wine (was: Re: [geeks] OW.)

[Julius Sridhar]

On 8 Mar 2002, Gregory Leblanc wrote:

> > > > After all, it *was* Jesus who turned water into wine.  Drink up!
> > >
> > > As I was told when I questioned that, I was told simply that where
> > > and when he did that, they couldn;t drink the water. Thus, wine was
> > > the only way to avoid dehydration. Not my point, just a quote.
> >
> > If that was the only reason for drinking wine, then why wouldn't Jesus have
> > just purified the water?
>
> Well, a few thousand years ago, it was pretty damn hard to "purify"
> water.  As in, there were a places where you could drink the water, and
> others where you couldn't.  If you couldn't drink the water, there
> wasn't much you could do to make it drinkable, except to cook with it.
> If you've had to drink boiled water, you'll go with the wine any day.

Actually, they didn't know about the boiling water for purification trick
east of Persia.  And even in Persia, India, Tibet, China, and the Khmer
kingdoms, people didn't drink boiled water unless they were very poor.
They drank tea.

Peace...  Sridhar