"You can't put Old Wine in New Bottles "

It sounds like a misquote of Jesus; he said you can't put new wine in old wineskins (because they would burst).

Bob

Yes, it was a quote of Jesus, although a misquote.

It can be found in Matthew 9:17 (the first book of the New Testament)

When the religious authorities were trying to criticize Jesus and his disciples, as well as Jesus' teachings, saying they went against the old testament laws and traditions, Jesus was saying that what he was offering was fresh and new, and just didn't fit their old ways of thinking which had lost God's intended focus. Old wineskins were brittle, inflexible. New wine was fermenting, giving off gas. You needed newer flexible wineskins to expand and stretch as the young wine still gave of CO2, or else, new wine in old wineskins would burst the dry skins, losing everything. So too, God's purpose in Jesus needed open, hungry and humble hearts to be received, instead of inflexible, immoveable traditions and attitudes.

Hope that's helpful.

Rick Fremont, MI

Makes sense. The skins would stretch, they were made of hide. Joe

Hi Rick...I've tried to find good pages on the internet dealing with the history of wine in 1st century Palestine, Rome, Greece and such....what wine would have been like....customs etc. .....know of any?........andy j.

Hi Rick...I've tried to find good pages on the internet dealing with the history of wine in 1st century Palestine, Rome, Greece and such....what wine would have been like....customs etc. .....know of any?........andy j.

Hi Rick...I've tried to find good pages on the internet dealing with the history of wine in 1st century Palestine, Rome, Greece and such....what wine would have been like....customs etc. .....know of any?........andy j.

Here's a link from a friend:

It's at least a look at the art of making wine from Bible times.... an intereaction of the process of winemaking as well as Bible verses...

That's as far as I know.

Rick

I always thought that quote was refering to old skins being infected due to wine in contact with air in them and the old wine would ruin the new.

So he was either polking at the old was because they were inflexible and could not accept new ideas or because their old ideas would infect and sour the new ones. A little different conotation either way.

Ray

Hi Andy,

I'm not aware of an Internet resource, but a good book on the subject is "A Short History of Wine" by Rod Phillips. Chapter 2 is "Democratic Drinking - Wine in Ancient Greece and Rome", which covers the 1st century.

I host the web site that Rick Vanderwal referred to, "Winemaking In The Bible", which covers basic principles of winemaking from the beginning of the Old Testament (about 5,000 BC) until the close of the New Testament canon, (about 100 AD).

Regards,

Gary

Thx. to All for replies. I turned 50 last week and I think the quote I gave ( "Old wine in New Bottles") is becoming more and more true as time goes on !

Andrew