we connect to God’s creation. But maybe more most importantly, how we connect with one another and just being able to sit around the table, being able to enjoy a glass of wine, not having to be pretentious about it, but just getting to enjoy people’s company and and enjoy that part of what it means to be human. Yeah, that’s the other thing about one, and I’m sure you’ve experienced it in your own life and in your own days. But then I think it is just such an important thing about what it can teach us.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:09 Amen.

Mark Scarlata 00:42:11 That’s great. There we go.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:14 All right, so, Mark, your book is available, I assume, on all the bookstores, Amazon, Barnes and Noble chapters, Waterstones, all the places people can order your book, and we’ll put links in the show notes so that they can find it.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:27 Is there any other links or anything you wanted to mention, either for your book or for yourself?

Mark Scarlata 00:42:31 No, it should be out. I’m still waiting for it to come out in paperback. It should be out in the other book. As I was saying, we’ll come out in the spring, but no people can look on social media or wherever I’m around. They’re often sometimes posting wine stuff and other things like that.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:44 That’s great. Oh, this has been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much, Mark. It was just wonderful. Thank you for taking the time. I really appreciate all your stories and I’ve learned so much.

Mark Scarlata 00:42:55 Yeah. Thank you. Natalie, there’s been so much fun to chat about it.

Natalie MacLean 00:42:58 All right. Cheers. Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Mark. Here are my takeaways. How did wine transform biblical meals into symbols of the covenant in the ancient world? Had Melchizedek brought out bread and water, or if he gave Abraham sustenance, it would have been fine, as Mark explains.

Natalie MacLean 00:43:23 Nothing wrong with that, but it would have been a sign of. All right, well, here’s some bread and water. It will sustain your body. But once you include wine in the meal, it elevates that meal. And some biblical scholars say it becomes a covenant meal, meaning a legal agreement in the ancient world that bound you to someone else. What’s a wonderful Mark explains, is that Abraham has saved the day. He’s done all of the military things, driven out the bad kings, and brings peace to the land. And there is something about that that relates to celebration and the joy and the victory in this case, that God has given Abraham that Melchizedek celebrates as well. It also gives us a sense of the importance of sitting down with someone and breaking bread and drinking wine. Number two, how did the overflowing vineyards and giant clusters of grapes become such powerful symbols of the Promised land? Mark says that the wonderful story of them coming back with grapes on a pole is a vision of the fruitfulness of the land, and also that you could make a lot of wine.

Natalie MacLean 00:44:30 There’s an ancient Egyptian text that talks about wine flowing like rivers in the land of Canaan. The Egyptians used to go and attack the land of Canaan, and then they would talk about the king’s armies when they went there, because the wine flowed like rivers, and the army got drunk every day. So there’s all of these testimonies of this wonderful fertility of the land. But then the fact that the vines grow and produce so much wine is part of the mystique. It’s a place that’s bursting with abundance and wine and life. And number three, why did religious leaders label Jesus a glutton, a drunkard and a friend of sinners? Well, Jesus did drink wine with sinners and tax collectors and everyone else who was an outcast back then. As Mark says, the interesting thing is that Jesus would have experienced in his lifetime these criticisms against him, and there probably was an element of truth to it. He would have grown up a Jew in Galilee, celebrated the Sabbath every week. There would have been wine. If his family could afford it, it would have been there as well at Passover and other celebrations throughout the year.

Natalie MacLean 00:45:40 So the accusation or the labeling of him as drunkard and glutton, Mark thinks, had a grain of truth in that he was out drinking with people who the Pharisees thought were the sinners of society. If you missed episode 221, go back and have a listen. I chat about blood from a Stone with Adam McCue. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.

Adam McHugh 00:46:07 I was on a wine tour with a guy named Antoine. Chateauneuf du Pape had been one of my favorite wines before I got to this area, and it was the climax of this entire trip for me. So you have all these little trees coming out of these huge round rocks. I didn’t really understand that there was actually soil under there at the time. I thought it was just rock all the way down. And so I asked Antoine, how in the world can you grow anything out of these rocks? And he sort of winked. And he said, making wine is like squeezing blood from a stone. Not only is that a revelatory phrase for me, there’s miracle, there’s renewal, there’s resurrection in that.

Adam McHugh 00:46:48 I was searching for meaning in that trip. I kind of felt like it raised me from the dead.

Natalie MacLean 00:46:58 You won’t want to miss next week when we chat with Veronique Rex, the managing director for the Mouton Cadet brand, and Jérome Aguirre, director of the Mouton Cadet Wines, about their fair for life program. It’s really inspiring and they’ll join us from Bordeaux, France to give you a taste of future guests. We’ll have John Baker on the intriguing backstory of Stalin’s secret wine cellar, now worth millions of dollars. Millie Milliken on artisanal tequila. Nick Fogg on the wines of Japan. Doctor Dave Nutt on wine and health. Ben Hawkins on port and sherry. Global bartending champion Caitlin Stewart on fresh new cocktails. Humorist Maryse Chevrier on how to sound wine smart. Karen Newman on 40 cocktails to close out Any evening. Liz Gabay on rosé. Christiane Rester on whiskey. And Marisol de la Fuente on the wines of Argentina. Do you have a question for any of our guests? Please let me know. Do you know someone who would be interested in learning more about the fascinating intersection between wine and religion? Please let them know about this podcast.

Natalie MacLean 00:48:07 Email or text them now while you’re thinking about it. It’s easy to find the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. Just tell them to search for that title or my name Natalie MacLean wine on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or their favorite podcast app. Or they can listen to the show on my website at Natalie MacLean. Com or podcast. Email me if you have a tip, question, or you’d like to win one of six drinks books I have to give away. And yes, those future guests will also be giving away books so you can get a jumpstart by contacting me now. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on this episode, or if you’ve read or listened to my book. Email me at Natalie at Natalie MacLean dot com. In the show notes, you’ll find a link to take a free online food and wine pairing class with me called the five Wine and Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner and How to fix Them Forever. At Natalie MacLean. Com and that’s all in the show notes at Natalie MacLean.

Natalie MacLean 00:49:01 Com. 394. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week. Perhaps a wine that has helped make a dinner.

Natalie MacLean 00:49:11 For you.

Natalie MacLean 00:49:13 A spiritual communion.

Natalie MacLean 00:49:21 You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at Natalie MacLean. Meet me here next week. Cheers!

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