The Nugget:
1Timothy 5:23 Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities.
My Comment:
This verse is one of the most misapplied verses in the Bible. To suppose that Paul would advise Timothy to partake of alcoholic beverage for the health of his stomach ailments is absurd. In the first place, in New Testament times wine was not distilled in a manner to make it more alcoholic or potent as is done in modern times. Of course, in Paul and Timothy’s day refrigeration was not available, so grape juice could be fermented. But the better understanding of what Paul was recommending would be to take Paul’s advice to Timothy in the sense of consume more fresh fruit juice. Paul elsewhere in this same letter to Timothy commanded total abstinence, according to the proper translation of the Greek text (1 Timothy 3:2).
This issue was just raised on Facebook on a site where Muslims and Christians exchange views.
My Response:
A resource I have addresses 1 Timothy 5:23 as follows:
“These words have been the excuse for much drinking. Timothy had been carefully trained by his godly mother and grandmother (2 Timothy 1:5) and was evidently abstemious in his habits. The old missionary, worried about the frail health of his young friend, advised him to use the fruit of grapes which grew there in abundance. St. Paul was the forerunner of today’s popular acceptance of the therapeutic value of fresh fruit juices for digestion and general health. While St. Paul may have known nothing about vitamins, he did know that fresh fruit juices were healthful for digestion” (B. R. Palmer, “The Bible and the Use of the Word ‘Wine,'” page 4).
Other New Testament passages in the original Greek text command total abstinence from what we today call alcoholic beverages, as at 1 Timothy 3:2, where the Greek is more correctly to be translated “without wine” which the Friberg lexicon defines “…strictly holding no wine, without wine; abstinent.”
Therefore, the better part of wisdom is to remain totally abstinent.
