45. Act_2:13, Full of New Wine
Acts 2:13, Full of New Wine Acts 2:13 : “Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine.” To account for the strange fact that unlettered Galileans, without previous study, could speak a multitude of languages, the mockers implied they were drunk, and that it was caused by new wine (gleukos). Here are two improbabilities. The first is, that drinking alcoholic wine could teach men languages. We know that such wines make men talkative and garrulous; and we also know that their talk is very silly and offensive. In all the ages, and with the intensest desire to discover a royal way to knowledge, no one but these mockers has hit upon alcohol as an immediate and successful teacher of languages. The second improbability is, that gleukos, new wine, would intoxicate. This is the only place in the New Testament where this word occurs. Donnegan’s Lexicon renders gleukos, “new, unfermented wine—must.” From “glukus, sweet, agreeable to the taste;” where oinos is understood, “sweet wine made by boiling grapes.”
Dr. E. Robinson, quoting classical authorities, defines gleukos, “must—grape-juice unfermented;” but, seemingly with no other authority than the mockers, adds: “Acts 2:13 : Sweet wine, fermented and intoxicating.”
Dr. S.T. Bloomfield says: “Gleukos, not new-made wine, which is the proper signification of the word (for that is forbidden by the time of the year); but new, i.e. sweet wine, which is very intoxicating.”
Rev. T.S. Green’s Lexicon,gleukos, “the unfermented juice of the grape, must; hence, sweet new wine. Acts 2:13. From glukus, sweet. James 3:11-12; Revelation 10:9-10.”
Science teaches that, when by fermentation the sugar is turned into alcohol, the sweetness of the juice is gone. Thus, sweet means, as the lexicons state, unfermented wine.
Kitto, ii. 955, says: “Gleukos, must, in common usage, sweet or new wine. It only occurs once in the New Testament (Acts 2:13). Josephus applies the term to the wine represented as being pressed out of the bunch of grapes by the Archi-oino-choos into the cup of the royal Pharaoh.” Professor C. Anthon says: “The sweet, unfermented juice of the grape is termed gleukos.”
Smith, in his Greek and Roman Antiquities, says, “The sweet, unfermented juice of the grape was termed glukos by the Greeks, and mustum by the Romans; the latter word being properly an adjective, signifying new or fresh.”
Rev. Albert Barnes, on Acts 2:13, remarks: “New wine (glukos)—this word properly means the juice of the grape which distils before a pressure is applied, and called must. It was sweet wine, and hence the word in Greek meaning sweet was given to it. The ancients, it is said, had the art of preserving their new wine, with the peculiar flavor before fermentation, for a considerable time, and were in the habit of drinking it in the morning.”
Dr. William Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, article “Wine,” says, “A certain amount of juice exuded from the ripe fruit before the treading commenced. This appears to have been kept separate from the rest of the juice, and to have formed the sweet wine (glukos, new wine) noticed in Acts 2:13.” “The wine was sometimes preserved in its unfermented state, and drunk as must.”
It was, indeed, the most consummate irony and effrontery for those mockers to say that the apostles were drunk on gleukos, new wine, and full as reliable was the statement that, being thus drunk, they could intelligently and coherently speak in a number of languages of which, up to that day, they had been ignorant. Peter denies the charge, and fortifies his denial by the fact that it was only the third hour of the day, answering to our nine a.m. This was the hour for the morning sacrifice. It was not usual for men to be drunk thus early (1 Thessalonians 5:7). It was a well-known practice of the Jews not to eat or drink until after the third hour of the day. As distilled spirits were not known until the ninth century, it was altogether an improbable thing that they could have thus early been drunk on the weak wines of Palestine. As the evidence, both ancient and modern, is that gleukos, new wine, was unfermented, and therefore not intoxicating, this passage testifies in favor of two kinds of wine.